After their fourth loss in Split 1 of the
VALORANT Champions Tour EMEA,
Karmine Corp assistant coach
Ahmed “ZE1SH” El Sheikh sat down with
Sheep Esports to reflect on the start of the year, discuss the current situation within the roster, the arrival of
Marshall “N4RRATE” Massey, and more topics.
How do you feel after that game? And if you had to summarize your players’ performance, what would you say? What was missing today for you to win this game?
Ahmed "ZE1SH" El Sheikh: “Obviously, I’m disappointed. Honestly, I don’t know exactly what the problem is, apart from the fact that we often fall into the same pattern: we win the first map, and then everything turns into complete chaos. The voice comms are… You really need to be in there to understand. Right now, I don’t have the solution. It’s very difficult, because it is hard to identify problems that you do not necessarily see in practice. Unfortunately, we have that reputation, people call us “scrim heroes”.
In Europe, when we play tier-one teams in scrims, we are very strong. And, in a way, we deserve that reputation, because in practice, we beat everyone. But as a result, it becomes difficult to spot the real issues in those situations. You can still identify certain areas for improvement and tell yourself that something is not working or could be better even if the results are there. But when you see a completely different version of the team in official matches, it becomes hard to pinpoint exactly what needs to be worked on. Apart from the fact that we need to stop playing in chaos when we become too confident or when we have just won a map and there is too much emotion involved.
Marshall “N4RRATE” Massey, right after Game 1, was interviewed on the VCT broadcast and said that Haven was one of your best maps. Over the past few years, we have also seen that Lotus has generally been a map you have mastered very well. Is that depth in the map pool now one of the team’s biggest strengths?
ZE1SH: The thing is, for example, before the match against Gentle Mates, Fracture was our most successful map in scrims. It was the map where we were the strongest, so to speak. So honestly, I am finding it harder and harder to distinguish what is real from what is not. I do not rely on stats as much anymore. I mainly try to trust what I see, not necessarily whether we win or lose. As I said, it is hard to have truly concrete elements to work with.
Last year on Haven, I think we won nine and lost only one toward the end of the season, when we switched to Phoenix. Lotus, I think we won quite a lot as well. Bind, we also won a fair amount during the qualifiers. Honestly, I do not think we have a map pool problem. I think the issue is more about whether or not we start well on the first map. If we start well, we can play very well. But if we do not, we completely lose ourselves.
Since the beginning of the year, things have been quite complicated for Karmine Corp, with a lot of defeats. As a coach, how do you manage the pressure of losing with the players? Do you think being 0-3 also affects the team?
ZE1SH: Yes. What high-level competitor can be confident when they are 0-3? That is normal. But as I said, you get what you deserve. If we played better and applied what we usually do, we would potentially have more wins. Unfortunately, I feel like this is a bit of the story of my life: losing very close games 2-1. Honestly, I do not know. Of course, there are problems. It is complicated to identify them when you feel like everything is running smoothly. When most of the time things go well, when there is not a huge amount of chaos in communication, and when reviews go well, it is very difficult. I cannot understand it. But of course, there are also things I do wrong. I am not Professor Xavier, and I have no pretension of being him. There are plenty of things I do badly, but I also think there are many things I do well.
That is what drives me crazy. For example, today on Bind, we literally knew what they were doing thanks to our preparation. We knew that when they placed the smoke short from the market and the molly B long, they were going to go B into B. We knew exactly what they were going to do, and yet we still got rolled over when they were attacking. Sometimes, those things are difficult to manage, and it is frustrating. I am becoming more and more frustrated, but I try to stay very positive. If I am frustrated and I show them that frustration, it does not help. Despite everything in the room, I try to remain positive because we are already 0-3. I am not going to add more pressure, and above all, that is not even my role. My role within the team has changed this year.
I would like to go back to an important point from the off-season with the arrival of N4RRATE. We saw a lot of fans talking about it on social media and asking for him to join. Did the fans’ calls help you make that decision?
ZE1SH: Not at all. I think the people who follow me know very well that N4RRATE is my brother. I had known for a long time that he was benched. As soon as the opportunity came up, I jumped on it. I literally spent my off-season taking late-night calls because of the time difference, speaking with his mother, his agent, and him to convince them to come, because he had received one or two other offers from clubs that wanted to sign him.
I spent all my off-season nights doing that. I already knew in advance that there was a 90% chance he would be removed from his team. So I jumped on the opportunity as soon as I knew. The fans may have helped from his side, in the sense that he saw the hype and saw that people still loved him a lot. So yes, that may have helped him. But the N4RRATE opportunity was something we knew about well before it was announced. We had always stayed in very good contact since his departure, so I did everything I could to make sure he could come.
KC before the game against FUT Esports at VCT EMEA. Credit: Michał Konkol/Riot Games
On Twitter and on most social media platforms, you are often the main target of criticism, whether people understand the game or not. How do you manage those storms?
ZE1SH: That is a complicated question. I think last year, it affected me a lot. Really a lot. I can understand people holding me responsible, but why is everything always my fault? That is what hurts me. People do not know my responsibilities. They do not know what I do within the team, or what I bring to it. And I feel like most things always end up falling on me.
But it is also partly my fault, in a way, because I have made a few communication mistakes at times. I am not going to deny that. Obviously, when you make a communication mistake and things go badly, everything comes back to that. Those are the rules of social media; that is how it works. It is also the other side of the coin. When you are known and you are in a position where you are expected to perform, if you do not perform, you take everything.
Unfortunately, that is life. I would rather it be me than the players. I would rather be the one taking all of it in the face. Most of the time, I do not even use social media anymore, apart from Instagram, where I post stories. I barely use Twitter anymore. From time to time, I log in to check my DMs, in case someone has sent me an important message, but otherwise, I do not use it at all. As I said, that is life. I do not necessarily have an answer to that, because I do not understand it myself. I feel like, in people’s eyes, everything is my fault, even though they do not know what my responsibilities are.
Typically, this year, what I am supposed to do within the team is mainly match preparation: understanding how the opposing team plays, giving the right patterns, and understanding their habits. Most of the time, our preparation is correct. I also work individually with certain players. Recently, for example, I have been working with Lewn (Burak Alkan); before that, I was working with Dos9 (Zhumagali Dastan). I do a lot of individual work with the players. I try to show them many things. For example, Lewn had to switch to Neon, so we reviewed a lot of things, especially his scaling. The same goes for Dos9, who also had to work on Neon. For his Omen, it is the same.
For Haven, for example, we watched a VOD of Rb (Goo Sang-min) with Nongshim during the Masters together. We looked at how he played and tried to replicate certain things for Dastan. He manages to reproduce them quite well; he has incorporated part of Rb’s gameplay into his own, and it works. I try to do my best, like everyone else. But as I said, I would rather be the one who takes all the blame than the players. That is life.
It hurts me because this is a club I love, and I do not like seeing us in this position. Being 0-4 had not happened to me since 2023, since the ScreaM (Adil Benrlitom) roster. It hurts. I am the first one to be extremely sad, and I am the first one to be sorry for the fans. Truly, I am sincerely sorry. I understand the criticism; I do not deny it. I have my share of responsibility. I can understand it, and once again, this is a competitive environment: you have to deliver results, and when you do not, criticism inevitably follows.”
