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Valorant Champions Tour 2022 kicked off its Stage 1 Challengers tournament for the EMEA region, pitting 12 of their best teams against each other to decide EMEA's representatives at the Stage 1 Masters.
BBL Esports took on Guild Esports in a Bo3 thriller for their opening matchup of the tournament's group stage. This Group B fixture witnessed Guild dominate BBL in consecutive rounds to earn themselves a victory.
BBL conceded the first map, Breeze, with a 6-13 scoreline. Despite their efforts at staging a comeback, their second encounter on Haven ended 9-13 . After an unexpected loss, the Turkish side are preparing for their Week 2 matchup against Fnatic.
Sportskeeda Esports' Adarsh J Kumar had the opportunity to talk to BBL's head coach Vlad after their opening fixture. The coach elaborated on the team's performance against Guild Esports and their expectations for the Valorant Champions Tour 2022 Stage 1 EMEA Challengers.
Vlad highlights BBL Esports' performance against Guild and their expectations for Valorant Champions Tour 2022
Q: Can you walk us through BBL Esports' preparations ahead of Valorant Champions Tour 2022?
Vlad: We were caught up in a tough situation at the Turkish Qualifiers. While we were at our bootcamp, four of our members tested positive for COVID-19. That disrupted our initial momentum and took away some of our preparation time.
Excuses aside, we have been mastering some of the maps over the last two weeks. I think Guild Esports have better map selection and ban phase. They took out one of our best maps - Ascent.
Breeze was a shocker for us. On Haven, we played with a lot of mistakes, which we shouldn't have made. They just outperformed us.
Q: BBL Esports are grouped alongside teams like Acend, Fnatic, G2, and SMB in Group B of Valorant Champions Tour Stage 1 EMEA Challengers. What is your opinion on the remaining teams in your group?
Vlad: Looking at the group, I feel that some things are out of place. There are three CIS teams in Group A and two Turkish teams in Group B. I was under the impression that teams from CIS and Turkey would be spread across both groups.
Some of the best EMEA teams like Acend and Fnatic are in Group B. We can expect some close games against the remaining teams. We're not complaining about our group, but we are aware that it's going to be a tough fight.
Q: Fnatic looked great against G2 in their opening match of the Group Stage. You will be facing them in an official match for the first time in your Week 2 fixture. What are your expectations for the matchup?
Vlad: We were demoralized after the loss, but that is okay. We will be working hard throughout this week to prepare our gameplan. Fnatic are one of the teams that we have been practicing against lately, especially during the selection of their final player, BraveAF.
We know some of the vulnerabilities of Fnatic where we can hit them. We will prepare harder than what we did against Guild.
Q: Valorant has released two new Agents, Chamber and Neon, in the past few months. As we slowly see the meta shift towards these Agents in some parts of the world, do you think they are viable for competitive FPS like Valorant?
Vlad: The thing with Neon is, I can't really pick her over Agents like Jett, Reyna or Raze. Neon is currently compared to Reyna, who is not even part of the game's meta anymore.
Neon feels illegal, in my opinion. The Agent does not look like a competitive FPS character at all. Shifting, ducking, shooting electricity, all of it takes me back to the Half-Life days. Personally, I dislike it. But if there are ways to make set plays around her utilities, there's no reason not to use her.
Q: As a coach, do you find it difficult to adjust to Valorant's meta every time a new Agent is released?
Vlad: I wouldn't really say it's hard. After an Agent drops, we have sufficient time before they get added to the competitive pool . We will practice with the Agent for at least a month or two. We just go into the server and explore the capabilities of the Agent.
However, when someone picks an Agent unexpectedly, it can get troublesome. Draken played Yoru against Futbolist in a match sometime in mid-2021 (Stage 2 EMEA Challengers Playoffs, VCT 2021). Playing against such a setup is something that no team in Valorant would want to experience.
Q: You were a successful Valorant caster before you joined BBL Esports as the head coach. What led to the change in careers?
Vlad: I was really interested in coaching. I had a career in CS: GO where I was coaching a local Turkish team; we used to qualify for ESEA leagues, among other tournaments.
I wanted to become the head coach for an organization just like BBL Esports. I had offers coming in from several Turkish teams, but I was casting and was good at it. Only a handful of casters understand the game as well as comment on each play.
I was already interested in coaching when BBL offered me a job to rebuild their Valorant team. I had the freedom to pick my own players and do things my way. So I was all ears when they offered me the post. BBL has had a huge impact in Turkish esports, so I am really excited about being here.
Q: After the result of your Week 1 matchup, how confident are BBL Esports about qualifying out of the Group Stage and eventually making it to the Stage 1 Masters of Valorant Champions Tour 2022?
Vlad: Firstly, we needed a win against Guild. We expected to win the match. Since we lost, we need to win two more matches. We have certain opponents that we definitely need to defeat in order to achieve our goals.
Guild Esports was one of them. Despite them being unbeaten in the EU Qualifiers, we saw that they were similar to us. Their game revolves around their aiming ability, just like us.
Guild was also built from scratch since the team was based around Sayf and Leo. However, both of these players were outstanding on Breeze, the first map. Trexx was excellent on Haven. I congratulate them on their performance.
With our loss today, we're a bit shaken up. But we still think that we can make it to the playoffs at least. We have the capability to emerge from the bottom.
As I mentioned earlier, we were eliminated from the first Turkish qualifiers when some of us turned up positive for COVID-19. We brought ourselves back into the game with no lifelines back then, and that's how we plan to head into the next matchup as well.
