Mag: «People were sceptical about me as a player, precisely because of my age»

One of the reasons why I became a coach is because people were sceptical about me as a player, precisely because of my age. That made it much more difficult for me to find a team. I think that all depends on the person, but a player can perform at the top level, in one of the best teams in the world even after 30. Just look at Puppey. I am sure he will continue to play for a long time and not once he amazed us with his drafts and high level of play. Another reason for which I switched to coaching is Ceb. He inspired me to do that. I decided that I was stagnant. As a player, I felt for a while that I wasn’t making any kind of progress and I  realized that I just need to move forward. I felt that my experience could be put into something different and that I can establish myself as a coach. At that time, I wanted to work with SoNNeiKo, because I had played with him before, so I knew that we would be on the same page. This is how I joined NAVI.

Now I understand that I want to develop myself in this direction. I want to take the team to a new level. I believe that we have not reached the level that we deserve, but I will not rest until we succeed. I have to admit that coaching has its own buzz. I tried to do a lot for the team. I’ve been drafting from time to time. This has, in any case, a huge impact on the game, on the result. In addition, there are many more duties that the coach performs. I like it. This is something interesting, something new. I found out that when I watched the game from the sidelines, I started to understand the game better. Of course, I had to develop some qualities. At the beginning I had no clear understanding of what would be the right thing to do from the coach position. Sometimes you need to talk face to face with a player. Sometimes, when you see some kind of decline in performance you have to talk to almost everyone. You need to choose the right words after a defeat or before the game. I haven’t even tried this before. And only when I became a coach, I realized that there are other things that need to be done. Like Ceb, who is both a player and a coach. If you look at the True Sight, you see how Ceb is inspiring, motivating his players. For the most part, he performs a lot of functions that a coach should perform, in my understanding.