By his own admittance, Vorborg’s time with Evil Geniuses didn’t go as well as he, or anyone else for that matter, would have liked it to. A troubled roster, the former Copenhagen Flames coach struggled to ever really put his stamp on the team and steady the ship.
With an understandable sense of unfinished business, and with EG choosing to rebuild their roster without him, Vorborg now looks towards a future with many potential prospects. We sat down with Vorborg to discuss those prospects, his time on EG, and his thoughts on the talent brought together for their new team.
You said in your interview with HLTV that you feel you have ‘unfinished business’, can you elaborate more on that? Is that more of a feeling to do with EG or with tier one in general?
It’s just the fact that what I showed, and what we showed in EG is not up to my standards. I believe that I can be a great coach, but obviously I didn’t show that to myself or the world this past year. I really want to prove to myself that I can be part of building a team that challenges for championships, that was the entire reason I left Copenhagen Flames - but obviously I haven’t shown that yet.
In terms of the time with EG, what do you think the biggest problems were outside of where you blame yourself? Many fans might say it’s down to a couple of players not being ready for tier one.
We didn’t have a roster composition that was ready to be a part of the absolute top in my opinion, and that also includes me in that composition. When I joined my style was to create a very collaborative team, where it’s important everyone chimes in a lot. But we didn’t have very opinionated players compared to their role, outside of maybe autimatic. That’s not necessarily bad, but it was at least a bad fit for me at the time. We tried our best to figure out something that would work for us, and we got close in my opinion, but due to a variety of reasons, it never really culminated in our breakthrough.
On the flipside, some of the experienced players also struggled. What do you think the issues have been in recent years for players like Brehze and CeRq?
I only got to work with CeRq briefly, but he was definitely struggling with finding his footing. I think he got in his own head a little bit, lacked confidence, and was trying a lot of different things to find success. He was never really in a position though, to stick with something and give it time for it to work. I thought it would benefit him to get a bit of a reset as well, and I am sad we haven’t yet seen him back on another team, I hope that happens soon.
Brehze is honestly still an amazing player, but he is not the type to make a team great. He won’t fix a team's core issues, and identify what needs to change to get teamwide success in my opinion. But if you put him in a team that is functioning and works, I think he can play at the absolute top. His aim and mechanics are absolutely insane, and he made my jaw drop most days in practice.
Why do you think the players could never convert good practice to officials? Is that one of the places where you felt like you failed?
Yeah, definitely. We had a great off-season in January, but we had such a hard time continuing that style of play into officials. Definitely the biggest what-if of our time in EG. After it became apparent that it was an issue, we had little to no practice time, and I failed to fix that issue in time.
If the move with refrezh had gone as planned and you had better practice opportunities, what level do you think the roster would have been able to reach?
I think refrezh added a lot of good stuff to the roster, and I felt like we were headed in the right direction. At the same time we added refrezh, neaLaN had also really started to come into his own as a leader. So we started having a lot more ideas flowing around, and added a lot of stuff that made our play better in my opinion.
The thing is, when you have a lot of new great ideas, and ways of looking at the game. That takes time to implement, and we only got to really integrate some of it. And then at the same time, we had limited practice, and most of it with refrezh on 130ping, practising till 4 am in the morning.
Looking at the new roster, as someone who worked with him previously, what’s your take on HexT’s potential?
I think he is a great prospect. I think it was tough transitioning into tier one with our roster. It’s rough as a rookie to have to take a step up, especially if you get into a non-functioning roster.
I still think he learned a lot from the experience, playing with good players and against great opponents. But it can be hard implementing everything you learn, and play with confidence, when the team finds little success.
I think his time on EG Black has hopefully allowed him to take everything he learned, implement it in his own way, and elevate his game to the next level.
What about the others on the roster, like Walco and Jeorge, even Axed as a young coach?
I obviously have less experience working with them, but I have watched their practices and official games with voice comms also. I think it’s a roster that has a lot of confidence in themselves and each other, and I hope they can ride that momentum and not question themselves because they are taking a step up. They are definitely the biggest talents in North America in their roles.
You’ve said you could see yourself doing things outside of coaching. Is coaching your main priority?
If I can coach for a team that has the resources and ambitions of participating in tier one, then that would be my priority. But at the same time it needs to be a good fit, and I need to have a good feeling about the people I would be working with and for.
I’m getting older, but I feel like I have some years left in me where I can travel for 250 days a year, and spend all my time working. But in some years, I’m not sure exactly how many, I’ll probably want to settle down and have kids, and I don’t think I see myself travelling that much if I have kids at home.
So if the right fit as a coach for me isn’t out there, I am okay with taking another type of job, even though ideally that would maybe not be for another three years or so. But I do think I would enjoy and be great at GM work, being a player agent or something like that.
It looks like Heroic are in need of a Sporting Director, is that something of interest to you?
I think it’s a Head of Performance, but their Sporting Director Oliver has my number, so he can feel free to reach out for a talk!
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