“We’re in the middle,” Onur comments on Leviatán’s expectations versus the results

The VCT Americas playoffs are in full swing and we are starting to see teams lose their chance at Masters Tokyo. One of the first teams eliminated from the bracket was Leviatán. They fell to Cloud9 and afterwards, esports.gg spoke with their head coach Rodrigo "Onur" Dalmagro about the match and getting another shot at Champions with the LCQ.

"On the broadcast, it looked like you had a lot to say in the pre-match huddle. What were telling your players before they went up against Cloud9?"

Onur: "I don't remember the exact moment. We always try to visualize the technical aspects of the game. We talk a lot. We talk about the maps that we are going to play. We already faced Cloud9 a few weeks ago, so we had a read on several of the strategies that they like to do. So, maybe we were talking about about that."

"Then once the match started, we saw the comp change on Haven. Was that just to swing for the fences against C9 and hope for a homerun? How did it come about?"

Onur: "No, not really. We planned to change our Haven composition before LOUD. That was the reason why we picked Haven against LOUD. To show the other composition. So, we gave Cloud9 false information about what we are going to do in the playoffs. And we trained the composition for two weeks. We had good results against very good teams. We are very confident that we can play the competition better than we did."

"Both teams tried to mount a comeback in the first two maps, but Leviatán were the ones stopping the comeback on Lotus. There was a timeout called with the rounds at 12:10 and you won the map right after. So, how do you approach your timeouts? Do you use them to strategize or to just keep the players positive mentally?"

Onur: "It depends on the moment. Some of them are to stop the momentum of the rival in the game. But that timeout specifically, it was about what what could we achieve with the Ultimates that we had in that moment. So, that one was a little bit technical, but other ones could be psychology."

"At the start of the season, a lot of people ranked you guys very high. Do you think those expectations put pressure on the players? And that is maybe why some of the matches didn't go as you would have liked them to?"

Onur: "I don't think so, but also it was because we like to train. We like to practice very serious. Maybe more serious than other teams. We always perform a good in practice, better than tournaments. Maybe with that information, maybe with comments of other players from other teams, the hype train started to go.

"We are not as good as they have mentioned, but we are not as bad as it looks right now. We're in the middle, between their expectations and all of the results. We are going to train harder to achieve the Last Chance Qualifier. We want to win a championship."

"Regardless of the outcome today, you still made playoffs and have that Last Chance Qualifier ahead. But looking back on the first VCT Americas season, do you have any regrets?"

Onur: "Not really. We put the hours, we put in the work, and it didn't work out in the end. We have been training for six months with no day off. And maybe there's a lot of stuff in the technical sense that we could do better, but we really put the hard work on the table. So, it didn't work as expected, but we really tried."

"What's the plan then to get the team in shape for the LCQ?"

Onur: "Well, I think in the next week, the guys are going to take a short vacation. They are going to be back with their families, with their loved ones. Maybe in one or two weeks, we want to start to train again. At least for one month, to be prepared for the Last Chance Qualifier. So, that the plans in the next couple of months."

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