As the 2023 VCT EMEA League playoff picture started materializing, things were only looking bleak for Team Heretics. In the lead up to Week 6, in which they were set to face Giants, TH announced the substitution of Aleksander “zeek” Zygmunt for assistant coach Brandon “weber” Weber due to the former having “personality mismatches” with the team throughout the season.

Taking into consideration TH’s recent form in the league, which saw them lose five consecutive series after defeating Karmine Corp in Week 1, many suspected TH’s troubles would only deepen as the season was nearing its finish.

Unfortunately for those skeptics, TH had other ideas in mind. Instead of languishing further by suffering another loss to a mid-table team, TH kickstarted their resurgence by beating Giants 2-0 off a 13-9 win in Pearl and a 16-14 triple-overtime comeback win in Lotus.

Such a performance by a team seen by most as one of the worst in the league wasn’t done by conventional means, of course. With the help of a double-duelist composition, which was decided less than half an hour before the start of the series, and a resounding display by the substitute player, TH snatched a critical win over their Spanish rivals. Just like that, TH is back in the fight for playoffs.

Following the series, Team Heretics’ head coach Neil “neilzinho” Finlay talked to Fragster.com for an interview about how the team prepared with what little time it had, what it was like integrating Weber into the lineup, his view on their struggles throughout the season, and more.

Taking on Giants

Pedro Romero, Fragster.com: First off, congrats on that win over Giants. It was very well deserved given how the entire series played out. I want to know your initial thoughts on the team’s victory in upset fashion if that’s an appropriate way to call it. What do you think about that result?

Neil “neilzinho” Finlay: I’m just supper happy, to be honest. It’s the first time in the whole season where we’ve had a real kind of team environment and obviously, I think it’s mostly down to the change. That’s why we made it. Obviously, getting a coach in is not ideal, but the most important thing for me was bringing everyone’s mood up and trying to become a proper team with the values we’re trying to create and I think that’s exactly what happened. It boosted everyone’s performance and we didn’t have as much pressure, so yeah, it’s just a really good one.

Fragster: You alluded to the team’s preparation over improving their mental and the like. Was that the single biggest thing that you focused on when it came to preparing this team for this series against Giants?

neilzinho: Not really, to be honest. With the change that we made, we did fix a lot of the mental problems because we had our assistant coach in who is another voice in the team and he was making sure he was reassuring everyone and making everyone believe, but to be honest, that just came naturally. The atmosphere in the team was just completely different to what has been in the past since it was made. It’s such a huge difference. The mentality is part and parcel with having the right environment and that’s basically what happened. It wasn’t like we focused on the mentality. It’s just a byproduct of the changes we made.

Exit zeek, Enter Weber

Fragster: And of course, the biggest thing that happened for you guys concerning this week is the fact that you brought in Weber, the assistant coach, for zeek ahead of the series against Giants, so I want to know what the timeline was like in bringing Weber over and getting him integrated to the team. What was that like?

neilzinho: Zeek got benched almost 48 hours ago so we played a total of five scrims with Weber. It was not much, obviously, but he knew our strats. He makes a lot of them. He integrated very well. He used to play professionally in CS:GO and CS: Source. He has also played on LAN before and in big tournaments so you don’t have to teach him anything. He brings a ton of value to the team.

It was literally just him slotting in and he brought a really good calmness and his communication was great. Me and Weber have played together in a team for four or five years back in 2010 so I wasn’t really worried about integrating Weber. I knew exactly what you could bring. It has been a long time since he played an FPS game, but some people were just kind of gifted with talent and that’s the trait of that guy. He’s talented so it was easy bringing him in.

Fragster: Even so, for him to have played well in both maps in the series–especially in Lotus–were you surprised by how he performed against Giants? For a moment, he was leading the team in kills on that second map.

neilzinho: No. I know people are gonna be thinking that I’m trolling but I’m not. Like I said, I’ve played with him before on teams. He’s literally such a cold person when it comes to winning. He has no emotions in it and I knew he was going to perform well. He was always known as having an incredible aim in CS at the very start and I still believe to this day if he didn’t get an injury in his wrist, he would have been a really top top top top player in the world in CS:GO. He was a top five in the world in CS: Source so the only thing that surprised me with this is how he’s adapted so quickly, but for me, I’m biased because I know what he’s got in him and I’ve played with him before. I know what he’s capable of. Even if it’s not Valorant, there are similarities in his games.

