Satthew: “We had a call where I had to be brutally honest with the players.”
Matthew "Satthew" Ackermann opens up about the triumphs, trials, and tribulations that he has faced during his time coaching G2 Esports. In this candid interview we discuss a wide range of topics including the addition of Massimo "Atomic" Franceschi, G2’s international performances, growing as a coach in Rocket League, and much more.
Satthew behind his team at the RLCS 2021-22 World Championship - Image courtesy of Psyonix
Shift: Let's start with the beginning of 2022. After the RLCS 2021-22 Fall Major you decided to make a change which saw Atomic join from OpTic Gaming with dreaz heading the other way. What was the thought process behind this move?
Satthew: “That had been something in the works for a little bit even prior to my arrival to the team. Chicago and JKnaps were always interested in Atomic and really liked his playstyle and mind for the game. Essentially, once we saw that he was available, it was kind of a no-brainer for us. This was in spite of dreaz slotting in fairly well, helping us win a Regional that Split and making the Major, which was fantastic on his part. We just saw the opportunity to elevate the squad with a player like Atomic, so we went for it.”
Now looking back on the last 10 to 11 months, what has Atomic brought to the roster that you were missing back then?
“Besides his obvious raw mechanical ability, he’s got a ridiculous mind for the game; he’s an incredibly smart kid. At first, he acclimated to how we wanted to play, but as we’ve grown and evolved as a team, he’s become more outspoken and brings some new ideas to the roster. Even more importantly than his individual talent is the work he puts in off the field and the ideas he brings to our team discussions, which are invaluable skills and not something found in many players.”
Has this been something you think he’s picked up over time, or something that has just come natural to him?
“There is a natural element to it because in his schooling, he was a really smart kid. He said that in the last year and a half, he’s picked up a real interest for the game and really wanted to take this seriously, to really go out to win every competition he plays in. So I’d say he’s really started bringing it out in recent times and he has more passion for the game now, but his ability to understand the game at a higher level and communicate it well is purely natural, that's just a gift.”
Since dreaz’ removal from the roster, it feels like his stock has fallen not only with fans but the wider professional scene. Have people been too quick to write him off?
Definitely, he was always really talented, especially mechanically. He’s one of those young prospects who is able to do anything that he wishes on the ball. I think that maybe his stock at one point was a little inflated by playing with JKnaps and Chicago for some time and being supported by them. Since then however, it's definitely fallen too much. He obviously doesn’t have the same support cast anymore, and that's no disrespect to the current Dignitas roster or OpTic before then. I don’t think the fans are too hard on him even though their expectations for him may have been a little too high at first, but I don’t see too much negativity around his name.
Where does he need to develop to find his way back to a top North American roster?
“There are a couple of things. Mentality-wise, I think he’s a product of his environment and I feel that he, as an individual, needs to put his foot down and really try to be more of a leader. I know that's a tall task for a kid his age, but I’ve seen kids his age do so which really shines them in a different light. He needs to be more adamant about taking every scrim seriously, taking every tournament seriously, looking to improve, and not going quiet. Those are all common things, not just among kids but a lot of players in the scene. He just needs to overpower the environment he’s in.
Regarding his play, our issues with him were typically nested in the defensive side of things, whether it was positioning or the actual touches he decided to take and whether those were the right decisions or not. I’d say that's where we kind of fell flat with him from time to time, but it's not like it was always detrimental to the team. We just felt it could be improved with the addition of Atomic.”
After the move, you went through some inconsistency within your region, but you found your stride and managed to win the Winter Major. What went right for you that tournament?
“Obviously, having two lives in the Grand Finals was a huge advantage and closing out that Team BDS series successfully went in our favor. I think most winners of a tournament will have some sort of fortune go their way. For us, it was our Game 5’s, and it was the fact that we didn’t bring many other series (besides the Team BDS one) to Game 5. Obviously, we were almost reverse swept by Team Secret as well, but at the Playoffs, against higher quality opponents, we were winning earlier in the series.
As a team, we were still new to each other. In a way, it felt like we were still somewhat in our honeymoon phase because that's where it's easiest to accept that you’ve made a mistake, look to improve and talk about it with the team. We could do that in a free-flowing way and there really weren’t any hindrances to our communication at the time, so we were able to squash problems really quickly. We had a system we all believed in and generally all followed to a T. We also let individual creativity shine through at times, for example with the prejump dunk on Wasteland against Team Queso.”
G2 Esports after their win at the RLCS 2021-22 Winter Major - Image courtesy of Psyonix
Both JKnaps and Chicago have been through several second-place finishes across their careers. In those key moments, like before your final against Team Queso, how do you counsel players who have the weight of those previous failures on their back?
