N0tail has returned to OG's active roster to be their new coach, over three years since his last competitive appearance.
Johan “N0tail” Sundstein, two-time The International (TI) champion and one of the greatest Dota 2 players of all time, has announced his return to competitive play to become the new coach for 
OG's Western European roster and the organisation's Dota 2 project lead.
OG officially announced N0tail's return on Tuesday (6 May) with a short video where their new coach and Dota 2 project lead said he will be “leading the charge” for the team moving forward.
“We're starting anew, starting with a new project. I'm going to be leading the ship as the coach, also trying to put the project together,” said N0tail.
N0tail was among the founding members of OG and played in the organisation's active roster from October 2015 to November 2021, being a pivotal part of the team by becoming the first two-time TI champions in 2018 and 2019, as well as winning four Major championships in the Frankfurt Major 2015, the Manila Major 2016, the Boston Major 2016, the Kiev Major 2017, among countless other accolades.
His last formal competitive appearance was at TI 2021, where OG finished in 7th-8th place. After retiring from being an active player, N0tail had a short stint as coach for 
OG Seed until July 2020, and has since remained in the organisation's inactive roster. He will now take over as OG's coach from 
Maurice “KheZu” Gutmann, who parted ways with the team on Monday (5 May) after seven months in the position.
N0tail hopes to qualify for TI 2025 as OG's new coach
While OG have yet to reveal the expected overhauled roster that N0tail will be leading, the team's new coach was candid about their ambitions for the rest of the year: qualify for TI 2025, which will be hosted in Hamburg, Germany in September.
“We're hoping to qualify to TI and place in the top. I mean, to play the best Dota in the world for me is the aspiration. It is the goal. I think I got the record, maybe it's still holding, I don't really know. I got to play really good Dota, but I know that there's still more to get,” said N0tail.
“There's still a way to play even better, I don't think the ceiling has ever been achieved, I don't know if it's achievable, but this is my hope: to play the best Dota anyone has ever played and, yeah, we're going to come to TI and smack.”
While N0tail has proven himself more than capable of leading a team to TI and helping them raise the Aegis of Champions, it will be an uphill battle considering the team's current form.
OG started the year with a roster consisting of 
Nuengnara “23savage” Teeramahanon, Leon “Nine” Kirilin, 
Sébastien “Ceb” Debs, 
Matthew “Ari” Walker, and 
Jian Wei “xNova-” Yap following the departures of 
Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov and 
Adrian “Wisper” Cespedes Dobles during the offseason.
But after failing to qualify for DreamLeague Season 25 and ESL One Raleigh 2025 in January, OG benched Ari and signed little-known Kazakhstani player 
Tamir “daze” Tokpanov to be their position 4 support. Ceb would also reprise his role as the team's offlaner and captain in early February following a brief departure from the active squad to lead the team through another gauntlet of qualifiers.
Unfortunately, that move yielded little to no improvement, as early March saw OG place 7th-8th in back-to-back qualifiers for PGL Wallachia Season 4 and FISSURE Universe Episode 4. That then prompted the team to part ways with 23savage and xNova while Ceb returned to the inactive roster, with OG filling in the gaps with three trial players in 
Stefan “Ulnit” Gavrila, 
Cedric “Davai Lama” Deckmyn, and 
Ivan “Kidaro” Bondarev in late March.
After failing to even make it out of the DreamLeague Season 26 Open Qualifiers, OG once again shuffled its roster as Nine departed the team while signing two more trial players in 
Altanginj “423” Bilguun and Daniel “Stormstormer” Schoetzau.
Despite all those roster moves, OG's struggles only continued into April as the team failed to produce results even in lower tier tournaments, finishing 7th-8th in CCT Series 8 and 5th in FISSURE Special.
OG's roster currently includes three trial players in 423, Stormstormer, and Kidaro, with only Daze fully signed. While OG continues to overhaul its struggling Western European roster, the organisation has already expanded to new horizons by signing a secondary Peruvian squad in 
OG.LATAM.
According to N0tail, OG's new Western European squad is “almost there, and things have been going in a really nice direction.” The new coach also explained the logic behind the construction of this new roster and what he hopes to bring to the table as their coach.
“I'm trying to build this team a lot on communication, but also the ability to speak about the game, strategize about the game, and still to kind of play it at a high level. But also just playing the game with words, not really having to go through and testing everything. I want to be able to theorize really well which is something that I think is really hard to do and I didn't really achieve with so many of my teams in the past, but that's what I'm hoping for,” said N0tail.
“That's what I'm building towards, really strong communication and ability to express yourself and to use words, and obviously very high talent. I still want to have the same ideas about the game and how you should play the game that I want to implement. I want to see it done, I want to see my solutions also used […] It's never a single journey, it's never an I journey. It's about making the max, making the full brain work, making everybody click, making everybody work, and then making use of everybody.”
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