Astralis sports director explains team\u2019s new academy system AstralisAstralis Talent, a new sports-inspired academy program, has been launched by the Danish esports organization. [jwplayer WGyDcVLl] Unveiled on November 12, the initiative is said to be based on a \u201cbalanced, professional approach to performance and constant progress\u201d and will be used to recruit young players. Astralis Talent members will be housed in the same facility utilized by the A teams of the organization, initially focusing on Counter-Strike and League of Legends. Recruits will be integrated into the org\u2019s performance model, the training program that they cite as a major proponent of their success to date. Alongside stated intentions of building a 10-man roster in Counter-Strike, following unplanned breaks for two players due to \u201cburnout and stress,\u201d Astralis are ensuring procedures are put in place as a means of prevention. The talent program will be a component of keeping the main teams fresh, as well as developing prospective stars. To delve into the academy program, including the exact approach that\u2019ll be used and concerns of them locking down future talent to generate profit in years to come, Dexerto spoke with the team\u2019s director of sports, Kasper Hvidt. \u201cWe don\u2019t know the best way to optimize players yet,\u201d he told Dexerto. \u201cWe have ideas of the parameters we have to work on in order to create the best performance possible, but I don\u2019t think any of us yet know the perfect formula. \u201cThere are still many parameters to work on, including in-game training in League of Legends and Counter-Strike. In the last six months, we\u2019ve seen tools develop where pros are starting to cut down their performance into smaller pieces. This is the same in a sport like football, where they work on corner kicks, free kicks, and on other smaller details. In esports, players are not taught what they should actually do in solo queue so practice isn\u2019t optimized. There are many things we can do to improve globally in performance.\u201d Nature vs. Nurture Astralis Talent is an initiative that will evolve over time, exploring best practices to help mold the next generation of talent. More than that, it\u2019s also a recruitment platform that will see the Danish organization create a support system for their main teams. \u201cIt\u2019s a recruitment platform for the first teams,\u201d Hvidt said. \u201cIn order to recruit talent for those teams, we need to attach the Talent team to the first-team staff. The ideas of the head coaches in the A teams will be brought down to the young talent we bring into the Astralis system. Football teams maybe bring one or two academy players into their main team, and that\u2019s what we want to do, as well.\u201d The newly-announced talent is effectively an academy system \u2013 but that\u2019s complicated in League of Legends, where each of the 10 European LEC sides already houses academy teams in national leagues. In the past year, there have been examples of academy players being called up into top tier of play and performing well \u2014 something Astralis are cognizant of. \u201cWe want to go a step further; we have an academy team and below that, we have a Talent team,\u201d he said. \u201cFor our Talent teams, we are looking at players from Scandinavia. There are so many talented players in the region between the age of 14-20 that haven\u2019t had the chance to properly go into a professional athlete system, and that\u2019s what we want to provide.\u201d It\u2019s not just prioritizing physical fitness or improving reflexes that go into being a professional player. They are assets for the organizations they\u2019re representing, and with that come valuable requirements that are entirely absent from the server. This talent initiative will also prepare young gamers for that eventuality, too. \u201cAll the big teams, it\u2019s our obligation to take the knowledge we have down to that pool of talent and help them to be as prepared as possible when they get the chance in the pro scene,\u201d Hvidt explained. \u201cThere\u2019s a big gap between being a good talent and being a professional, there are so many factors outside of the game. \u201cWhen you\u2019re hired by an organization you\u2019re not just a gamer, you\u2019re a professional athlete. There are a lot of obligations: media days, commercial obligations towards sponsors, and many other things you don\u2019t see when you just follow the game.\u201d Starting in January 2021, Astralis Talent will compete in both Counter-Strike and League of Legends wholly comprised of raw and mostly-undeveloped prospects. They\u2019ll also be integrated into Astralis\u2019 procedures for their A team, and that includes practice. Whereas in a normal scenario Astralis have to scrim the same teams they compete against, they will soon be able to prepare and produce new tactics against their prot\u00e9g\u00e9s until they\u2019re ready to be deployed in official competition. Merchants or maturation machine? When Astralis Talent was announced, there was skepticism shown towards its legitimacy. Some believe this program simply sounds like a ploy to snap up all the promising future stars of esports just to then sell them on for profit. The director of sports for the Danish giants addressed this perception. \u201cNothing is black and white, everything is in between,\u201d he said. \u201cIt could be that we develop a really good player, an in-game leader, and within a couple of years he\u2019s good enough to play in a tier-one team \u2014 but the main Astralis roster still has gla1ve and Magisk leading. It\u2019d be quite hard to get into that team. \u201cIf somebody approached us to buy that guy, we\u2019d have to look at the situation. It\u2019s not like we\u2019re trying to keep all of the players and have 25 teams, and we\u2019re not going to build a roster that\u2019s able to compete at the highest level; we want talent we can develop. If we were to buy all of the Danish players, we should have multiple teams capable of qualifying for a Major \u2014 which can\u2019t happen.\u201d Not denying the plausibility of selling their developed talent instead of retaining them for the main roster, Hvidt sees the initiative in a similar way to football academies. It\u2019s incredibly rare, nigh-on unrealistic, that all young academy players will graduate to the main team. A couple may make it to the next level at the club, but the majority will naturally move on. \u201cThe dream is to recruit our own players, not to hold players against their wishes or bind them with crazy buy-outs,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we can sell a player that we can\u2019t use in our main roster within the next couple of months, so we\u2019re actually [hampering] that player\u2019s career, then we will try to sell him. This is a professional business so we won\u2019t give them away, nobody does that. We all try to do the best business we can, of course.\u201d 10-man rosters There\u2019s a current trend emerging in professional Counter-Strike in which organizations are recruiting a sixth man. The likes of Team Vitality and ENCE are prime examples, and, of course, Astralis themselves. The four-time Major champions actually unveiled their intention to build a 10-man roster, however, though that plan has not quite come into fruition. While the likes of JUGi and es3tag joined the ranks since the initial announcement, the team currently have six players with Bubzkji serving as the substitute. Dexerto asked Hvidt about his current thoughts on the project, and whether Astralis Talent is the next iteration of the plan. \u201cIf you build a roster with Snappi, JUGi, es3tag, Bubzkji, and one more, then you have a top 30 team,\u201d he said. \u201cThat team could qualify for a Major, and nobody would want to be in that team when the main Astralis exists as they would degrade their own career. This isn\u2019t black and white either. \u201cI think you can build a roster within the next two years that is good enough to support the main team, not compete with them. In this case, hopefully, we will be able to see when a player is due for a break before it\u2019s needed and we can tell one of the young guys they have an opportunity with the main team while they\u2019re relaxing. \u201cWhen one of your best players is suddenly out for five months, it may be that you have to go out to the market. That\u2019s no longer a conversation about support, that\u2019s a substitute conversation and it\u2019s too early for a Talent player to step up. Over time, we can develop a team that can help in practice and prevention of burnout; every organization should try to find a way to prolong their players\u2019 careers.\u201d The jury is out as to whether the academy approach will work for Astralis, but if it does then they will be playing their part in helping to develop the next wave of esports talent \u2014 and likely making some money along the way, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Astralis sports director explains team\u2019s new academy system AstralisAstralis Talent, a new sports-inspired academy program, has been launched by the Danish esports organization. [jwplayer WGyDcVLl] Unveiled on November 12, the initiative is said to be based on a \u201cbalanced, professional approach to performance and constant progress\u201d and will be used to recruit young players. Astralis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}