“I’m honestly still working on that. So far, at least with Queso there was a lot of fortune going our way and a lot of things were aligning right to where we were able to keep playing without too much more thought. After the first series loss, we did have to talk a decent bit about what went wrong. I’d say that was my best course of action at the time. I had to call certain players out about what they were doing in the previous series that really screwed the team over and they were able to openly accept it without taking offense, realizing it was for the betterment of the team. I think I’m just fortunate to have players who are able to do that. I didn’t even bring up any history. Honestly, I was so new at the time I didn’t even realize, we were just kind of playing.”
“It was about finding ourselves again.”
Domestically, you guys were in peak form for Spring, but ended the Split with those two devastating reverse sweeps in the Major. Gamers8 ended up being a bit of a write-off with a stand-in. At the time, there was a lot of chatter about those results heading into Worlds. In that month between the Major and Worlds, when there were no RLCS officials to play, you had a bit of travel to contend with and some of the North American scrim partners were already on holiday. What was your game plan as the coach to get the lads back on track?
“It was about finding ourselves again. During the Winter Major, we had this great type of play set up and we were really confident in it. Like you said, domestically in the Spring Split we just started winning, we won the first two Regionals before coming second in the third Regional. To be honest, we’re still confused about that Split to this day because looking back, we were not playing at all how we wanted to; it was the weirdest string of events. In a way, it bred complacency for us. Going into London, we showed up and got reverse swept twice, so it was not like we were playing horribly, but we were missing key parts of our game. Notably, in the way we were challenging at the time, we had major issues and for some reason we had completely shifted our mindset when holding a lead from being more offensive and keeping a team pinned to actually accepting more pressure. That was definitely a complacency thing and not keeping to what we had worked on before.
In that month's span, it was about regaining what we had gone through before and bringing it back to really try to solidify the way we wanted to play, to make sure everyone was on the same page.”
That must have been a tough month. How did you go about finding yourselves again in that time?
“First, it was about comparing gameplay from London to gameplay of good scrims and the Winter Major. it wasn’t that our play had declined, it was the fact that we weren’t playing correctly. Identifying and showing them that there were clear differences between how we were playing started getting the keys turning and telling the players that we were playing wrong. This started restoring some faith in the play on their ends.
We go through that process of identifying those clear differences and then we start working towards how we had been playing in scrims again. As a team, we put a lot of faith in scrims. We do believe that our scrims for the most part are a good representation of how we’ll play in tournaments. The results in that first week back from Saudi weren’t great, but as the weeks went on we just started getting into our dominant phase again, which restored our confidence.”
At the World Championship you were able to overcome all of your domestic competition and reached the finals without dropping a series, but when it came to Team BDS, they proved too much for you. In your mind, what ended up being the key to the outcome of that final series?
“It was frustrating. Like I said with the Winter Major, a lot of fortunate things came through to us to where I didn’t really have to counsel the boys or anything. I think that final against Team BDS is where they needed counseling. We just completely lost track of the moment we were in and we kind of just went out there on autopilot. In one aspect of our game, we reverted to something we had struggled with in the past, even before I arrived on the roster. That exact aspect of the game is something Team BDS actually countered incredibly well and we knew that going into the series. This was a pure miss on my end where the support they needed going into that series: what should have been said and what should have been shown was missing.”
Looking back on RLCS 2021-22, do you consider it a success as a whole for G2 Esports?
“I’d say it was successful, yeah. Again, it’s frustrating because I can’t tell you how often I think about having that series back against BDS, or at least that moment before, and it's like ‘will we get that again?’. Obviously, the goal for this season is to reach that moment again. Overall, we came home with a Major title, made all three majors, qualified and did well for Worlds. I’d say it was pretty successful but we’re hoping that this season we’ll have a different mentality, a more killer mentality, at these events.”
“We’ve realized it is a similar problem to what cost us at Worlds, so it’s just about eliminating that.”
Coming into RLCS 2022-23, you were understandably one of the only NA teams not to make a roster change. However, it's safe to say this hasn't been the greatest of starts to the season. What has the team been working on since your early exit from the Fall Cup?
“I don’t want to say exactly, albeit people will probably see it when we play. A certain tiny aspect of our offense, similar to what cost us the series against Team BDS, has kind of carried over into the beginning of this season. It's weird because we felt like we were playing terribly in Regional 1, relative to Regional 2 where we thought we were playing better but the results just didn’t go our way. Still, we have looked back at Regional 2 to see what it is we were missing and we’ve realized it is a similar problem to what cost us at Worlds, so it's just about eliminating that. Once it starts clicking in their heads they really do respond to it well . Scrims have been going well yet again, so I think it’ll translate to this last Regional.”
Earlier you said when you’re honeymooning as a team, during that phase it’s easy for you to make changes as a coach. Now that it's been almost a year since Atomic joined and you’re firmly established as a lineup, are you finding it more difficult to make changes and for the players to be as receptive to your coaching?
