The Bees stung the competition this week, defeating both NAVI and Karmine Corp to secure a spot in the League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) Summer Playoffs. Despite a rocky start to the season, Team Vitality now has a tied series score against Movistar KOI and could even contend for a top-two finish in the group stage. In an exclusive interview with Sheep Esports, head coach James "Mac" MacCormack discusses his team’s recent improvements, the coaching staff’s “last chance,” and his ambitions to return to Worlds.

What changed between week one and week three that made you so convincing in Week 3?

James "Mac" MacCormack: "The break was good, we got the time we needed to address a lot of the things we felt were off. The biggest change is that we just stopped overthinking so much. In the game versus GX, we really showed the worst of ourselves and were suffering from analysis paralysis. We put a lot of work into simplifying things and getting people on the same page. We wanted to reach a state where players don’t second guess taking risks and potentially failing. That mindset really showed this week; we played the game so much faster. We were opening the map really aggressively, and if we were stronger, as soon as we saw someone, we just jumped on their face. That's the type of League of Legends that I love to coach. I'm really happy.

How was the mood like after the loss to GIANTX? Were there any worries?

Mac: We were confident. There have definitely been a lot of ups and downs this year, and to be honest, the downs have been very rough. It's fair to say that in a lot of the do-or-die situations, we died. That's obviously something that the Vitality fans are a bit frustrated about, and I totally understand. After the GX match, we were so disappointed, absolutely. I'll be honest, our results this week are a relief as well; we played really well. It's also a relief because it means that we're a lot safer than we were for getting out of the groups. I believe we have such a special group of athletes with a great mindset, I just think that this team needed time.

Obviously, the nightmare situation is that you mess up in a really important match—and the GX match was a really important match—and then you don't get the time. But bringing in a new support who's a bit less experienced than the others, Fleshy (Kadir Kemiksiz), he's going to need his time to acclimatize. I believe that after the last two weeks, he did just that. He really did an amazing job at turning things around. He went from sometimes overthinking a bit to just being really decisive, and the other players also backed him up so well on that. So I'm really proud of them.

How do you see the future of this roster? Considering the organization hasn’t been at the top of Europe for a while, and with recent comments from Fabien "Neo" Devide, Chairman of Vitality, saying this was the coaching staff’s last chance, is there pressure to perform and show results?

Mac: Absolutely. Internally, there's definitely pressure. More than anything, we also put pressure on ourselves because we view ourselves as better than what we've done so far. And that's actually the biggest source of pressure.

Obviously, in Spring, we took a really big risk role-swapping a player into a role that he'd never really played before. And that risk was supposed to pay off in Summer. Then, obviously, it didn't go to plan. Changes were made, and that's a big step backwards, which is frustrating for fans, for management, for everyone. Seeing so many changes being made is absolutely frustrating, so I can definitely understand that. Ideally, we would have brought in Fleshy in Spring, but we couldn’t get a visa in time for him. There were a lot of “almosts” this year, I would say.

The future for this group of players is really bright. If I look at our players top to bottom, I believe all of them have so much potential individually, and they click well together. All of them are good communicators in game. All of them are really good people and really hard workers. For example, if you asked me whether I’d want to exchange Czajek (Mateusz Czajka) for another of the best midlaners in the league, the answer would probably be no.

One of the reasons the players wanted Fleshy after Spring was that everyone said: if this guy came into the LEC right now, he would be a top support mechanically. Yes, he will need time on the other things, but on pure mechanics, this guy is really good. And that's absolutely what I've seen internally so far.

Have you already discussed with Neo what the next step for this project is? Has he given you specific goals you need to meet for the project to continue?

Mac: Yeah, Neo's been quite frank, but he’s also a pretty understanding guy. The baseline expectations for Vitality have been set, but there is a subjective aspect to it, right? Let's say we went to a game five in a best of five against Fnatic, that would probably be enough for him to say, “Okay, this roster has some promise and this project is moving forward.” If we crashed out in seventh again, that wouldn't be enough, being really realistic.

In terms of my aims and Vitality's aims, I think we're still really aligned. Vitality sees itself as an elite organization, and in most of the titles it competes in, it is an elite organization. It hasn’t been in League for a while. The aim is to be a consistent top four team. The aim of everyone on this team is to compete at the highest level—go to MSI, go to Worlds, go to international tournaments and be able to compete toe to toe with big teams. That’s the ambition of the project we’re building, and it’s still exactly the same. If I stay here, and even if I don’t, that will still be the aim.

Looking at this split specifically, now that you’re in a good spot for playoffs, what’s the aim for Summer? What’s the minimum you’d need to achieve for it to feel like a successful split?

Mac: This team should push for top four, absolutely. We have a printed-out roadmap of our road to Worlds in our room. Obviously, everyone is aiming for Worlds. All of the internal pressure, the fans, the sponsors—all of those things play a really important factor. I’m very sensitive to the needs of the business. I get it, you know? We’re entertainers at the end of the day, and we’re a business. But the greatest pressure we place on ourselves is internal. We see ourselves as top players who are capable of being top players—not next year, but now—and we want to go to Worlds. So it’s that simple.

Do you have any words for Vitality fans?

Mac: I'm obviously aware that there are frustrations, and those frustrations are totally valid and shared by a lot of us. We've been disappointed with ourselves a lot this year, and that disappointment is very evident in the tone of how people talk about the Vitality League of Legends project. It’s been frustrating for a long time to be a Vitality League of Legends fan. Those concerns are very much heard and shared by everyone at Vitality—from Neo and upper management all the way down to the players. Everyone is pushing as hard as they possibly can.

We’ve been working so well. At least what I can say from behind the scenes is that I've never seen a team work this hard and this well. Every single day, our aim is to practice like champions and prepare like champions. I really believe we’re fulfilling that. And this is not me saying, “give me more time.” This is the reality of what I see. I've never seen a team practice this well. I've never seen a team prepare this well.

What I see behind closed doors is that when we play against weaker opponents, against teams you’d consider bottom six—the league has a very clear top four and a very clear bottom six, maybe you can make a case for GX being top five—when we play against the lower teams, it’s not even close. I’d happily publish our scrim results, no issue whatsoever. We have a board that tracks them all, and we’re planning to take a picture and post it at the end. Accountability is a motivation for us.

We are very, very solid, and our fundamentals are improving a lot. Our team play is improving a lot. I'm not going to promise that it’ll be ready by Summer playoffs—the turnaround time is quite tight—but I hope the fans are happy with the progress we’ve made in the last two weeks. And I hope we’ll be able to do more and prove to them that we deserve to wear the colors."