So, over all these years of training and the experience that you are beginning to have, how have you evolved in your way of helping young people progress? When you think back to your first misutaaa practices, how do you see your personal progression?

Frankly, I think I haven't changed that much in terms of mentality. I have continued, on a daily basis, to do what I have been doing since the beginning. In my way of managing a team, players, I'm the same since I started the project of bringing people up. It is the players who have had to comply with my requests. I've always had the same speech, I'm a very frank person and I'm not interested in other people's opinions.

I know that my working method is the right one, either you comply or you leave, I have nothing to lose. That's what misutaaa did, it paid off, that's what Nivera did, it paid off. Python did it during our few months together, he followed me blindly. And yet, God knows that in the game I am very very very intransigent, very disciplined, it is my gendarmerie side that stands out. I ask a lot of them, because I know they need this mentality to succeed.

Outside of the game, I have the mentality of a child at 32, I love to joke and laugh. But they know that when you start the game, you don't laugh anymore, they know that. Whether it's training against bad or good teams, strat' time, I'm at 1000 %, I'm in my bubble and I don't let anything or anyone bother me. Seeing me so involved, especially at my age, when I have nothing to gain, the players feel obliged to get involved too, forced to work as hard as I do.

In the game, I've always been very frank, I'm the first one to congratulate my players or yell at them, and they know that what I say is to move them forward, not to put them down. This method, and my ability to manage people, I don't think anyone in France is capable of doing that: taking players so young and making them progress in team cohesion and personality. I'm not just talking about the game, sometimes they even teach me tricks in the game. But in coaching, I don't see anyone else who knows how to do what I do in France.

If we take the French subtop scene, what do you think about it, in terms of level?

It's been 4 years since there's been anything interesting in the subtop, they're there and they're hanging around. That's the term I've always used with my young people: "if you're here to hang around, stop playing, go to work and don't waste your time". Three-quarters of the subtop, they hang aroundand they're going to do it for a few more years, with no objective. The level is terrible, there is not a single team able to build long-term. In ECN, in ESEA, there is not a team that is worth it, and yet they are all in tryhard mode.

What is your current situation?

After the departure of my young guns, I had a ECN slot left. So we made the season as a mix with MAIDHEN, Python, AKUMAAA and a youngster that I wanted to test a bit, AntoN. AKUMAAA left during the season, so it was really hard to work. Since May, I had let go a little bit, there was the lockdown, I had to take care of my daughter. Especially since for the past 2 years, I've given everything and I've had nothing in return.

I told Python that I wasn't going to let go of him, keep playing with him and try to put him on a team to keep him progressing. And I wanted to follow him individually, watching demos and so on. We still managed to qualify in ESEA Advanced thanks to Nivera who finished the season with us, despite his departure at Heretics. I find myself with a slot in Advanced but not really any players. I watched the scene, I made a post on Twitter, I received a lot of proposals and I went with a core that I liked, the Alltech core: Derly, Dr4kon and Rokz.

I offered them to take the Advanced slot, it's still a nice competition with a good little level to gain experience. With a little bit of luck, we might hold on and see where it goes. For me, it was a time when work was starting to pick up after the deconfinement, my little one was starting to grow up, so I warned them that I wouldn't be able to be with them all the time. At most I could be there for a few practices, and during official games.

I watched a few practices and I quickly saw that there was going to be a problem. I let it happen, so that they would try to learn from their mistakes as well. The season started with 1 loss, 2 losses, 3 losses, few wins.

The training was the same, the game was not good. Basically, I was seeing a repeat of what the subtop has been doing for the last 4 years. At the end of the season, they offered me to play again to try and keep the slot, but I refused. After all, if you're relegated it's okay, it's life. As a result, the players started to leave and, as usual, we plugged the leaks with players brought back in hastily, and they almost run away from the downhill.

It's annoying to lose the slot, but it was predictable. I told Python that if he wanted, we'd do the next ESEA Main season with Kyojin, just to play in September and show they were still alive and strong. We made the season with MAIDHEN and Pase, and we're one win away from a playoff qualification. But we just made the season to keep the slot and put the spotlight on Python and Kyojin, without training.

So at the moment, I don't have a precise role or project. I assume that the Wonderkids cycle is over, everyone has had their place, except for me in the end. Afterwards, I continued to follow the games, I do a lot of debriefing with my former players like Python and misutaaa, as a second coach, to help them correct their flaws.

Are you looking for a new project?

I would like to, but who wants me? Why not someone else with a bigger track record? Even if I know people and have my network, I don't want to succeed through that. If someone comes looking for me and offers me something solid, why not, but I'm not the one who's going to go out and canvass people. I've been knocking on doors enough to try to fit in and get into structures. Now I understand that people are not interested.

Besides, it's funny, as soon as my players break through, everyone wakes up, I get 3 interview requests in a week and people think I'm the savior. But maybe if people had talked more about me and my project a year ago, I could have been better publicized and had proposals. If I had 10K followers, I would probably already be with a team. But apart from the work behind the curtains that I've been doing for the last 3 years, I don't really have any fame, nobody thinks about me in the end.

