Gaming
Esports
How are OG CSGO getting ready for ESL Pro League?
At the end of last year OG formed their CS:GO roster with big goals for 2020. We sat down with their coach, Casper ‘ruggah’ Due, to talk about the squad’s targets.
While OG’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive squad only formed at the end of last year, they already have some good placements under their belt. At cs_summit 5 they placed 3rd-4th and more recently they narrowly lost against G2 in the grand finals of the BLAST Premier group stages.
OG have a different philosophy when it comes to team-building than other top CSGO teams out there. OG is for the players and by the players, which is apparent in the way that they formed their roster. They choose players that fit their mentality from an array of different teams, instead of just buying out rosters like most other teams do and so far it seems to be working. We had the chance to sit down with OG CSGO coach Casper ‘ruggah’ Due to talk about the team’s future goals and the way the players are meshing together as a squad.
Ever since OG were founded as a Dota 2 team, the esports team have gone about things differently. They formed their roster based on friendships, players they think would mesh well with the core of the roster – and boy did that work.
This approach is no different for CSGO; ruggah tells us that there's a lot of trust between the organisation and the team. He says: “The approach is very different from my previous teams when it comes to communication and interaction on a daily basis. It's quite clear for me that the focus is to help us develop and give us the tools to do it, rather than enforcing things upon us without taking the individuals into consideration.” He adds that it really feels unique and that it’s no surprise to him that OG are labeled as a competitive family, because it really does feel that way to him.
Even though OG as an organisation are new to Counter-Strike, their team members are certainly not. They all come from well-established teams and ruggah himself has been in the CS scene for years as a player. He knows all too well that the most important thing for a team is how well the players combine. Luckily, meshing isn’t a problem, says ruggah.
“We've taken great steps for the last couple of weeks, where we've shown we're capable of overcoming even the hardest tasks and turning things around. On top of that, we're building team chemistry all the time and our time together in London has improved that a lot, since we were able to tackle immediate challenges face-to-face from the tournaments and our bootcamp as they appeared.”
A common problem that orgs struggle the most with when it comes to the formation of a new team is how the players think differently about the game. This is especially the case with teams that sign players from different teams, since they’ve absorbed different approaches from their respective coaches. Ruggah says it’s a process and that processes take a lot of time.
It's quite normal that the team's identity on the server takes a couple of months to be set. We're doing our best to speed up the process
The star-studded roster will take things slow despite expectations
© Red Bull
OG also want to be realistic about their goals as a new organisation within CSGO. Ruggah wants to focus more on 2020 as a whole and isn’t really focussed on short term goals. He says: “The scene is super-competitive and things can look very promising one week and the opposite the following week”.
He also says it’s unlikely for the squad to win a major in the first half of the year. “The teams we compete against have had a lot more time together. I hope we can make it to the major since the road to get there is super-hard,” he adds.
The next big tournament that OG will be competing in will be the ESL Pro League, which kicks off on March 16. Ruggah is cautiously optimistic about his goals for the tournament: he wants to fight for the play-offs spot.
“If we bomb out in last place I'd obviously be disappointed, but in the end, it's about our performance more than the result itself,” he tells us. “We try to build a successful roster over time and I can live with a bad result if the performance shows signs of development in our process.”
Patience has always been a virtue for OG. Let’s hope that proves the case for OG CSGO too.
