SchweppeskaidusIsn't it widely considered that they are coaches in everything but name?
basically this
steel is clg's coach, but he isn't allowed to state that directly. He just hints towards it sometimes on stream.
I think this should be taken with a grain of salt, from watching some 10man/steel streams it seems more like:
1. Steel has demo reviewed CLG's demos before on request of CLG
2. Steel briefly lived in the CLG house when he didnt have anywhere to live (his house was flooded? i think?)
So does steel coach CLG? Not really? he doesn't design plays for them, he doesn't go to tournaments and provide them feedback on how maps went, he just watches them play sometimes and calls them out on blown coverages basically. he's like a fancy ESPN talking head. Could he play top level CS anymore? probably. Is his analysis of CLG the equivalent of acting as the coach of a top level cs team? no.
NB: steel/dazed are viewed as these godly cs geniuses. its worth noting, that throughout their entire cs career (source included) has basically consisted of stealing smarter french igls (xsten6(im not even going to bother learning to spell his name until he makes another top 5 cs team) and happy (pronax honorable mention, but happy is easier to mimic because happy creates godly cs players and pronax just finds them).
so lets talk about steel first, his entire csgo strategy is stolen from dazed. ok thats it.
so lets talk about dazed. dazed stole it from copying and mimicing LDLC. At least thats when IBP got really really nice, he designed his strategy (and his entire way of viewing "right" cs) based on how happy saw it. what i think is interesting is the way he was able to do it, and why for a moment it looked like sgares (and therefore c9) would be able to do it and become a top 4 cs team. Watching and having his team copy LDLC's demos. LDLC eats T2 teams for breakfast, they can literally outmuscle every T2 team. How? All of his players including him are basically flowcharts, flowcharts learned in scrims based on being told by happy what to do differently.
so if your dazed, you tell each player exactly what to do every round, and mix it up only as often as LDLC mixes it up. Those deviations are stolen from LDLC. Everything is. What makes being an igl so hard, is being able to read when to deviate, what mid round adjustments to make. Now finally, you don’t have to. You run the same pistol rounds, you run the same gun rounds, you run the same eco rounds, you utilize the same buying strategy. And it doesn’t matter, because you aren’t being counterstratted yet.
So why did sgares fail where dazed succeeded? Sgares doesn’t actually get the igl role (maybe he does, but it doesn’t look like it). Happy understood it the absolute best: its watching demos, and playing the most complicated role in whatever system is being used. People accuse happy of baiting? No fucking shit, its his job as igl to set himself up for the easy 100% frags. The difference is those frags are also the most varied frags anyone on his team picks up. It’s why LDLC (now NV) realized that all that mattered is: the igl, and 4 best role players (basically aim/dm). this is basketball where the coach is forced to play basically. it will eventually more resemble the pg in basketball, but right now its 100% the coach.
What are those roles?
Carry – Kioshima/Shroud/Swag: only listing Happy styled carries. Fnatic is much less rigid, because they weren’t all made into amazing cs players by pronax in the same way that all of NV has been created by either happy or shox (shox started kio, happy polished him). This is the guy who collects frags, because hes set up for them in strict senses (not fluid happy style).
Entry/Trade-bait – Freakazoid/Apex/Steel: the player that walks into to die to a peeking ct and get traded on. Aim is nice, but tbh you don’t need this player to get kills. Seriously, you can get all the T rounds you want with your entry getting 0 kills. But ya, you hope he can win you some rounds by giving you the trade advantage in a site take (which is what a good entry does for his team). Your strats will tend to leave T2 teams out of position and blind so he can devour T2 teams which is where the value in him having good aim really helps.
Inside Scoop: This used to be Kio, and Shox was carry. I think the LDLC meltdown occurred because Happy realized that kio was the better carry and shox the better entry, but shox felt he was too good and too smart to be utilized in entry roles. In the end happy shipped out shox and smithzz because smithzzz wasn’t good enough and shox didn’t want to switch roles. SPECULATION
Sniper – Skadoodle (under both dazed and sgares)/KennyS: when you win a forcebuy, or weak buy chances are if its past the first 7 rounds of the game that there is an awp to pickup. The awp is really powerful for entries, or at least forcing your enemy to respect certain angles, and PUNISH enemies for peeking for information. Seriously, this is what makes awps awesome, they force teams to respect your silence, they cant peek for information without potentially losing their life. Therefore: the awp is a game changer, and ideally you have a player who can tear it up with the awp and you can afford them to be a weaker rifler. This role used to be less sniper focused, but it just makes sense to basically “hide” your best awper in a role that allows for a weaker rifle.
IGL – sgares, Happy, Dazed: You watch demos. When you lose, you find a team that’s better than you and copy them. So lets say you play vs. fnatic and get dumped on. Switch to fnatics ct and t side. How did fnatic beat you? Switch to fnatics new ct and t side. Now you can do that from square 0 and just copy every team you play, but its simpler if you pull a Dazed and just copy a really solid fundamental cs team, and then once your competing at a high level, you start really copying your opponents. Oh ya, and because you understand whats actually happening in the game, youre expected to be smart about rotating. You are the important rotate/switch role on most maps. Other players should expect constancy in their rounds, you should be freestyling a little more.
Inside Scoop: this is where sgares struggles. He allows other people to call over him, back when POVs were a thing there was an important round where sgares called for an NOA stack at mid after the T’s smoked it. Freakazoid disagreed, and so did N0thing. Both players were hesistant to stack. Eventually they did, they were spammed down by someone xbox. Both players took that as a sign they were right. In reality, sgares was, their hesitance cost them the frag, the entry in an unbelievably crucial round. (the entry matters because youre giving a team the trade advantage).
Rock/Safelane Carry (lmao dota) – NBK/AZK/n0thing (lmao this is why c9 sucks btw no one can assign a role to Kobe Bean Bryant I mean n0thing whoops xd): Second best aimer, plays safe positions where the importance is staying alive to play off other peoples peeks and flashes (B site on inferno, long on dust2). This is n0things and c9’s big issue, n0thing doesn’t understand that his job is just to copy what sgares tells him, he overthinks his positions and ends up costing a lot of rounds. Remember when Dazed said he would just post someone up where Jordan plays and get a frag everytime when he pushes? He wasn’t joking, Jordan doesn’t understand that pushing as a ct a lot causes a lot of drag on your round winrate, and against ecos will cause SERIOUS issues.
Because thats whats great about cs, its this amazing behemoth blend of basketball and poker and it makes for a display of raw skill and genius decisionmaking (wagering peeks/lives and rounds rather than chips and pots).