“It’s harder when we’re doing extremely well because in a way I also get complacent along with the players. Between Gamers8 and Worlds, it was very easy because I had to catch their attention in some way. We had a call where I did not say very nice things to the players. I had to be brutally honest to all of them and some of it may have been overboard, but I had to catch their attention. It kind of put them in the moment and made them realize that we crapped the bed in London and Riyadh. Together we needed to realize where we were as a team and be conscious that we were underperforming severely.
It's tough when we go through good stretches because everyone thinks that there aren't any issues if we are winning. However, since the last Regional, we’ve gone through an incredible amount of growth in the week and a half and I think we’re starting to take measures where we can prevent this in the future and avoid complacency. I think it’ll grow us as a team a lot and grow us as friends and a unit.”
JKnaps celebrating victory at the RLCS 2021-22 Winter Major - Image courtesy of Psyonix
Is this the most competitive North America has ever been as a region?
“Easily, it’s not close! When you bring one region’s champions, you bring another great team from Europe, and you bring a good individual player to one of our teams in Complexity, it makes it competitive as hell.”
Since FURIA moved to NA, they’ve had a little bit of trouble adapting. By becoming part of the NA scene, have they become a less, or more daunting prospect to face?
“At one point, playing against them less we felt like we had them figured out and they only saw us so often where we felt like they couldn’t figure us out. Now that they are playing us week in week out in scrims as well as Regionals, I do actually see improvements in their game and I think they made huge adjustments in the second Regional to overcome us in swiss. Although they didn’t beat Version1, I think they are improving as a team. Despite that, the region is still super competitive and it's going to be tough for them no matter how much they adapt because there are seven or eight other hungry teams who also want to adapt and become better with them. I don’t think they’ve ever experienced depth in a region like that.”
Onto your coaching specifically, it's been over a year since you joined the organization, how have you grown as a coach since those early days with the team?
“This was something I struggled with as a player. I’ve realized that there are so many more times for brutal honesty where you need confidence in what you're saying. I think I’ve grown in the aspect of being able to voice that. It helps having players who are so receptive, but at the same time these are players I obviously heavily respected when I was a player myself and definitely looked up to, realizing I wasn’t near their level. They were better than me and superiors on the field. Despite that, I’m still able to voice very candidly to them these days, especially after these last couple of weeks, about what I think has gone wrong and what needs to be fixed. I think I’ve grown stronger in my voice and my confidence.
I’ve also picked some things up from them which has added to what I already thought about the game and how it should be played, so it’s just expanded my knowledge on professional play and introduced some things I didn’t think about when I was a player. I was able to bring some aspects that they were missing when I came into the team and they’ve now given me back aspects that I can use to expand my own ideas on the game and preach to them.”
“The second you find your team deviating away from either the playstyle you agreed upon, or just how they think each other should play, that’s where replay analysis comes in because you can get everyone back on the same page.”
A couple of weeks ago, JKnaps mentioned on the CJCJ Show that the team has been doing replay analysis on a weekly basis and I got the sense that it was more often than he’d been used to in his career. What is the value of bringing the team together to do these sessions?
“The second you find your team deviating away from either the playstyle you agreed upon, or just how they think each other should play, is where replay analysis comes in because you can get everyone back on the same page. Sometimes it can be tough. We’ve had sessions where team tension was decently high because we all realized we have different ideas and we were just beating around the bush. The good sessions are where things are more black and white: ‘this is good, this is bad’. It solidifies the ideas of how the team should play in their heads and inherently breeds confidence when they play on match day.”
As it is a common practice in other esports, do you think there is more room for professional players as a whole to do replay analysis independently as part of their training?
“I definitely think so. There are things that should be looked upon by a player on their own and I do think it needs to happen. I have players that do it on their own. At worst, if they don’t find anything, they can at least bring questions to me and avoid complacency. It allows players to realize what they can improve on or at least maintain what's making them succeed.”
There was a lot of discussion over Comm’s record-breaking 20 demolitions against NRG. You were one of two teams to have beaten Version1 last Regional before they went on their playoff run. In fact, in your series specifically, Atomic managed more demolitions per game than Comm. How important of an asset is aggression on the pitch to teams such as yourself and Version1?
“Incredibly important. It further reinforces any boost starvation you’re trying to accomplish during a game. Obviously, if you take a car off the pitch it can be very helpful if you’re shooting on net or just trying to create an open space on the field. It's a huge aspect of the game that every team needs to be aware of and needs to implement into their game. You will fall behind if you don’t.”
Can it become a liability?
“You can overextend for demolitions, you can do them at incorrect positions, or you can take yourself out of a play for too long leaving your teammates on an island at the back. There can also just be useless demolitions where you take yourself away from where you should be on the field at the time.”
