WarHorse on TSW's Worlds goal: “Our goal is to qualify for the quarterfinals”

When you built this team in the off-season, did you expect it to be so competitive domestically — that they’d win all three splits?

From the very beginning it wasn’t that smooth for us, and we didn’t set a very high goal. Maybe the ultimate goal was reaching the World Championship. But all the players improved so fast through this journey, and they have a very strong will to grab every victory. Last year they always lost against CFO, so this time they really wanted to try their best — that was one of our biggest motivations.

This is a very young roster. Does that make it easier for you to shape them?

I do help shape our players, because in how they approach the game, and in age, they’re very young. So we try to make them more decisive and to avoid random actions inside the game. That’s a very important part of what I have to teach them as a coach.

Is experience something this team lacked at the start of the year, and that they’ve gained by winning three splits?

International tournaments mean a lot to us, because they really show us the weaknesses inside the team. Even though we won everything in the LCP, it’s still very hard for us internationally and we only got a few wins. I hope we can learn a lot from that, take the lessons, and use that international experience to make the team better.

You already have international wins — at MSI you beat Top Esports, the LPL’s second seed at the time, in a BO5. Was that important in breaking the mental barrier this team could have internationally?

Definitely, it helped us a lot. We always knew it’s very hard to take a victory against LPL and LCK teams, so after that win we built a lot of confidence and got motivation — and after that we could set bigger goals for the team. If you keep losing to one team or one region, you lose that confidence, which is very important as a pro player, and you don’t trust yourself. And honestly, beyond losing to LCP and LCK teams, we also had a lot of losses against EU and NA teams — we got smashed by some of them. So that victory was very important for the team.

A lot of people will compare you to the CFO team that reached the Worlds quarterfinals last year. Do you understand that comparison?

CFO did a super good job last year, and we want to look up to them and do the same thing, because they had potential and so do we — they made a very good achievement. For us, we had a really bad start at First Stand, but we got more victories at MSI. So coming into Worlds, we want more.

SofM, MVK’s coach, told me during play-ins that you’re a big threat in best-of-ones, and that the Swiss stage could particularly suit you. Does he have a point?

MVK’s good result is actually a very big motivation for the team. Before Worlds, before the play-ins, there were so many rankings of the teams, and the LCP teams were always in the last three. Then after the play-ins I thought, oh my God, MVK aren’t that bad — they can get victories, it’s better than we thought. That means we could do more, we could be better. So it’s motivation for the team. And I agree with what SofM said: our players are still quite young and not as experienced as many veterans, so in a best-of-five the drafts or champion choices could be a little hard for us. But in a best-of-one, because it’s short, I believe we have more of an advantage.

Have you set results-based goals with the players, or do you come here simply wanting to perform well?

Our goal is to qualify for the quarterfinals. At the start of the year we’d have treated that as a joke — but through the experience we’ve accumulated, we feel like it’s a dream we can actually reach. So we want to see whether we can qualify for the quarterfinals.