VIT Pad on Naak Nako: "I would not think of changing how he plays in a million years"

Locked in second place in the LEC 2026 Summer regular season, are now headed to Madrid to fight for a spot at Worlds 2026 against titleholders in a best-of-five that promises to be more explosive than ever. Nevertheless, questions over whether Vitality can continue its recent streak of dominance remain, with the team having gone undefeated in Berlin since its appearance at the Paris Roadtrip. However, doubts continue to surround the squad following its catastrophic run in the Spring Season.

In an exclusive interview, head coach Patrick "Pad" Suckow-Breum sat down with Sheep Esports to discuss his coaching philosophy, his mentality heading into the playoffs, how he works with , and how he balances the needs of every player while hammering down fundamentals.

Patrick "Pad" Suckow-Breum: “Much better than last time we spoke in Paris [laughs]. I feel super good. Obviously, there's a lot of stuff happening to prepare for playoffs. We've been in a similar position before. But I'm really happy, right? My first year as head coach, and I take first place in the spring split and second place in summer. It's a good beginning.

Pad: Really good. That’s quite funny, though; I didn’t see that interview, but it’s completely true. We talked notably in relation to the change since, ultimately, this decision could come down to being potentially my last split as head coach of Vitality. This is why I really wanted to do things my way. Bringing him in as our new midlaner has really empowered me in a lot of ways.

Pad: For sure. There's three big elements, right? First of all, this entire team loves playing together and that just makes a massive difference. This has been the number one ingredient on any team that I’ve been on that has been successful in the past. Five players and a coaching staff liking to spend time together. It's there.

Secondly, the whole mantra we went into this split with was fix our fundamentals so we can build on top of that and not have games where we flunk out versus teams that are worse than us because of fundamentals. I think we are pretty much there.

And thirdly, you know, it's summer. Worlds is coming. Last chance. And that pressure is something that the lads have responded really well to so far. So I hope we can just keep up this momentum for playoffs.

Pad: We talked a lot about Marek, but the second thing that we haven't talked a lot about publicly, which was my big takeaway and what I brought to the team when we met back for bootcamp, was that our fundamentals were in shambles, right?

We were too relaxed on these things. I'm not going to go too much into details, but basically it's just making sure that there's harmony within the actions that we take in the game. And especially for early game, it's a part of the game that is very easy to replicate the same results.

Mid game is all about creative freedom. It's all about looking for different angles and finding ways to explode the game. Those will be super different from game to game. But early game, regardless of what comp you have, there will be certain fundamentals that are set pieces which can be run every game.

Those are the ones that Lyncas referred to. We were just, you know, not “disciplined” enough—that would be his word. I hate this word. It's too broad, but it's his favorite word... But linking these fundamentals to the positive rewards you get for doing it rather than why are you not doing this has been really, really helpful for the team.

Pad: No, not for me, for my teams. It's impossible. My role within this team is Spider-Man and Spider-Man's job is to make sure that everyone is happy. And that means that we play disciplined enough that Linas is happy, we play creatively enough that is happy, and we play enough around mid so FIESTA is happy… we never run into the issue of being too serious.

We've cracked the code of how to run fundamentals, which is, you know, for our creative players, maybe more boring. But linking the rewards of having solid early games to the positive consequences of mid game, I mean, that was just very easy and it meant that we could do it in a way where it didn't feel like militaristic.

Pad: No, because when I talk about fundamentals, much rather than it being, you know, like you have to do A, B, C, D, E, F every game, it is highlighting that every game you will have the option between A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3 and so on. We are sort of setting that scaffolding to give players multiple good choices for decision making rather than saying “you must always do this”. This is how I coach to get around the formulaic “running it back” same part every time. I don't believe in that. I don't believe that the game is like that simple.

So fundamentals, even though I used the word a lot in this interview, are very broad for me and much less simplified than it probably is for other teams.

Pad: No, no, it's completely fine. That guy is so smart. He's way smarter about toplane than I will ever be. I think it's one of my lovely qualities as a coach—being humble enough to know that my players will often know better than me, and knowing how to get the best out of them.

What that means for Naak is that yeah, a lot of teams have tried to attack him in the last seven series we've had, but none of them have beaten us in a best of three. So maybe that's not the way to beat us. And that's a big issue for teams, right?

In past splits, if you shut down Naak, maybe we were vulnerable sometimes. But now you shut down Naak and Carzzy carries the game on Kai'Sa. You shut down Fiesta and Naak carries. You shut down Lyncas and Naak carries. You shut down Fiesta and Naak, Carzzy and carries. So I don't think it's an issue.

There are definitely some edge cases, like playing against a comp with a lot of globals, right? Like when teams roll up and they're like, “fuck you guys, we are playing Ryze, Nocturne, Ambessa no matter what and we are diving your top laner”. Maybe there’s something we can do there to have better early game fundamentals, so that we learn how to play versus globals. But for Naak Nako, I would not think of changing how he plays in a million years.

Pad: Fun. Giga fun. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. That's good. Just good. Just excited to go. I already booked a hotel. So I'm just excited to go back on the stage and pick up on the last roadtrip.

About G2, they are not in their best shape, but we will never underestimate this team. What's important for us is that we now have a week to iron out the issues that we think that G2 can expose. And if we do that, we'll probably win the series.

Pad: [Laughs] Me too buddy, me too.”