Double duelists in Pearl and comeback in Lotus

Fragster: For Pearl, you guys opted for that double-duelist composition by selecting Yoru for M1xwell. What was the idea behind bringing that comp for the map? Was that a result of you guys not having as much time to prepare? Or was there anything else that led to the selection of that comp?

neilzinho: It was a risk that they were going to pick Pearl but we just didn’t think they would overthink it that much, to be honest. We thought they would keep to their strengths and not play to our weaknesses, but they did. We knew it could happen and we did discuss it where we’re like, ‘If they do pick Pearl and we haven’t prepared with Weber on it, then we’re just going to pick a comp that we want to play.’ We literally made the comp five minutes after the vetoes were done.

We talked generally about how we want to play. We took some inspiration from Evil Geniuses. We played against them on Pearl in Brazil so we watched that game back and figured we can make some plays with Yoru. M1xwell was very good on that agent. He’s played it before in previous teams and then Weber found his own KAY/O lineups, molly’s, and flashes, so we spent like 20 minutes preparing it and it worked well. And I think it caught them off as well. That was the whole plan.

Fragster: And you guys managed to take that map very well. Moving on to Lotus, it was a map that gave trouble for you guys. The team was down 10-5 but then they pulled it back in the latter stages of that map, especially on the defensive side, to force overtime and then take it at 16-14. How did that turnaround happen?

neilzinho: We took a tactical pause pretty early on and just kind of reset. I tried to put less pressure on everyone. That was the main thing we spoke about: just having fun again. Straight after the tactical pause, we won the round flawlessly and then it kind of just continued from there. We won a really really crucial 4v5 retake on A and I think we were 6-10 down or something at that point, and as soon as that happened, I was literally thinking we’ve won this game. I legit said that out loud and the funny thing is Weber said the exact same thing in the server. He was like, ‘Guys, we’re winning this game. There’s no way we lose.’

It was just that kind of change in atmosphere and change in belief that we didn’t have before. And obviously, Maxwell went huge at the end along with Weber actually. I think the M1xwell you saw today is the M1xwell that has the potential to be that kind of player when he’s having fun, and he’s not been having fun lately so hopefully it continues.

Looking back at TH’s struggles

Fragster: Of course, you guys were not having that ideal season in mind by losing five straight after initially winning against Karmine Corp. What was it like amidst those struggles and how did you guys navigate through that? And for you particularly, how did you navigate through that time span amidst that constant losing up until that substitution?

neilzinho: It was just constant problem-solving. We tried loads of different things. We brought Boo back to IGL where’s he’s really shined. He brought us a lot more stability and then, to be honest, we were improving. The atmosphere was getting a little bit better. One of the things I was very critical of the guys, and I even said in a public interview, was after we lost to NAVI, which was our second or third game, our mentality was shocking.

A certain player gave up very early in the game and it really tilted me, so ever since then, it was a big focus on the mentality and it improved a lot after Ultimately, I tried everything I could, to be honest, in trying to improve the atmosphere and trying to improve the mindset of the team since back in Brazil and nothing was going to work. That’s all it was: constant problem-solving. But there are some problems where it’s like I can’t fix problems like that, you know?

Sometimes, it’s on the individual to fix those kinds of issues. As a coach, you can just get your people and advise them and you can’t work miracles. I basically got to the end of my tether and yeah, we made the only change that was left, really. We tried absolutely everything to make it work so yeah.

Fragster: Staying within the Spanish domestic rivalry setting, your next opponent is KOI. What are your thoughts against facing off against KOI now that you guys are having this resurgence as a result of taking down Giants?

neilzinho: We’re not going to think about it too much, man. We’re just having fun. That’s the most important thing. I don’t really want to think about KOI too much. I just want to have fun and that’s what’s going to propel us. We’re not scared of them. We know them really well. I love koldamenta on that team. He was my old IGL in G2 and the guys love him as well. It’s gonna be a fun matchup and we’re just gonna have fun, to be honest. I’m going to be confident, we’re gonna have fun, and we take it game-by-game and see what happens.

Feature Image Credit: Hara Amorós / Riot Games / LVP / lag