The first one who PM'd me was a very nice guy from HLTV. He told me "Honestly I respect you, I didn't know you, for me you're the French HUNDEN". It was a foreigner who came to tell me that, not a French guy, Luis Mira, when he was writing about misutaaa and Nivera. He doesn't understand why I don't have a team, and I tell him it's because nobody wants me. Or they just can't afford to pay me, thinking I ask for 10k a month.

And on the other hand, I see teams run by people who are totally overwhelmed, while I watch demos every day, I watch every game, I do player tracking. It's really my passion, but if I don't have anything after 3 years, that's just too bad.

Maybe I'm not that good. If it happens, tomorrow I take a team and it can go badly, I'm not 100% sure either. But it's been 3-4 players that I've brought out, and apart from ZywOo, all the young players who have emerged on the scene, did it thanks to me.

You were talking about projects that didn't come to fruition at the beginning of the year, can you tell us more about them?

Yes, of course I can. The negotiations that didn't succeed were with G2 and Vitality. Basically, in March, we were supposed to do a project with Vitality and it was snubbed out of nowhere, without us knowing why. I don't know what their point of view is on it, I don't blame them, it could have been any other team. I think they were chilled when they recruited misutaaa after ALEX surprise departure and Nivera went to Heretics, they didn't want to go on with the idea of an academy-like project without the original Wonderkids roster.

When I see LDLC, I think it's such a shame not to see them invest their money in this kind of project, because of their reluctance or lack of confidence in my skills. A year ago, we could have gone to them too, but they preferred to take older players for their failed "academy". The management and the discourse of the structure are not good, especially when you compare the results and the means.

You give me those means, forget it, I'll make you a T2 inter team. But maybe the players are not involved enough, maybe the staff is not necessarily competent, the structure trusts people with high visibility. That sums up the functioning of our society with the role of influencers, and I'm not one of them.

Same for Heretics, I knew they were looking for a coach since B1GGY was banned. When Python negotiated with them, it was me who helped him with the team management. I took the opportunity to tell them that I was interested in the position if they were looking for a new person. They told me that I was on their shortlist, but that they had other names as well. Apparently, I'm competing with other people who may not be active in competitive CS:GO anymore, but who are better known.

Maybe they will offer me something, and it will be a pleasure for me to do a test, but apparently I'm in 3rd, 4th, 5th position on their shortlist. Such is life.

With the ECN season 10 just over, have you spotted any names that caught your eye, apart from famous teams like Heretics, LDLC OL or TheDice?

I'm not going to give you names, it's part of my job, I don't want to get my ideas stolen. I saw 3 or 4 players that I knew from the beginning. There are 1 or 2 I didn't know at all and they look very good. But the curse of the subtop is that there are a lot of good players who unfortunately don't have opportunities. These guys are already older, they're over 20 years old, but it's never too late as we've seen with JaCKz.

But for a project like mine, they wouldn't be a priority, even though I'm not closed to taking this type of player under my wing. For me, there is a player that I wanted to take at Wonderkids a while ago and who had refused, it's Djoko, from TheDice. He's not a young guy, he's 22 or 23 years old, he's not necessarily a young player anymore, but there's a way to do something nice with him.

And even overall, the TheDice team, it's pretty decent.

Why can't he get over that threshold for you as well? They've been really stable for the last 2 years.

I know some of them and for me, there is a management problem. They don't have someone above them to supervise them, to structure them. Since they are older players, who have been there for a long time, they are too fixated in their routines, which they have not changed as they should. Their working method doesn't seem optimal to me. That's why it's blocking them from moving forward, whether it's their work routines, their mental routines, their team routines.

They think they're doing the right thing, but maybe they're not. So every time they're about to take that step, they miss it. I think they have real potential, I even listened to them play when Seb (krL) streamed their TeamSpeak recently. In the game, they have a very good base, the communication is good, the skill is correct. Normally they have what it takes to get into the Mountain Dew League because the Advanced level is not very high.

If they get stuck, maybe it's because they're stressing out a little bit, maybe they're missing out on the official game. There's a lifestyle that at some point, doesn't work. As long as all players are not 100% on these important games, you miss your chance, since these leagues leave no room for error. Even in qualification, it's terrible, to get to closed qualifiers, you have to play 6 bo1 in a row. Normally you win them 9 times out of 10 and on the day you lose them and miss the closed qualifier. They may have a bit of bad luck, but they don't have all the ingredients to succeed and have luck on their side.

In this team, I find Djoko very good. He's not the only one, but we know the others. But he, who has been out for a year, impresses me. The sad thing is that players like Kan4 or nonick have been around for so long that you can't even imagine that they will break through, even though they might be worth it. But they haven't evolved since then, so you think there must be something wrong with them, whether it's in their behavior, mentality or level. For them, mentally, it's a spiral. They don't manage to be present in important matches and that creates a vicious circle that makes them stagnate.

Today, I don't see any team capable of moving to the next level because the methodology and mentality are not good, especially among the teams at the top of the subtop, who are trying to move to the next level.