Coaches

With all the recent news, it seems to be an appropriate time to discuss coaches in PUBG.

Before I get started, and because I might have fairly direct judgments, please remember it’s only my perspective, based on what I heard, and what I see from other teams. “Coaches” can fill quite different missions based on what their team requires, and there isn’t a good answer to “What a good coach is?”.

The environment

First, it seems impossible to discuss coaches without mentioning PUBG’s responsibility.

PUBG decided one day that their game would be a 4-men team game, and eventually, they never reconsidered their decision. Despite the very different rulings across the regions, coaches are for the most part ignored within the PUBG ecosystem:

• Communication during games: No,
• Interviews: No,
• Content: No,
• Access to information: No.

To PUBG, either you’re an org or a player, or you just simply don’t exist.
There are other topics that could be discussed there, but PUBG’s decision definitely never aimed toward a better consideration of coaches.

Alongside, PUBG’s communication has always been pointed out when it comes to organizations leaving the scene, and based on my experience, this is mostly true.

Even if the game we all love is really demanding, and I think that’s also a viable explanation of why some other games took over and the player base/viewership bounced away, PUBG had a gem, and through poor consideration of their partners led the investments away.

This created a situation where not only a few orgs left have a lot of power to concentrate the best players (even more with GPT) but also forced most “smaller” orgs to have short-term-based decision-making. You have to get results within your first year, or you’re threatened to get your regional partnership reduced or dismissed.

In such circumstances, what org would be keen to invest in a coach and let him build something up over time, as any traditional sport would do?

The environment definitely doesn’t give fair visibility to coaches, and networking, or being friends with the right person is definitely more valuable than being actually good at what you’re doing.

What a good coach is?

Even if I seem to suggest only a few coaches really deserve the position they have, let me be more precise.

To me, the most accurate criteria to determine whether a coach is good or not is to compare his actual performances to the performances he’s supposed to have given:

• The players,
• The work environment (salaries, boot camps, staff),
• The stability.

While I can’t really judge the third item, I can definitely use the first two, and it leads me to the following conclusion based on the last two years:

• Alrein: even if the addition of Ubah has solved a lot of problems NAVI might have had in the past, Alrein has definitely grown a lot over the last two years, and went from someone who was telling me “We’re getting trolled” in PGC 2021 GF to someone who got a team to achieve the most impressive performance we might have ever hard in a world championship,
• Zeko: he still has a lot to learn as a coach, but winning a PCS and getting to PGC Grand Finals with an inexperienced roster is a significant performance. 2023 will be key for him, but given how humble he’s, and the potential of the team, they are in a position to cement themselves as a top team in Europe,
• Syllogic: while SQ has ruled the Americas for the last two years, I think they got complacent. Even if they won PGI.S, people have to remember it was a single BO10, and other than that, SQ international showings have been more than terrible. I’m not sure whether he’s more of a manager than a coach, but he definitely couldn’t step up when his team needed it the most,
• Gunner: definitely an interesting case. LG has been on a downward trend for a while and based on that, I’d be keen to be really harsh with him. Yet, LG had resurgences here and there, but they quite failed to maintain their dominant position, both domestically and internationally. I’d say I have a mostly negative perception of Gunner's actual coaching skills, but he might prove me wrong at any time, so I’ll remain humble and will wait for the next global to have a fair judgment,
• Didz: he’s certainly a good coach, but I feel like he always slightly underperformed given the criteria above. Faze always had a great aura, and certainly benefited from good work conditions along with the players they wanted, and yet, they failed to be successful. However, the consistency they have shown leads me to give him credit. The same thing as Gunner, his next position will be crucial to have a fair opinion of his actual coaching skills,
• 7teen: even if he quit coaching, I’ve always had a great opinion of him. Under his leadership, TL has always been top 3/5 worldwide, and almost never (if ever) failed to be consistent at the best level,
• TM’s coaches (Blamous, TheTab): it’s really hard to judge these people as coaches. TM seems to be a strong self-driven team and based on my talks with Batulins, coaches have just been a way for them to get different perspectives and get more complete before moving on to the next person,
• Ball1n: I’m not sure how much he’s responsible for that, but I can easily give him credit for picking newcomers (Beami/Curexi) while top teams were just recycling the same players. And by doing so, he won an ESL and got 2nd place at PGC21. Other than that, HERO has been really underperforming given their resources, and that’s why I tend to think he’s a terrible coach. However, I’m pretty sure he was more a manager than a coach, and I’m not sure what his future will be given the situation in Europe,

There are many more people we could be talking about, and I’ll happily answer if asked, but I feel there aren’t a lot of actual technical coaches (people who have a deep understanding of the game, and a specific identity associated with them).

Conclusion

I could have written a longer essay about the topic, as it’s something I’m really passionate about. However, I think the main conclusion we may have here is:

• Don’t misjudge managers for coaches: even if some are both, most of the time, they fall into one category over the other, and using the same word to define managers (Trevor, Ball1n, Syllogic (?)) and coaches (Alrein, Gunner, Didz) do more harm than good to both categories in my opinion,
• Even if coaches/managers are, by definition, generous people: the current state of the scene, in the West at least, will lead in the near future to a talent drain toward other games.

Thank you for your time, and as always, feel free to reach out if you want to discuss the topic further.

Maxime