William "Blitz" Lee Team Liquid coach was interviewed on the ESL DreamLeague Season 19 broadcast after the team cleanly swept beastcoast 2-0. He addressed how he's handling the stress of the job, how to tackle team conflicts and his biggest flaw as a Dota 2 coach. How was that Game 1? Was it stressful, watching from the sidelines?  I don't actually get so stressed anymore. I just think my team's good so, they'll pull it out. And [even] if they don't, we have more games to figure it out so, it's not the end of the world. Did the Thunder Awaken series at TI [make you think that] it's not going to get more stressful than that, so everything is "peanuts" after that?  Yeah, that was probably the worst moment of my life, simultaneously the worst and best. Once you kind of experience that kind of high and low at the same time, nothing else really competes, so now I'm a lot more chill. In the past, I couldn't even watch our games live, I'd have to go upstairs and just pace. But now I'm more chill about it. Do you have talks with [other coaches at the Team Liquid] facility?  No, but I think Liquid is trying to set that up. I think the [Team Liquid] Valorant coach is coming with us to the Major, 'cause they also play in Berlin. He'll interact and see what we do differently and see if there's any overlap, which I think is a really cool initiative by Liquid. You said that you don't really feel any pressure watching these nerve-wrecking games of your team, but how do they feel afterwards? Do you feel like you have to pep-talk them or calm them down after games like that Game 1? No, I actually think that the only thing we have to pep-talk is after game losses. The [Gaimin] Gladiators serious was kind of brutal. Zai was [also] kind of mad about the Tundra [Esports] series, so we had a pretty big talk after that. [But], for the most part, after the draft ends I'm just out of there. It's a long season, [so] if you give a long speech every single time I think that the value of them just diminish over time, naturally. So, you want to ramp up the intensity as the season goes on. You know, the season isn't decided here. If we lose a game here or there that's life, and you should just move past it. We're going to lose games, you know, it's the inevitability of competition. Would you say [the players] are good at hashing things out amongst themselves when you're not talking? Has there been any butting of heads or conflict after games? No. The reason why we believed in this roster for so long is because everybody is very easy to talk to. Maybe, sometimes, somebody will be defensive in the moment, but if you approach them one to one I think there's a very clear line where they'll accept criticism and they'll understand, they're pretty self-aware. This is something I understand too, there are moments to be constructive [in]. Right after a loss, nobody wants to hear [criticism]. So, you just give them a bit of time and later on you bring it up, and they're really good about it. I think Zai sets a really good tone for the rest of the team, Aydin [Insania] also does a really good job because you can criticize him endlessly and he just takes it. I think everyone's really easy to work with, it's honestly the reason why this roster has been with Liquid for almost four years now. You give them feedback, they take it well, and I just knew [the] guys would eventually succeed. During The Lima Major (...) you picked Talon Esports over EG. Now that you've played [against] EG and beastcoast, do you still EG are difficulty to play into, or has beastcoast usurped the [best team in South America] slot?  It's really weird. In theory, EG is very similar to the Thunder Awaken team that gave us a lot of problems at TI, but beastcoast has some kind of magic. They're really annoying to play against, drafting against them is not straight forward, they do a lot of unique things like this Juggernaut pick against Phoenix. I think that speaks volumes about the kind of team that you are, if you're willing to do that. There's not way that they practice that [matchup], because we never practiced Phoenix, we just decided to [pick it] last night. I think it's really cool that you can bust stuff out like that, it shows that you have a lot of confidence. As far as EG goes, I think they're definitely a way scarier LAN team, because they put the pressure on you, [they're] a team that is willing to run at you at all times. When you're at the comfort of a facility like [Team Liquid's], it's really chill, it feels like there are no stakes. whereas, when you're at LAN, they get a kill, it snowballs into two and three and they just keep running at you and hit this mid-game timing and it's really scary. There's no way I was going to choose them in Peru, there is zero chance I [would choose] a Peruvian team in Peru. You just don't want that kind of Karma. What's your biggest flaw as a coach? I think I get emotional a bit too much in the moment. For example, I had an argument with one of our players the other day, and I could've probably just dropped it and waited for a better time, but I have a hard time letting things go. It's a really big flaw of mine and I wish I was better at it. My team calls me out on it and they're trying to [help me] improve. I want to work on that. (Interviewers point out that Team Liquid player Boxi had a very similar answer in his own interview, and Blitz responds) It's funny because it was after a win. MATU told us that when you win you should push, when you're losing you should just ignore. Everybody knows the mistakes that they made, just be positive and let things slide, but when you win, you should just push for improvement, because that's when people are most receptive. I really though that was super insightful and I took that, so when we won yesterday it was a lot easier to talk about it. Then we had a kind of bad moment, we argued, then after about 3 hours we had another talk about it, we both apologized to each other and it was all fine. Sometimes that is the nature of the relationship, you're going to argue and fight so you both just kind of have to be okay with that.

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Featured image via ESL. Remaining images courtesy of Team Liquid. Did you like this Blitz DreamLeague Season 19 interview? If you missed it, check out this interview with Team Liquid player Zai.