How do you prepare for the overly aggressive teams?
“We usually play our own game and it does us well. If someone is overextending or demoing in more unique positions, we’ll talk about it. We’ll potentially look at whether it's a spacing thing, if we need to play quicker out of defense, or if we just need to do a double take and realize that our opponent is just staying in our half where we’ll just have to maneuver around them. We’ll adapt if we feel our gameplay is being hindered by it.”
“The removal of the open qualifiers for the third Regional doesn’t make sense to me at all.”
Moving onto the wider Rocket League scene. While you are a coach of a top team now, a part of your career was spent in the bubble. Currently lots of bubble players feel aggrieved over the changes to the format of each Split. Where do you stand on the discussion?
“I felt like the removal of the open qualifier portion of the third Regional of each Split was unnecessary. I’m not sure about the logic behind it. I support some sort of influx of money into the bubble scene to have tournaments, especially during Regionals or Majors that these teams aren’t playing in. If possible, throw money towards those time periods where certain teams have three to four months off with nothing to do.
I don’t really support the extension or expansion of the amount of teams in a regional, because I come to the question ‘when is the line actually drawn?’ I don’t feel like there is a logical answer to that. It comes down to how many resources you have for the actual esport. Sometimes I feel that it's expanding just to expand rather than there being enough competition between all sixteen teams where we actually need more spots. I’m not certain about expansion, but the removal of the open qualifiers for the third Regional doesn’t make sense to me at all.”
If the majority of the viewership and fan base is focused on professional Rocket League esports, why should Psyonix even take measures to support the bubble scene? What do they stand to gain from it?
“It's down to wanting that super competitive future set of pros coming up. At least with the RLCS and Rival Series, you had that spotlight on the Rival Series for a little bit and you did have exciting storylines come out of it. By putting money into that scene, there could be some cool storylines to come out of it and you can breed pros that wouldn’t be found otherwise if it's more closed off like this.”
“I do worry about the amount of series being played each season now.”
This feeds into the overall health of Rocket League Esports. In our interview last year, you were pleased with what Psyonix had introduced for RLCS 2021-22. Do you get the sense that there has been some stagnation this season?
“It's tough. Last year was a huge step. Having the same format is good and looking to keep some sort of stable circuit is good. I’m gutted for the South African teams because I don’t know how they are even supposed to compete with not being able to play at Majors. That's confusing to me and I think that was a huge miss on Psyonix’ part. I think a second Major spot was also deserved for the MENA scene, so we could expand the Majors. I can see the concerns over stagnation, but I do like the stability.
It has been a recent topic on some podcasts as well as Reddit. I do worry about the amount of series being played each season now. First of all, from a viewer's perspective I worry about the meaning of series now. I actually think RLCS League Play could have been improved upon and made into a very viable format. Whether that was through an expansion of the league or potentially doing a double round robin over a longer time period. I think the circuit format is fine, but I really do worry about burnout in the players. Having players burn out means you’ll cycle through players a lot more often and then you can’t really have a stable professional scene. I do worry about the health of the esport if that does become the case.”
Do you think it's up to organizations to provide more mental health support for their professional players?
“Physical and mental health. Whether it's trainers or psychologists, you need both. Organizations should definitely take care of their players, because they are like their little athletes as if it was like a proper sports club. There are certain aspects where professionals are just overplayed, which is on Psyonix. Obviously, the orgs can try to mitigate the effects of that but I worry about that.”
Do you think too much play happens online, rather than LAN?
“Yeah, that could definitely be an aspect of it. Even then, I see some people say that having three Majors throughout the year downplays the importance of Worlds. Obviously LANs are more exciting because you get the crowd and everyone is there in person, but I think it's more so that when you have three Splits, three Regionals and a Major per split, there is a huge amount of series you have to play.”
To end, what improvements would you like see made to the current format?
“What we just touched upon. I don’t know exactly, but I always do consider maybe having a format with two splits and one slightly longer transfer window so you actually have a break. Perhaps we could have a slightly longer offseason as well. At least for teams that made Worlds, it was basically a month before we were back practicing again. I think it could do the esport well to have an actual real offseason where teams are making transfers and playing in offseason tournaments where you have a set break. In terms of viewership, you’ll have people waiting in the offseason, they’ll be excited to wait for something, not ‘oh Worlds has just happened, now we’re watching Regional 1 already’.
The NFL does it well because you play a relatively short season. They are able to stretch it out long because you have to have time between games since it's a very physical sport. They have about 17 or 18 games and stretch it over about six months, but the hype is built week in week out. That's why I liked RLCS League Play: it built hype for the matches every weekend because you didn’t get to see the same series several times a Split. I support some sort of shortening of the season, not necessarily in overall length, but in the amount of series.”
Satthew has now spent over a year at G2 Esports - Image courtesy of Psyonix
