MAD Pad: “I will not promise you a 2-0. I will promise you a bloodbath, entertainment, heart attacks and we will go forward.”

MAD Lions have had up-and-down performances throughout the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) 2021 tournament thus far but they are on the brink of making it to playoffs. One more day remains.

We spoke to the MAD Lions assistant coach Patrick “Pad” Suckow-Breum to talk about the challenges they face, how they’re facing them and a little bit about his background in coaching.

Firstly, congratulations on defeating Pentanet.GG (PGG) and going 1-1 today. Would you be so kind to run through the games with me, especially your earlier loss against PSG Talon?

Pad: Sure! Obviously we went 1-1 today and 0-2 yesterday and overall the last few days have been pretty rough. I suppose our loss against PSG was less frustrating because we lost that game at Level 1 on a late invade, that we as the coaching staff did not cover for our players. So that’s completely on us.

Against DWG KIA (Damwon) and Royal Never Give Up (RNG), we have looked way weaker than we actually are in terms of our level compared against the Asian teams. A lot of it has been slight meta shifts while we’re here and that’s been hard to adapt to this late in this stage of the tournament.

Let’s talk about something more cheerful, MAD Lions defeated PGG in dominating fashion and I’d like to ask about the Lissandra pick. I know she’s a niche pick into assassins but she’s not been seen in awhile, is she low-key viable in MSI 2021?

Pad: So… I’m sorry to disappoint but it’s only good into Qiyana (laughs). If Lissandra was played into another other champion in this meta like Viktor or Orianna, you’d probably get gooba stomped!

A quick side tangent, there has been much discussion on the possibility of enchanters dominating the meta. As it stands, we’re not seeing very many of them this MSI. Why do you think this is? Are teams more comfortable with the current picks perhaps?

Pad: I think it’s a mixture of things. There was a last minute shift to the jungle champion pool with the new patch that made Morgana and Rumble exceptionally strong, and once you pick one of those two champions it can be hard to fit in an enchanter in mid-lane.

For bot-lane, if you’re not playing champions like Nautilus or Leona or champions with hard engage, you will often struggle. I think enchanters are hard to play now because with champions like Kai’Sa and Tristana, they just blow up enchanters, so it doesn’t matter if they’re played mid or support. If you play an enchanter mid-lane, you’re not having priority. If you don’t have prio well… it’s unplayable.

With MAD Lions at 4-4, you still have a chance to make playoffs. What are your impressions of teams like Damwon and RNG? They seem more shaky than some people expected, so do you think EU’s level of play is very far off from them?

Pad: I think obviously if you’re a spectator and you just watch our games against them then yes, it does seem like LCK and LPL are pretty far ahead. We’ve scrimmed both teams a lot and we do have a track record against them. Damwon have had a fairly slow start to MSI but they’re ramping up and starting to look really scary now. That’s natural since they’re the current World Champions and they have insane players.

I would say RNG is the team most similar to us in the way that they play. They play so fast and so aggressively that maybe they have a tendency to overreach. Just like us! They’re for sure the funniest team to play against and in my opinion, the gap between RNG, Damwon, us and even Cloud9 (C9) is not as big as people think, so this tournament is up for grabs.

What it really comes down to is how people play in the best-of-five series. If you’re a good best-of-five team, then MSI 2021 is up for grabs for every team.

Fair take. Tomorrow is the last day of the Rumble stage and people have talked about how there are no one day breaks and so forth, so this stage is much more challenging. Tell us a bit how MAD Lion’s staff have been dealing with it and preparing the players for the matches.

Pad: It’s been weird for sure and completely different from anything we’ve tried before, even different from what James “Mac” MacCormack and Christophe “Kaas” van Oudheusden had been doing before. This is my first season with the team, so everything is new. Going into the LEC 2021 spring playoffs, the preparation was way easier because you knew you had to prepare for one team and it didn’t matter if you had to play three or five games, because you’re only preparing to face one team, so you know about their team identity like how they draft, play and so forth.

Going into the Rumble stage five days in a row with two different teams every day has definitely been hard. What we’ve been doing is bringing good and healthy snacks, we’re working out and doing stretches, keeping the players awake and alert in between games as well as making sure the players don’t go to bed at 5AM. It’s been rough and we’ve been doing what we can, but the format is definitely very taxing.

Not going to bed at 5AM definitely helps!

Pad: Definitely!

In that regard, has there been someone in the team –or multiple people– who have been actively keeping the team spirits up then?

Pad: For sure. I’m always a happy person and we have such a lovely team that we kind of bounce off our positive energy really well. So whoever’s happy, they bounce that to other people and it keeps going. We have a great positive reinforcement system where even if for example, nine guys are tilted or angry, it just takes one guy to lift the mood up!

It depends from day to day but Matyáš “Carzzy” Orság is always very social and such a kind kid, he’s making sure everyone is alright. Norman “Kaiser” Kaiser is… always Kaiser. He’s very consistent, you always know what you get with him which is lovely to have. And it’s the same for Irfan Berk “Armut” Tükek too, Armut is always nice. We have a lot of players who are good at ‘infecting’ us, so we have become good at infecting each other with joy.

That sounds lovely. Alright Pad, I want you to tell me and the fans loudly now: Are the MAD Lions going to go 2-0 tomorrow against RNG and C9 and make it through to MSI 2021 playoffs? Will the fans be on ‘hopium’ overdose???

Pad: (laughs) Ok so, MSI has shown that RNG can bleed, and we have made them bleed in scrims. They’ve played both PSG and C9 today and those teams have taken the fight to them as well. I think almost everyone has a shot at taking the fourth spot, and C9 like Damwon looked shaky in the beginning but they seemed to have fixed most of their more glaring issues, though the Scuttle Crab memes are funny.

I will not promise you a 2-0. I will promise you a bloodbath, entertainment, heart attacks and I promise you, we will go forward. We’re done going backwards. We’re going forwards and it’s going to be fun!

Before we end, my specialty is covering the European Regional Leagues (ERLs), so I’d like to ask how has the transition been for you to go from NLC to being LEC champions, and now being MSI representatives?

Pad: Honestly I don’t think I fully understand it. I’m just doing my best to make sure I am always useful for Mac, Kaas and the players. I don’t think I’ve realised just yet that I’m with an LEC championship team or that I’m at MSI, I’m kind of just living my dream right now and doing my best to contribute in a positive way for us to win games. It’s still mind-blowing to me.

Have you kept up with the ERLs and did you watch the EU Masters? Is your old team Tricked Esport going to make EU Masters?

Pad: (laughs) I still follow the ERLs, because I’m the kind of guy where I always remember where I came from. My coaching career started in the UK scene and I’ve been in the UKLC/NLC scene for a long time so I still keep in touch with my former players like Sof, Achuu, Chemera and Mumus. They’re all lovely lads.

I try to give back as much as I can with how much I’m learning at MAD Lions without giving away any secrets and give back to where I came from, because in the end I want the grassroots system in LoL to work so I have more talents to develop.

What has been your biggest challenge since you’ve come from the NLC into the LEC?

Pad: My biggest challenge was firstly catching up to the level of game knowledge. It took a long time and I overworked myself a lot. After that, the biggest challenge was just being away from people, since we were kind of isolated in Berlin due to lockdowns. I’m a very social person, and I love our staff and players, but having no input from other people outside that was really rough since I’m usually used to having a lot of people around me in Denmark.

That comes to the end of the interview, do you have anything else you’d like to add or shoutouts you’d like to give?

Pad: Thank you to everyone who supports us. Yesterday was a really rough day but I got so many kind and sweet messages, and it was really overwhelming. Thank you so much for that!

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