Semmler says ESL should mimic the setup VALORANT offers to coaches

Auguste “Semmler” Massonnat, a professional commentator and host who is most well known for his work in CS:GO esports, has come up with an interesting suggestion regarding the coaching issues that happened during the Regional Major Ranking (RMR) tournaments for the IEM Rio Major.

Coaches can’t interact the same way they normally do when their team is playing in a Valve-sponsored CS:GO event like the RMRs or the Majors. They must control their emotions and not interact with the players in any form whatsoever unless a tactical timeout is in place, as per Valve’s ruling. These rules have been criticized in previous RMRs and were once again this past week during the IEM Rio Major qualifiers.

Semmler suggested that ESL, the tournament organizer of the IEM Rio Major in partnership with Valve, mimic the coaching setup that is used in Riot Games’ VALORANT and League of Legends.

“ESL should provide the coaches with offstage setups like they have in VALORANT,” Semmler said on Twitter. “Keep a camera on the coaches. Get all of the coach reaction shots that you want without breaking the rules of coaches interacting with players, and the coaches are MICed for the timeouts.”

It didn’t take long for esports personalities to weigh in after Semmler’s tweet went live. The head coach of BIG, Fatih “gob b” Dayik, who has also competed in VALORANT, said he had “lots of problems” with keeping his emotions down during BIG’s matches at the Europe RMR and that he’d “really like” the change Semmler suggested.

“After we won our last game it was not even a release, the emotions were still locked and it slowly got better,” gob b said. VCT caster RyanCentral weighed in as well, saying he imagines the “quality of coach impact would go up” should CS:GO offer the same setup VALORANT does.

The IEM Rio Major will be played from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13, meaning ESL and Valve would have just a few days to change the rulebook and relay that information to the 24 teams in attendance in case it wants to make coaching changes for the $1.25 million tournament.