NEO: "Maybe [Spirit] just didn't feel like we were going to be good on Vertigo"

Filip “NEO” Kubski is one of the biggest legends in the history of Counter-Strike. A Major winner in CS:GO, his list of accomplishments stretches as far as anyone’s in earlier iterations of the game, and now he is forging a new legend for himself as the coach of FaZe Clan.

Now almost a year into his tenure as the coach of the Major-winning core, we sat down with NEO to talk about beating Spirit, his evolution as a coach, and the game ahead against Vitality.

You had a pretty tough game against Spirit. How are you feeling the morning after?

NEO: I feel good, beating Spirit, getting their revenge on them after losing to them twice, it was just amazing, you know? It was, I think, one of the most intense games I've had so far in my coaching career.

It got to a point where it was hard to be part of it, even though the vibes and the energy we've had was great throughout the whole game. They were coming back or we had to come back on Nuke but it felt right, the way we approached the game and the moment we've had. Now it was us being the underdogs in the game, even though we are ranked higher.

But these guys have been on a winning streak for a while now and everybody knows, like, it's Donk, right? [laughs] But then you have the whole team that's playing really well. They have very good players and the whole structure they have is just amazing.

When you're coming into this game you know it’s a tough one, but not impossible… and we felt like we were very hungry to win this one.

Truthfully, we were surprised by them. I mean, we knew that it was an option, that Vertigo might be there, and we've been preparing for that moment for a while now. After Katowice, we went deep into Vertigo, so we knew at some point we were going to use the card.

But yeah, we were kind of surprised they didn't go for Ancient because it's their second-strongest map, but it's also a good map for us. Maybe they just didn't feel like we were going to be good on Vertigo. But I think it all started with, or at least it felt this way, that it started during the veto that we surprised them by banning Anubis and not Overpass. They never pick Overpass, so we knew we could use this one because otherwise, they would have had two maps effectively, Mirage would probably have been the third if we went for an Overpass ban instead of Anubis. So it felt like they got surprised at the start of the veto and they went with the moment and they banned Ancient, which was a part of the plan. We wanted to have it and we knew it was the moment we were going to go with. 

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So with Vertigo then, Spirit have looked quite shaky on Vertigo recently. With that in mind, why was it that you chose to leave it up to that decider, which could be maybe more random and couldn't work rather than pick it if you did have the confidence with it?

NEO: Going for a pick like that, I think it's not the way to go because you need to be confident on your favourite maps and going for a pick like that is more of a risky play, you know? Obviously, we're a strong Mirage team as well and we feel confident on some other maps as well. So it didn't feel like we need to go for those picks, you know? if they went for Ancient instead of Vertigo, that would still be okay for us. But, since it was one of their best maps as well, we didn't feel like picking it. Nuke was the way to go for us. Like I said, I think they wanted to go for Anubis and Mirage third. So by this approach, we kind of ruined their plans.

In terms of your approach to coaching, when you're behind the team you seem to be very different to how Robban was behind the team. How are you finding that your method of coaching, whether it's out of the game game, in-game, is developing? 

NEO: I've had to learn the things that come together with being a coach and that every coach has different things to do in every team because I always believed to have a successful team, you have to have five players to be able to build the structure and be able to progress by themselves. 

The coach is someone extra who's going to help them put the pieces into the puzzle, and like with this team, it’s both easier and not easy at all because you have all the structure you need. You have Karrigan who is leading the team, building a lot of stuff. You have very smart players on each side of the map who can bring some new things from them. So then you just need to see what's needed. When I joined the team, I just observed how they work and what are their habits and how they play. Then I started getting to know them as people. I feel like we get along pretty well and I like being around these guys. It's so much fun to be with them and they're very professional and serious about the work. So they have everything they need to be a top team and with some extra help then it’s just the small things, right? Step by step, if you improve a little bit here and a little bit there, you just become more stable. 

So, I'm still learning how to be a coach. I found out you can actually have a big impact on the game if you take timeouts. It was during the Spirit game when I had to ask the admin if we had more timeouts left because I lost the track and I felt like I could have one more. It was four timeouts before. Now it was only three. So there was a moment when I wanted to say something to the guys, but I couldn't. That's something I've learned after becoming a coach that you need to be careful with the timeouts and that the things you say might help a lot and change the way the game goes.

