Wen 丨 Amon
Recently, the LPL division, which rested for a Spring Festival, has returned to its former liveliness. Thanks to the abundant holidays, the players who returned to the training room to visit relatives and friends were full of happy New Year fat on their faces.
Of course, for the TES team that lost all the way a few years ago, lost RA and lost UP, and even the WE at the bottom of the league lost, in a sense, there is no opponent to lose, this holiday should not be so easy.
Even the enthusiastic fans and friends with the "New All-China Class" can't sleep well. Everyone is busy writing scripts for TES, everyone wants to connect their network cables into the brain-computer interface of the white crescent, and everyone is thinking, if I am a coach, how can I save a good hand of TES that has a good hand but plays a bad hand.
As a result, friends in the LPL division rehearsed a fiery "TES48" election contest at the Tiger Poker Forum.
The gold content of this post may not be visible to non-48 series laymen, but I can see that it is obvious that netizens really feel that this kind of blind rotation coach, I can also do it.
But what we want to talk about today is that there are so many spiritual e-sports coaches on the Internet, are you really ok?
※Most of the discussions in this article are in the field of League of Legends e-sports
Before we get into this question, we need to be clear, what exactly are these coaches doing?
As an ordinary LPL event spectator, the most common scenario we see of these coaches is the BP phase before each game. Coaches on both sides will stand behind the players, put on their headphones, pull out a small book that they don't know what they have written, and start a silent rap.
In order to protect the tactics, the various teams rarely leaked microphone recordings when the coaches lined up. For those spectators who only watch the game, in their imagination, the coach's job is to prepare a suit, wait for the game to go on stage and select the hero according to the small book, shake the name of the dish in the mouth and shake hands and go back to sleep.
But in fact, many teams will set up a separate BP coach position, responsible for providing several sets of hero selection programs suitable for the team's style and play style before the game. For teams that have set up training supervision positions, it is very likely that the BP will not be the head coach.
For example, the EDG team, after the Clearlove player took over as the training supervisor last year, often chose him to show off the suit on stage.
EDG's veteran player Nami once revealed in the live broadcast that in the early days of the establishment of e-sports competitions, due to the unprofessional and non-standard of the coaching staff, many coaches did not speak on stage, and BP and even tactical selection were discussed by players.
The most outrageous thing is that in the 2020 summer V5 vs OMG match, the head coach and deputy coach Asssin forgot the originally planned ban selection, the two looked at each other on the stage, and finally could only make a casual ban. The little Northeast Mole player couldn't help but spit out: "Won't you take this line in the future?" ”
In this way, as long as there is a BP coach to assist, it seems that you can really do it on stage to read.
But if it is another kind of audience that is willing to spend more time to understand the team, they may also see coaches cursing in VLOGs or documentaries released by various officials.
This spirit coach has more to say, to say that on the BP, I may not be able to put together a suit, but the lounge scolding, ordering takeaway, calling the boss to complain about this kind of thing, I am sure to do it!
Unfortunately, e-sports even swearing is learned. When the "No Break, No Standing" documentary was broadcast before, we talked about the targeted swearing sentence of Coach Mao Kai of "Shi Yi Tang", and also compared the unpopular group hypnotic PUA of the war horse coach, which was also a curse, but came up with a completely different effect.
In addition to scolding, the coaches in the lounge must also see through the weaknesses of the enemy and me while keeping a close eye on the field, and adjust the strategy according to the state of the players in time before the next game starts.
Do I need to be replaced? Do you continue to believe in players, or do you believe in big data? These are not things that can be decided at the touch of the lips, and each decision of the coach must be responsible for the fate of the 5 players on the field and the training group behind them.
Their courage to make decisions comes from the accumulation of intelligence after the camera day after night. In the shadows that we can't see, that's where the profession of coaching really plays its part.
In fact, what we now call "coaching" should be "coaching team" to be precise. In addition to the BP coach and training supervision mentioned above, most teams also have multiple positions such as analyst, master/deputy coach.
As far as the champion team EDG is concerned, the head coach Maokai needs to arrange the daily tasks of each coach and the players, and how long the hero walks in which position to squat in front of the computer in a day is his sole responsibility.
Analyst Hua leads other assistant coaches and analysis teams to most directly supervise every action of the players in the game. They must analyze the game and the version, identify the strengths and weaknesses of the players, and set the direction for improvement and promotion for them.
Supervisor Clearlove replaced former coach Zhu Kai and regained the responsibility of filling chicken soup and monitoring the mood of the contestants. In addition to this, he was also responsible for the BP work on the field with Maokai.
In today's e-sports industry, which is gradually standardized and professionalized, the personnel arrangements of the coaching team are becoming more and more comprehensive and specific. With such an efficient teamwork, each coach only needs to complete the work within his or her scope to snowball and drive a huge team.
But in the beginning, e-sports coaches did not have so many titles and divisions of labor, and the most common job on weekdays was probably to order takeaways.
The first LPL coach to stand on the podium was Abu, who was still in the WE team at that time, which is not to say that WE was the first team to win the championship glory, but before that, domestic e-sports events did not have the habit of coaches to come to the stage to present awards together.
The five teenagers who had just fought the game with their own hands stood up in clusters, walked down the stage with their backs to the direction of the trophy, picked up the coach from the coach's seat who was also worthy of this glory in their hearts, pushed him to the center of the stage, and lifted the trophy that belonged to each of them.
