In the first interview from WESG World Finals, Slaava "Twista" Räsänen talked about iGame.com's group full of unknown forces and the team's recent change which saw him transitioning from a player to a coach.
So far iGame.com have won both of their matches in their group, defeating VG.CyberZen and Colombia with two of the maps going to close scorelines.
iGame.com have survived both of their matches so far
We talked to the Finns' coach, Slaava "Twista" Räsänen, to find out more about his recent transition into the coaching role, what Jesse "zehN" Linjala brought to the team, and how they approached the unknown match-ups in their group.
In the group stage you face a lot of teams that you don't have much of an idea about, before you started playing the groups, what kind of mindset have you set for yourselves going into these matches?
Well, obviously because we have never played against them or seen them play, other than VG, I had to look them up. I watched their previous games against other teams, so I learned a bit about what they're doing. About the mindset, we just agreed that we're gonna play our own game and stick with that, because that would work the best in this case. So we did that. And Colombia, they were pretty good, actually, I didn't expect that much of a fight from them, but they played well, hit their shots. We did some minor mistakes, but that happens, so props to them.
Is there anything specific you noticed about Colombia's game that they did really well?
No, not really. I mean, their strats weren't that good, as in like nothing new. Nothing we haven't seen before. But they really just hit their shots in the right places. They had pretty good rotations on some points, that's really good as well, because they can play as a team in those situations, but other than that they just landed some shots and we didn't, which gave them a lot of rounds.
You've had a fair share of success in Asia before, namely the WCA Finals where you placed third, what are you goals here at WESG?
Our goal, first of all, is getting through the group stage, of course, and getting through as the first team so we'll be top eight. Top eight is the first goal, if we make it to top eight our next goal will be top four. If we manage to get top four, that's really good for us, we'd be satisfied with that.
I'd like to go back to the change you made in December, you stepped down and brought in zehN, what did you want to achieve with this change? Do you think you've accomplished that in the last month?
Well, after I stepped down, as zehN was playing and I was coaching, we saw pretty quickly that we had needed a coach. We needed the sixth guy to help us out with various things, like watching demos, watching our own mistakes and learning from them. I think bringing a new player will boost it even higher than we were, so it's a good move from us. There's a lot of things to work on, the teamwork is a little worse than when I was in, but we have a lot more firepower in the team now. The communication is a bit worse, but the rest of the things we just have to fix and we'll be on a better level with this new addition. We'll see how it goes, we're gonna practice hard and go from there.
How was that transition for you personally, from being an active player to coaching, what were the biggest challenges maybe?
I don't know if there were any challenges, it's just that I've been playing a long time, so it was a good move for me to step down and to get the younger guys in, more for Finland as well, because we need a better scene for Finland. I don't know, it was just natural.
How hard was it for you to work around the fairly new coaching rules, to find out how to help the team during the matches?
During the matches to help the team is a bit shaky now with the ruling, so it's more about helping them before the game and after the game. I think we just have to focus on that - I don't like the rule myself, but it is there so I just have to put all my energy on the other stuff I can do and focus on them, ignore the fact that I cannot help them all the time. I'm okay with that, but I don't like it.
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