[EXCLUSIVE] Engh on their win at Kickoff and victories since “I felt like many teams disrespected us at the start”

Karmine Corp Head Coach Andrey "Engh" Sholokhov sat down with Strafe Esports following their uneasy victory over KOI in the 2024 VCT EMEA Split 1 Week 4.

Karmine Corp's victory was anything but decisive, but after a well-fought battle between them and KOI, they emerged victorious after going all 3 maps and overtime on the last.

In the interview, he touched on the difficulties that comes with learning as a young roster together, including competing internationally under a more compressed schedule. Andrey also touched on his journey to re-prove himself, by starting over on a new team with new players in a new environment. Competitively, he spoke about the exciting state of VCT EMEA in 2024 as well as his thoughts on the reasons that led to Karmine winning Kickoff.

[Interviewer] Congratulations on your victory today. I imagine you’re breathing a sigh of relief after that Bind game.

Definitely (laughs), thank you.

[Interviewer] KOI hasn’t had the best track record this split. However, most teams and the desk has acknowledged that they aren’t a bad team by any means. That said, you guys were certainly the favorites coming into this series. Could you speak on why KOI ending up giving you guys such a hard time?

First of all, I want to say that KOI surprised us a lot. Why? Because we kind of thought before the game that they had nothing to lose right now. So, they’re going to play much, much, much, more aggressive, and freely fight. Because they’re 0-3. Nothing to lose and they want to do whatever they want to do kind of, but at the same time, I feel like they were, to be honest, better prepared than us in many aspects.

Especially with their micro plays around like many zones. So, yea, just a big props to the coaching staff and […] they are like who created the plan and this micro-like fights and blah blah blah. So yeah, but of course, I was more surprised with the way how good they are actually. It’s not just a, you know, let’s say silly plays. It’s really smart plays. Feels like macro-wise, they were a better team today.

[Interviewer] Do you think the mistakes today largely came down to nerves from not expecting KOI to put up this much of a fight? Or do you think it’s more down to the youth of the roster, being so young and a bit on the inexperienced side?

Hard to say. I feel like it’s everything. You know, I will say it like this. Every time you see some, let’s say, very, very, common and silly, I really would say stupid mistakes from us. They think, ‘how can they do this?’ and blah blah blah, because you know, we were ‘much better before’ and ‘where is our form?’ But I can say, right now, we have faced some problems with understanding how to separate good experiences and bad experiences.

What it means is that we have already played a lot of matches. And we are pretty young in terms of many things, not only ages. But also, like, we have a young guy IGL, we have like multiple people like switching their roles. When you play a lot of games, sometimes, you acquire not only good experiences, but also bad experiences, and these accumulate in you. These bad experiences, like, you know the mistakes that you did in previous matches.

[Interviewer] Coming into this year, what was the sort of philosophy and the idea that you and ZE1Sh had in creating this new Karmine Corp roster?

So, first of all, you know, I’m also kind of, let’s say a bit arrogant. The first thing I said was that I did not want to work with players that I have already worked with. Like I said, I wanted to work with fresh people.

Not because I didn’t believe in my previous players. No, no, not this. I just wanted to show, prove, that I am still capable of teaching and leading people with, let’s say, with different cultures, from different countries. And I wanted to prove, to be honest – maybe it sounds weird – but that was kind of my ego or my goal. Something like this, call it whatever, I don’t mind.

About philosophy, I wanted also to like, you know, it’s mostly about my vision of the game. I wanted to play a different game – a bit more explosive, a riskier game than before. Yeah, on some maps, we kind of play like this, especially Split, sometimes on Bind. We play pretty, let’s say, at high speed and we are very aggressive. So yeah, my philosophy was I just wanted to try something new.

More than that, I wanted to prove that I can be a good coach, not the best maybe, but a good coach with a different place, with a different playstyle, an absolutely different play style. That’s what I wanted to kind of prove.

[Interviewer] Coming back from Madrid, what were your team’s learnings? When playing against other international teams, playing against other regional styles, did you bring back some things from Madrid, back to EMEA?

It’s more outside of the game. We understood with [Madrid], we needed to change a bit. We needed to be ready […] that we had to play less. If you’re just talking about the games, I would say only Paper Rex was a really different team. Like literally different team at all. They’re playing like no one.

Other teams, I feel like, even the Chinese teams, they looked more like us, and we them. There were a lot of similarities in our playstyles. So, it’s not something new. I didn’t see something new. But in terms of preparation before games, it’s absolutely different. We faced a lot of troubles and we struggled. Because we had a lot of media and a lot of health problems, we had short amounts of time to prepare before each game. So that, I would say, we acquired, we got this experience.

You need to separate the league format and the tournament format. If someday we qualify again, players should be ready to play with this kind of high tempo. We literally had so much media, I have never had a feeling like that, in other games, and even in Valorant before. And the players were just so tired and exhausted and we as a coaching staff, again, for us, it’s experience, even more than for the players.

Next time, we need to be better with our schedule. Because we literally tried to do what we did at Kickoff. But of course, it was my fault. I need to learn it, and next time, I should be better at this.

[Interviewer] Last year, we saw Fnatic dominating a lot of Europe in terms of the level that they were showing. But however, this year, it’s completely different. The level of competition in Europe has skyrocketed. Could you speak a little bit of your own thoughts on the level Europe has reached competitively?

So, for us, I’m happy about the level of competition here. Right now, we have a lot of really competitive teams. But at the same time, I feel Fnatic still hasn’t played on their level of last year. And I mean individually, not macro-wise. Overall, their level is much better than before. But their level I feel, is still not the Fnatic that I knew. I don’t want to say what’s wrong with them, but definitely that’s not the Fnatic that they could be.

On the other teams, there are probably six or seven teams that could qualify for Shanghai or Champions. They kind of have the same level. Maybe KOI next split can also surprise a lot of team if they keep playing like they played today and keep improving their things. As a coach, I’m very happy.

Right now, the level may be also why it’s pretty different compared to last season. A lot of teams this year signed many rookies, and it shows that it’s better to sign someone who’s a rookie than recycling the same Tier 2 Tier 3 players or Tier 1 players that kind of didn’t achieve anything. Because to be honest, experience yes, experience is good. But at the same time, it’s a shooter. You need to shoot first of all here. And if you have 5 good shooters, it’s much easier to win games than playing with 5 smart guys.

[Interviewer] I mean, it seems like you were the ones who broke Fnatic, being the first to beat them at Kickoff…

Yes, but also if I may say even if you didn’t ask. I can reflect on why we won Kickoff. I feel like many teams, first of all, they disrespected us. Not only us, but many, many teams. Second, I think Fnatic wasn’t ready at all to play. Fnatic, NA’VI, Vitality. Yeah, that’s three teams that 100% weren’t ready to play. If you noticed, [Fnatic] already said that they didn’t have a good preparation.

NA’VI I feel, same thing. Right now, they’re performing much better than before. Much better. And Vitality they played with kind of a stand-in. If they had played with trexx, their results could have been different. Yeah, trexx is a world-class player. But from my perspective, it’s why we won. It’s because many teams really disrespected us and we surprised many teams with the way we played. Right now, it’s no longer surprising.

Karmine Corp will next play against Team Heretics. This will be both team's final game of the regular season of Split 1. It will also be the first time the two teams clash since the Grand Finals of EMEA Kickoff.

For all the latest updates on the LEC, follow the official VCT EMEA Twitter/X here. You can also follow along with the action on the Strafe Android and iOS apps, as well as the Strafe site.

Credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games

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