For the first time, we're starting to really realize the importance of coaching to a championship team.
If it weren't for the LPL's core fans, many passers-by who only cared about popular events wouldn't even have heard of TT, the league's penultimate team.
But as long as you've seen one of their games, you're sure to have an image of their coach, Heartart.
Although he only came to the TT team in the 2022 season, the impact on all players is visible to the naked eye. Whether it is the small routine of the first-level regiment or the position of the eye, all the players in TT have made great progress from playing style to thinking.
In the daily VLOG, his patient guidance and determination to never give up are difficult for fans of other teams to forget.
Heart Coach has worked as a teacher at RNG
And this Heart used to work as an auxiliary player at UP. In fact, almost all the well-known LPL coaches at that time and now were former professional players, such as the current FPX head coach Steak, who served as the captain and captain of the FW team in the LMS division.
FPX head coach Steak
And some of the old players we are familiar with have also chosen to embark on the path of professional coaching after retiring. It seems like a natural thing, as former professional players have both a game understanding and a lot of experience in the competition, which is what it takes to be a good coach.
Of course, there are exceptions, in the early days when the esports industry was immature and lacked talent, some people also embarked on this path through high-intensity confrontation with the official in the forum.
Zhu Kai, the current head coach of RNG, was once a water friend of the IG team, chatted with the team staff, and talked about himself as an analyst.
Image source Douban @ e-sports nine groups
In this way, the threshold for becoming an e-sports coach is not so high, and I believe that many LOL ten-year-old players can have such game understanding and tactical analysis. But is this coach really that easy to do?
Don't say it's a novice, even if you are a senior coach who has brought out a world championship team, there will be times when you roll over.
Splash the latest example on everyone with a basin of cold water. Friends who follow LCK should know such a character, the legendary coach Kim Jung-so.
Of course, it doesn't matter if you haven't heard of it, you just need to know that he led IG to the first S world championship belonging to the LPL, but last week, he also became the first esports coach to be unilaterally expelled by the team.
Before the termination notice was issued, he was leading the DRX team to a three-game losing streak as head coach. Although the team's results this season are not ideal, Kim Jung-so has served as the head coach of many e-sports giants such as IG, GENG, T1, etc., so no one in the audience has ever thought of pushing the pot of losing streaks to him alone.
But it just so happens that Kim Jing-so's front foot just left, and the back foot DRX ended the losing streak by relying on the second team players who were just promoted to end the losing streak, and really realized the "take-off again" written in the covenant book, and slashed five consecutive wins all the way.
Netizens who do not know the truth have been talking about it, speculating about what Kim Jing-so has done against the sky, so that DRX will not hesitate to suddenly change the head coach in the middle of the season.
Looking back on his coaching career, S8 replaced TheShy players who played steadily at the time in the knockout rounds; S9 imposed "punitive measures" on stubborn Nuguri players in DWG; and S10 pressed Faker players on the bench in T1.
These operations are now very outrageous, and all of them are aimed at the core players of the team, but based on his status as the head coach at the time, the management and fans can only choose to believe him.
This time he was expelled, and the player speculated through the statement of the official head of DRX that the reason seemed to be because he tried to rotate the core Deft players of the team, but the specific matter was not clearly stated.
The source of the picture is Taiwan forum ptt netizens, and the credibility is doubtful
In terms of team performance alone, Kim Jung-so is definitely a successful coach, but public opinion and results are ultimately not on his side.
The fact is that as the coach of the e-sports team, you not only need to pursue better and higher results, but also need to stabilize the mood and state of the players.
This is not an easy task. Esports players are just a bunch of teenagers who dropped out of school during adolescence, uncontrolled chicks. No matter how much big data analysis, it will be randomly broken by their psychological state.
Most of the time, the audience will only notice the sudden rotation of coaches or outrageous BPs, ignoring the hard conditions of the players' daily training.
Netizens always scold the coach more and praise less. After all, for most fans, winning the game is the player playing well, losing the game is the hero's choice, and few people are willing to admit that the "person" is wrong.
In addition to winning and losing, the audience has almost no channel to understand the coach, they will not broadcast live and do not have the public opinion support of core fans.
Despite this, in the e-sports boom gradually tends to be a big wave, the industry still has the old coaching team is unprofessional, individualistic dictatorship and other complex problems.
At the same time, there are not many head coaches in China, and we are familiar with Warhouse, Chashao, Steak coaches, etc. All of them have coached many times in different LPL teams, and although there is a turnover every year, it is always a few people.
And these well-known coaches in recent years have transferred fees in the million level, and it is rumored that the RNG team spent 6 million yuan to introduce Steak coaches in 2020, which is just that the transfer fee does not include basic salary.
The well-run head team is willing to spend money to buy good coaches, which also affirms the actual value of coaches. After all, everyone knows that a good coaching team can definitely change the direction of the battlefield.
But when the money is spent, the results are not necessarily good. Although netizens are joking about "TES48", they are really worried about the unprofessionalism of the TES coaching team.
After rotating so many players, if they still can't find a way out for their team, whether TES can enter the playoffs still has to play a question mark.
It's not just a matter of TES, all coaches should realize that in today's world where teams are paying more and more attention to the coaching staff, how to help players and teams stand out from the "training time inside volume" is the key to long-term success.
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