David Moschetto · @LilbowSC
10th Sep 2020 from TwitLonger
Reflecting on this past year.
Hello everyone.
Yesterday, I was released from Toronto Defiant. I honestly did not expect this and, unfortunately, the organization did not communicate many reasons when it comes to why. Sadly, I don’t think anyone else in the team was consulted about releasing me, either. I know the team performance was not great. As the Head Coach, I understand that does not reflect well on me and I accept my blame in this.
I was very disappointed in being released, and I know that is the first thing everyone will see. Still, I wish Toronto nothing but the best in the future. After assisting last year's French World Cup Team, this was my first professional coaching position and I'm grateful for the opportunity. I learned very much from this experience. I just wish I was able to continue working as a Strategic Coach because I believe I offered very good value there by utilizing my skill set.
The entire player roster and coaching staff were a pleasure to work with. This year was as enjoyable as it gets, all things considered. Good and bad things happened this season and I want to use this opportunity to explain my point of view on them for the fans.
Pre-Season: Féfé was recruited very late as a Head Coach, and I was recruited shortly afterwards. Because of that, we didn't really have time to do proper trials. At this time, Féfé believed in shorter teams, for understandable reasons (mainly from his funky experience with Eagle Gaming, I believe). I didn't have a contradictory opinion on this, as I never built a team. So we just reviewed VODs from potential candidates and went with experienced players. Before getting released, I was impatient and wanted to start potential Toronto trials and try HARD on them. I know how difficult and unrewarding T2 can be more than most, and I would have been very satisfied with looking at a wider range of candidates going into 2021.
Pre-Covid: Things were ok, we quickly noticed a lack of shotcalling and decisiveness withing the team. I was tasked with vod reviews and I would rewatch scrims and officials every evening and write myself what is basically a script to make the vod review as smooth and time efficient as possible (being time efficient to the players is important to me). I'm honestly rather proud of the work I did on these, and I felt a lot of satisfaction when I showed up with a smooth and accurate review in the morning.
On top of that I did a good amount of individual work, in which I would watch someone's POV, record clips from mistakes I noticed and show it to the player. That is something I enjoyed doing, but as clean reviews and third point watching proved more important, I had to slow down a lot on that when becoming HC. I would also write Pre Match talks, or do whatever the HC asked me, but I was overall quite independent.
Covid + Hero Pool: Oh boy did we get cucked by these two things. I thought Hero Pool was a decent idea, and I was happy to have these things to challenge my mind every week instead of just perfecting on one meta. However it proved to be devastating in our team. Having a shorter roster and very few DPS players, as well as one Main Tank and one Flex Support was tough, very tough. In my opinion, it was very advantageous to have a deep, flexible roster this year if you wanted to perform consistently well. The org was willing to recruit, but the market was very restricted due to the covid. Players had to be fairly close geographically and many teams were fighting for the best ones. (Onigod, Tai1yo, Kevster are good examples of that)
On top of that, Kellex, Féfé and Jae retired, all of them for very understandable reasons, and Mangachu turned coach. The org looked for a HC replacement, but couldn't find one that would meet their requirements and asked the coaching staff to decide on someone to be the new interim HC. Although I didn't want that title, I was eventually convinced that I should be the one stepping up.
I'd like to think the team noticed the effort I was putting into my role, and so I appreciate that they believed I might be a good choice to lead the team in the interim. That trust feels good, and I wish I could have rewarded their confidence in me with better performances.
It was very difficult to enter into a position that does not utilize my skillset, in the middle of Covid when morale was down, but still, that was my job. I take full responsibility for not being able to help this team produce strong results, and for that I am very sorry.
At this point I really wanted to recruit. Kruise was a logical choice due to his calling and to our team being super silent. I'm very happy that he was brought into the team. It was a pleasure working with him.
On top of that, a LOT of Mei was played and so we decided to recruit Zykk and I'm also very satisfied from this. He worked incredibly hard, playing an additional 6 hours a day including 2 as hitscan when it was needed, and was overall a much needed addition to the roster.
We then recruited Numlocked and he really had a massive impact on the team. Beast is actually a very skilled player, but our lineup lacked vocal players overall. We thought Numlocked would be a good addition because he is a vocal leader. Our decisiveness problem was gone and he was a great teammate. He is very vocal in game and often took on most of the shotcalling responsibilities. He also talked strategy a good amount and was eager to contribute during vod reviews. Many times when new players come into a team, they may be afraid to participate and feel like an outsider. But "Seb BARTON" was very good at this.
Spazzo then came in and I enjoyed working with him all this time. I think Spazzo and Barroi are really strong assistant coaches, and have qualities that are easy to recognize. I was hoping the org would also be open to adding an additional coach, someone independent that has ideas and would bring some fresh air to the staff, but I wasn’t given much voice in the direction things were going. As I already said, I know how hard tier 2 is for players but also for coaches, and I knew some coaches that really deserved to get a shot at OWL. That being said, I hope the team is able to find a talented HC because I think Spazzo, Barroi and Mangachu will become great assets to the new team.
So at this point we were lacking a few other things, in my opinion.
-An actual Head Coach, of course.
-An additional flex support. We figured out, too late, that we were expecting too much out of Kariv who is already one of the best Ana and Zen players in the league. We would have loved to add another player who could focus on Brig, Bap, and Moira. We asked RoKy to begin grinding Bap and he did an excellent job without much notice.
We trialed Lr1s, which would have been a very good recruitment, but decided not to go forward with him as we trialed him on the Bap/Zen meta. Kruise had a good Bap and Kariv a good Zen, so at the time it didn't feel like a necessary recruitment, but he would have been great for the Lucio/Moira or Lucio/Bap Metas...
-We would have benefited from an additional hitscan player too. Logix was of course formidable and that's not a secret to anyone, but running Double Hitscan was a NECESSITY very often. That was our biggest problem on the end of the season. However the hitscan market was rather dry. Korea has good players of course but the ping is high and we can't make them come because of Covid. Europe didn't really have any big hitscan names remaining and we couldn't afford to seriously take the time to trial due to the heavy schedule, they would also have played with some ping.
This is where I can take the blame on not recruiting Lr1s, as I did push rather against it. I also need to mention that we had 11 players in the line up at this point, if Lr1s was recruited, he would have been the last one. I wanted to keep that spot for a potential Hitscan but, as I said, we figured out there was no good spot. Lr1s, or some others Flex Supports out there like Afoxx for example, would have made our team better in some metas, in my opinion.
So that was our final position and we tried our best. I feel very sad because our players and other coaches really put in great efforts this year. I think many other teams will agree that this season was long and difficult because of quarantine. Even when morale was down and being away from home for almost an entire year, our players committed themselves and worked very hard. I’m also proud that, despite not having great results, our team did it’s best to remain as positive as possible and avoid drama. It was difficult to remain focused for so long and given the outside situation.
I hope that was clear enough. If anything isn't, I'll probably answer a few questions you guys may have in replies.
Of course, I'm now looking for a new org to coach for in OWL. Passion is intact and I'd love to go again next year, preferably in a role better suited for my skillset. I'm mainly a strategical/ingame assistant kind of coach, and I can do Vod Reviews, individual coaching on everyone or specialize in the Tank or Support role.
One final thing: I really want to thank everyone for this year. Jae, Féfé, and the Toronto org for giving me this opportunity. The other coaches who worked very hard with me and supported me. The players who gave so much effort during a difficult season. And the fans, who, despite us not having a good season, were very supportive of me and our players. It was a very hard season and it made me feel great getting picked up by you all with messages throughout the year.