"There were too many ideas in the old roster"— crazyguy on his return to Bleed, Deadlock pick on Split and Vietnamese Valorant [Exclusive]

Bleed Esports' woes in VCT Pacific continue as the roster lost 1-2 to Team Secret today. While the squad showed signs of improvement, it was not enough to defeat Team Secret with two new players. With this loss, Bleed finds itself with a 1-6 record with little to no chance of qualifying for the Playoffs Stage. This series also marked the return of its former IGL Ngô "crazyguy" Công Anh.

crazyguy was benched during Stage 1 after internal issues within the roster. With the Vietnamese IGL back at the helm, Bleed looks to possibly pick up a few wins in Stage 2. After the loss against Team Secret, I had the chance to engage in a conversation with crazyguy.

Bleed's crazyguy talks about loss against Team Secret, comeback on Ascent, current state of the roster, and more

Expand Tweet

Q: Commiserations on the 1-2 loss against Team Secret. What's going through your mind at the moment?

crazyguy: Nothing other than a little bit of regret. I feel we could have done better but things have happened and we can't do anything about it.

Q: It's good to see you back in the VCT Pacific stage. How does it feel to be back on the Bleed roster and play again with Sscary especially?

crazyguy: It was fine. However, the only thing I was thinking about was our chance to make it to the Playoffs. When I returned to the team, we fixed all the existing problems and had an open talk with each other, so everything is fine.

Q: On the topic of Playoffs, it feels like the chances of Bleed making it are pretty low after this loss. With a 1-6 record and strong teams like Gen.G and T1 up next, would you say that playing for experience and focusing more on improving for next year is the primary goal right now?

crazyguy: For now, our chances of making the Playoffs are pretty low. I think we wanted to get to the Playoffs Stage from the beginning. We tried to get to know more about each other and get more experience on stage together. From now on, we don't care about the results anymore. We just want to try our best and get as many wins as we can.

Q: What would you say are some of the biggest differences from the Bleed roster in Stage 1 to the current iteration in Stage 2?

crazyguy: For now, we have players who are on the same page. They listen to the IGL, which is me. There were too many ideas in the old roster and people didn't listen to each other. For instance, if one person said let's go A, another person would say going B would work as well.

Right now, we don't have one guy controlling everything and make sure that everybody in the team is on the same page and there is no conflict between players.

Expand Tweet

Q: Bleed had a great comeback on Ascent after going down 2-10. Could you give us some insight into what you said to the team to keep them on the map?

crazyguy: We have been in these situations many times before. If you guys remember, in Ascension, we lost the first map to BOOM Esports in the semi-finals and went down 3-9 in the first half of the second map. We had a talk where we all calmed down. I told them I had a feeling that we could win. I told them to consider the game like it's 0-0 and treat it like we are starting the game now.

I applied the same thing here and we got a few rounds in a row which helped create a momentum that we could carry which made things easier. I am also the oldest person on the roster. My job as an IGL is to help make my team feel comfortable. Even if I can't kill, I have good teammates who can do that job for me so I just try to make sure the team feels comfortable and can perform well.

Q: The Deadlock on Split did not have the best results for Bleed. Was the team experimenting with strats or was this a case of not executing well enough on the pick?

crazyguy: At first, if we pick any new Agent, we ask our players if they are comfortable playing it or not. We don't force a player to play what they don't like. Zest wanted to try it and we practiced a lot with it. We did pretty well with it. However, we lost a lot of winnable rounds on the second map and Team Secret got the momentum.

On Split, I felt everything I called was wrong. We were getting outmatched in terms of timing and I wouldn't say we lost purely because of the Deadlock pick.

Q: I want to know your thoughts on the Vietnamese Valorant scene. We have seen a couple of good players like YESicaN but they haven't been able to make the transition to tier-one. Are language barriers and lack of comfort in international rosters the biggest hurdles at the moment?

crazyguy: There is a language problem as not a lot of Vietnamese people can speak English. When we talk about talent in Vietnam, you need to understand there are so many talents in other countries as well. I don't think the talent in our region can be compared to the top countries in APAC like Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand. These countries have a lot of good players.

In Vietnam, gaming is not quite big. So when these players emerge, they don't really gain any experience. When they go to Ascension, they face a lot of good opponents and don't have experience in high-pressure situations.

Q: Any thoughts you would like to share with the fans supporting Bleed and you as well?

crazyguy: I know things weren't easy between me and the old roster. I just want to clarify that we have figured out everything. We had open talks and solved all our problems. Now it's about five teammates and a coach on a team. Although we didn't get the win against Team Secret, we tried to show our best gameplay. Hopefully, people are still supporting us and thanks for watching our matches.

Edited by Sijo Samuel Paul