SolGoat: "We don't deserve to be in ECL"

During day one of Fragadelphia 17, Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore had a chance to sit down with Victorum's IGL, Max "SolGoat" Wallace, to discuss the team's lineup, his journey as an IGL, and the team's sudden and controversial addition to ESL Challenger League, among other topics. Importantly, this interview was recorded before Victorum bested Limitless to make their way into the main event.

If I'm not mistaken, this is your first Frag on the East Coast?

For me, I went to the Frag before COVID in 2019, the NCS Grand Finals, but this is the first main Frag since COVID.

You're more familiar with the Denver LAN scene and Fragifornia for example. How does is Fragadelphia so far compared to say Fragifornia?

This is by far the biggest and best Frag ever. Obviously, it's 100k with a bunch of European teams, but even still 33 teams for the LCQ and another 16 invited is just - there's a lot of people here and it's awesome.

You're a regular in the circuit of Frag Denver, Chicago, the larger LANs like that. If we look at the Western half of the United States for those LAN events, they generally have worse attendance than the ones on the East Coast, despite large states like Washington, California, and Texas. Why do you think these LANs have worse turnout than East Coast LANs?

The main reason is because, like you said, the states are literally too big. Denver and California for example, the easiest part about going to a LAN is having a teammate that lives near there or being able to drive to it, but you can't really do that very much in California unless you live in the city that it's in. In Colorado, there's just not that many Counter-Strike people that live there, and anyone else that doesn't live there has to fly in most of the time, or its a twelve to twenty-hour drive. Whereas, on the East Coast, everything is an hour away, you know.

Talking about Victorum, you guys made the recent addition of Maestr0 as a coach. He's more known for the Refrag project and his work behind the scenes, so I was wondering how you got in touch with him to have him become your coach, and what does he bring to the team?

Getting in touch, he made an LFT tweet to coach, and then, it's actually pretty funny but back in Season 20-something, a long time ago when I was in IM, we actually almost picked up Maestr0, like on a team with me and Sway on it. We ended up not for reasons I won't get into, but I kinda had a prior connection with him back then. He also used to know Slugy and knew he was a really good player because he used to think he cheated. Part of that was probably why he was interested, and then he sat in scrims and thought we were a super coachable team.

A lot of people are familiar with you from your multiple seasons of Advanced, and a lot of people are familiar with Slugy, but I think most of our readers are less familiar with some of your teammates. Can you sort of tell us more about your other three teammates outside of you and Slugy and what they bring to the team?

AtomiK and Drew are still pretty well known, they play a lot more pugs and stuff, and I'd say they branch out a lot more. They're both really really solid players, they have a lot of ECL experience, and they're overall just really good players. Izik on the other hand, doesn't really pug nearly as much, and I feel like he's not super well known because of it, but he's like honestly one of the best aimers in NA right now, outside of the top five teams obviously. I'd say he's one of the most underrated players in NA for sure.

You've played with a host of very underrated players. One of those players is pengnax, and can you tell us why he didn't make the cut on this version of Victorum, and what sort of happened behind the scenes that resulted in him leaving or being replaced?

Obviously, pengnax was really good, he definitely would be on this team if he wanted to, we definitely didn't cut him or anything. This season, I'm not 100% sure what happened with him. He had a lot of team offers, and he just kinda didn't really take any of them, he just wanted to have fun and take the season off. I'd assume he's probably going to be back eventually.

We don't see a lot of NA players choose to become an IGL, NA is known for an extreme drought of IGLs. We've known each other for a very long time, but I don't think I've ever asked you, what started you on that path of becoming an IGL and taking up this role that is less popular than NA versus being a flashy player?

That's a good question. I never really wanted to IGL that badly, when I started I was literally just playing with the group of friends I played matchmaking with, like a lot of people do. I was just kinda calling for them. After that first team, it just felt like every team I tried out with with a different IGL, I just didn't really like the way they called, so I started to do it there from then on. Pretty much for the last twenty seasons, I've been calling almost every season. One of the hardest things in NA is trying to figure out how to be a good IGL for sure, so it's just really hard to try to figure that out and it takes a lot of time to try and figure out how to be a good in-game leader.

Are there any IGLs, whether in North America or internationally, that you try and model yourself off of, or have taken ideas from?

I mean, I've taken ideas from, starting out steel and Sean Gares, because I'm old. After that, it's hard to really model yourself after any particular IGLs just because you never really know how someone calls. If you don't know someone that can just directly ask them, it's really hard to figure that out, so pretty much I've just tried to figure it out entirely myself. I'll be honest I was really bad for a really long time, and I still think I'm a pretty bad IGL, but it's all about trying to figure out what you do right and wrong with each team that you're on and trying to improve it from there.

I think a big opportunity for you to improve as an IGL is being in ECL this season. Victorum's addition to ECL was not without controversy, with the team coming in largely due to external factors. Do you have some rebuttal to the idea that you don't deserve to be in ECL?

I mean, we don't deserve to be in ECL, let's be honest. We didn't make relegation, we finished top six in Advanced. We're all good players, and our goal is definitely to be in ECL next season, and I think we're going to do that, but we didn't literally earn our ECL spot. Even if BHOP didn't lose their spot it looks like we would've got it anyway with ONET4P dying, but even then it's just an absolute shitshow that we're here. But, we just got a good opportunity and we gotta make the best of it.

Even though you don't necessarily maybe deserve it, do you think your team is at a caliber that you can show some of these ECL teams that you might have the individual skill to play at that level?

Oh, 100%. I definitely don't think we're the worst team in ECL by a longshot this season. We only played one match so far, and we did at least take a map off a team that's been in ECL for at least five or six seasons, or four of them, not 100% sure how long. I think we definitely have the potential and are making enough progress that we should be in ECL again next season.

This Fragadelphia event is very unique in the sense that it's one of the first ones where we've really had top-tier European players show up to compete. I had a chance to talk to LVN, the British player, about his feelings about being on the same stage as people like shox, kuben, and nawwk. What's it like rubbing shoulders with these amazing players?

It's really cool honestly. For our first game of the day, we came in at 9:00 AM, we played our first game, stand up, and shox is just sitting in the corner right next to us on his phone. It's just weird playing a game of CS and then standing up at looking at a Major winner just right next to you, playing the same tournament. It's a really cool feeling, I'm not gonna lie.

Do you think these players are ready for the NA trash talk and do you think there are any NA teams here that could get the best of them?

I think there's some NA teams here that could get the best of them. Apeks seem like a really good team on paper, but obviously, they didn't make the RMR and they've underperformed a bit, and I feel like because of that there's quite a few teams here that could definitely take them to the limit. However, I do think they are 100% prepared for the shit talk. I think EU doesn't get enough respect for how much they shit talk, and if anyone tries to shit talk them they're probably going to get stomped right after.

SolGoat and the rest of Victorum have secured their place in the main stage of Fragadelphia 17 thanks to a dominant 2-0 win in the lower bracket over Limitless. Victorum will continue their campaign in Fragadelphia 17 tomorrow in the group stage.