Recently BIG has been plagued by one unfortunate event after another but despite this, they came into this tournament with an absurd amount and confidence. That confidence paid off as they managed to make it into the top three propelled by their fans who whilst little in number still managed to make more noise than everyone else in the arena. UKCSGO’s very own Freddie “GrimyRannarr” Pritchard was able to catch up with their coach Fatih “gob b” Dayik after the team’s defeat to Heroic
Firstly how do you feel about that game, especially with k1to flying in last minute?
He flew in two or three hours before the game, the flight was delayed as well because apparently everything at this event goes wrong for us. I think he tried his best, he brought in some good energy and unfortunately it wasn’t enough.
If you had Krimbo do you think it would have different results?
Probably yes. Not because k1to is a bad player, it is just because of positioning. When he was standing in for faveN once it was easier because he was playing all his positions that he plays in the academy team. Krimbo’s positions are however a little bit different so it might have been a little bit different but you never know.
Looking at k1to and his position in the academy roster. Is there any space for him to come back to the main roster, or anyone else in the academy roster in general?
Yeah I think so because the main idea of the academy team is that if we see some potential like we saw in Krimbo, we can always pick up some good players. They have a lot of talent, only k1to, other players too and so there always is a chance.
Looking at Krimbo, do you think because of his inexperience the amount of travel he is doing will affect him?
It might have to be honest, but normally he does have good conditions, he is still young so he can run and be cold and not get ill like the older guys. We will need to see what went wrong. It was just unlucky because all our tests were negative and he was all the time with us, so it might have been a little bit unlucky but it might have also affected him and his immune system with the amount of travel he is doing.
Looking at the rosters results, you had a disappointing major but then you have woken up in the last few events, what changed post major?
We were still a young team, it was the first event I was present at and didn’t really have much time to prepare. . Now I do have time to prepare but still not even that much because of our busy schedule. For example, we had to play the Dallas qualifiers with a stand-in, which means we are just getting less practice when we cannot afford to waste time. It just needs some more time for the system, I need some more time to work with the players so they can get a little bit better and it has already shown. My goal is to get top 10 and we are getting closer to that, hopefully we can go further but this is the first goal we want to achieve.
With you coming into the roster, you are really animated behind the players, are you a second voice in the team now alongside tabseN, how does this affect the players do you think?
It really helps the players and I feel like it affects them a lot. I would be disappointed if it didn’t, my experience helps a lot and I also know what people are thinking. On the other team I can see from the outside what is going wrong, but sometimes for us it feels like a 6v5 in the server. I am ready to jump in because I understand when the enemy coach will take a pause, and I need to be ready to prepare for this and I think I am getting pretty good at it. I just need to work on sometimes help people motivating them to snap out of their distractions and I feel like it has really affect my players
How has it felt going from player with some of these players to now coaching them, does it feel a little strange?
No not really to be honest. When I was IGL, I am almost doing the same, always trying to teach people. But as a coach you don’t get as easily frustrated as an IGL so it helps me a lot with less stress. I am becoming more understandable, seeing things from different perspectives and basically from the start when I was IGL, I always knew that the coach had a better view. Maybe not in game wise because he is standing outside the game as he is not having the stress of the game. So for me this feels like the perfect role and it is not that different, but the coaching role brings in some other stuff I need to learn.
Coming back from VALORANT did you struggle at the beginning with the transition?
I would say no, it might have taken a little bit longer but coming into Dallas I felt ready, I felt like I was reading the opponents well and feeling very comfortable about reading the next steps, understanding what they would do and how they would react. We have been having good timeouts with good understanding with what to do. However today we had two or three shots missed and we would have had a different game. Sometimes the right call just needs to get executed well. I even thought it would take longer, but it hasn’t.
What was the reasoning for you coming back to CSGO?
The main reason was definitely tabseN, I felt like his frustration was really big and I felt like he needed more connection with his coach. For me, right now we are always playing ping pong and thinking what would you do, what would I do. We are very honest with each other about especially with if one of us has a bad call. I give him all the time ideas, challenge him and making sure we have a open conversation.
The busy schedule I mentioned before, do you feel like when we hit the player break, you will finally have time to start implementing your systems?
Yes definitely. It is a long way to go however. Before this event we where thinking we had to play Dallas now, it was very last minute and some of the Russian players could not get visas so we knew that it was going to be a busy time. I said to the guys we should play all tournaments to get good experience and hopefully we use this time as a boot camp, we have a lot of stuff and can start maybe changing stuff around. However, we have had to go into some officials changing positions and not even having any practice in this structure. It is a little bit of a gamble sometimes, but it is paying off right now.