I really like being part of the game again and I enjoy it so much, even though it's more stressful than when I used to play. You're not busy with the game, you can't just be occupied with playing and sometimes you can only hope for the best and you don't have the full impact throughout the whole game. You can only say some stuff during the timeout. So, yeah, it's tough, but it's also a very nice thing.

With timeouts then, what are you realising is the best time to call them? In a game like that, for instance, it’s so tense, there's mistakes happening from both teams, it's high adrenaline, and there’s so much to speak about, so is it when things are going right? Is it maybe you need to calm people down? Is it when things are going wrong? When is the best time?

NEO: I think every game is just different and you need to feel it. You know, FaZe Clan has that and that's what I also like. I discovered that that's how teams I've played for also worked. It's very much feeling dependent, it depends on the moment.

Sometimes you can feel the energy is going down a little bit. That's when you can take a timeout and talk to them and bring it back up or you can give them some ideas. You might want to share an idea for a strat you think might work so it very, very much depends on the situation. Sometimes you just see the enemies being on a winning streak and you need to take a timeout to slow them down a little bit. So there are different types of timeouts. 

How is the team as a whole in terms of the integration of Frozen? You've only recently finally got to have a boot camp because of the schedule you've been on. How, how was that boot camp? Do you feel like Frozen is now fully integrated into the team where maybe he wasn't even in at Katowice?

NEO: Actually, I think he was. He's a type of person that’s just a great asset to the team. He's a very positive guy and like brings lots of good energy to the team and talks a lot. It's easy to talk about the problems you can have during the game with him, so I think instantly when he joined the team, he was part of the team already. 

It just takes a little bit of time to adjust all the small things. When you change a player, every player that's on the team, it doesn't matter which player brings what assets or values, that’s always the case, that player always brings something to the table. So, when you make even a small change, like one player in the team, the new guy that's coming in, that’s not going to be the same person with the same assets or values. He's not going to be bringing the same things. So then you need to adjust a little bit in different areas. 

For example, if you bring someone more vocal to the team, somebody else has less space to be vocal. So I think that was the key to the boot camp, just using a little bit more time to get to know the things and find our ways to do that.

I believe he was a perfect replacement for Twistzz. Even though Twistzz is p one of the best players in the world, and he still is, David is also an amazing guy and he's so young but very experienced already. I think that was also good for the team because they've been together for a while and from my own experience in a long term team, as in, teams with the same lineups for a while, there are more and more problems that might appear the longer you guys stay together. So for me, it was a good moment to change the energy a little bit within the team without changing too much.

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frozen spoke to INSITE earlier about the amount of voices in the team and how maybe there were too many voices on Nuke. From your perspective as a coach, what are the positives and negatives of everyone having a voice? And if you feel like there are too many voices when there doesn't need to be, how do you approach that?

NEO: Actually, in our team, it's a great balance between all of that because you have people that have like really great understanding of the game and they know that when the team needs them to step up and there's a different game each tournament, if there's one player who is more in the zone, he going to be more active.

That's when you switch the weight of the game to a different place. So it's very momentum-based games we have, but I don't think, in this team, it is an issue that there are too many voices, but in the past, we've had that like in my old team VP, we used to switch in-game leaders. So we had like three people that can be calling and then a fourth guy that can also be giving some ideas, and that leads to the moment when you need to follow one plan. 

That's what we've been discussing in the past. It's better to follow one, not perfect plan, but one plan over two or three different plans and everybody goes their own way. So here, it's a great structure. 

I think everybody trusts Finn [karrigan] as an in-game leader. On the CT side, it looks a little bit different because he's playing anchor sometimes, so you have different people stepping up when it comes to calling on CT sides. And obviously, you have a very unique AWPer who's just playing in different places, roaming around the map. So yesterday everything was just connecting pretty well. 

Finally, at the start of this interview, you mentioned that you lost to Spirit a couple of times when you played them recently, the same is true for Vitality. What's the method going into this game? Is it again based around having that kind of revenge feeling? Is there something that maybe you've been working on specifically for Vitality?

NEO: We finished at midnight, so we haven't had the time to like sit down and go through the game plan that we're going to have. We're going to do that in the evening before the game so we'll see about that, but definitely, we feel like we've lost two finals against Vitality in the past few months, so we're definitely looking to beat them finally and get our revenge. 

But these guys [Vitality] are also incredible. I think people didn't think they were going to beat Cloud9 so convincingly. It's going to be a tough one, but if you want to win the tournament, you have to beat everyone. So, I’m looking forward to another very interesting match.