In an exclusive interview with GosuGamers, OG CEO Daniel Sanders talked about the new direction for OG with N0tail back at the helm.
Iconic Dota 2 organisation 
OG made waves on Tuesday (6 May) when they announced that 
Johan “N0tail” Sundstein will be returning to competitive play as the new coach of the organisation's Western European roster.
Since his last competitive appearance in 2021, N0tail remained close to OG but has largely steered clear of the team's day-to-day operations as they competed in the bloodbath that was Dota 2's Western European scene. But after an extended period of struggle that saw the team undergo multiple roster shuffles, N0tail has taken back the reins to try and return OG to the heights he once led the team to.
GosuGamers recently sat down with OG CEO Daniel Sanders for an exclusive interview where he talked about the exciting new direction for OG, now with one of their founding members back at the helm.
“[N0tail] is going to be taking charge of the team. He's going to be coaching the team, managing the team, and building it in the way he wants it to be built. And that means picking up young talent, and really going back to his philosophy of running a team in his image.”
You will be hard pressed to doubt someone like N0tail when it comes to building a team from scratch and leading them to the top. After all, he founded OG back in 2015 after scouting the likes of 
Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi and Andreas “Cr1t-” Nielsen, who were still unproven prodigies at the time. N0tail led the core of that squad to winning four Major championships in Frankfurt, Manila, Boston, and Kyiv from 2015 to 2017.
And when OG was torn apart in dramatic fashion in 2018, N0tail scouted a then little-known pubstar in 
Topias Miikka “Topson” Taavitsainen and brought 
Anathan “ana-” Pham back from hiatus. Together with coach-turned-player 
Sébastien “Ceb” Debs and stalwart support player Jesse “JerAx” Vainikka, OG went on an incredible and improbable run to win their first Aegis of Champions in The International (TI) 2018. Then they ran it back the next year and won TI 2019 in dominant fashion, becoming the first team in the history of Dota 2 to raise the Aegis of Champions twice. And while 
Team Spirit and 
Team Liquid were eventually able to win TI twice as well, OG are still the only ones to do it back-to-back with the same roster.
Through it all, N0tail remained the heart and soul of OG. Shifting roles from carry to position 5 support to accommodate the shifting needs of the team, while acting as an experienced and steady hand to lead the young talent he brought into the spotlight. Who else can bring OG back to the top, if not the man who started it all?
A new challenge for N0tail as coach
Of course, the OG that N0tail will now be leading as coach are a far cry from the teams he played in during the organisation's glory days. The last time the team won a tournament was in ESL One Malaysia 2022 almost three years ago, with the team failing to qualify for TI in 2023 and 2024.
Sanders, who was appointed as OG's CEO back in January after serving as CCO for the past two years, bore witness to OG's struggles and was candid about the biggest reason behind the team's instability and poor results.
"We've been through a couple of years of instability in Dota. There's many reasons for that, and I think a big part of it has just been transitioning away from Johan and Ceb being heavily involved together. They're incredible Dota brains and incredible leaders, but they're also incredibly strong together.
We've had a period now where the last time Johan was involved in Dota was Stockholm Major 2023. He has not been involved in playing Dota, working with the team, anything since then. And Ceb's been running the team, and I think Ceb needed a partner in Johan, and without that, there's been some problems. But the reverse is happening now, in that Johan is incredibly enthused by being back in Dota."
With Ceb once again moved back to OG's inactive roster following the team's abysmal start this year, a reinvigorated N0tail will be taking his turn at trying to spark a comeback. While the team did struggle with Ceb leading the team with N0tail away, Sanders is confident that the latter has what it takes to build the foundation OG needs to return to relevance.
“What Johan is really good at is just knowing who's got the right drive and how people work together. So he's really good at bringing people that maybe have been written off or haven't shown their true side yet and understanding how to get a team running. So the names that we're working with at the moment, none of them are out of the blue. Everyone knows about them, but the way they're performing is he's putting it together in a good way.”
While OG have yet to reveal the overhauled roster that N0tail is set to coach, their recent roster moves do align with his strengths. Some of the players that the team recently trialed included unproven talents, like 
Altanginj “423” Bilguun as well as veterans looking to revitalise their careers, like 
Daniel “Stormstormer” Schoetzau and 
Ivan “Kidaro” Bondarev.
Sanders did tease that OG's overhauled European roster will include some of the players they've already trialed, and that they will help N0tail ease into his role as coach. While an eager N0tail said he hopes to qualify for TI 2025 in the video announcing his return, Sanders is more focused on the long term prospects of the squad, especially with the organisation's secondary Peruvian roster 
OG.LATAM now in the mix.
"We've already trialed some of them so [the new European roster] is nothing massively new. But it's going to give us a period until TI, where [N0tail] can relearn with some of these players, and do some scouting, and then properly hit the ground after TI. And then after TI, we'll have to sit down with the Latin roster, with Johan, and the new roster, and just look at the calendar and see how we can run two rosters.
So really, we'll stick with these two until TI, and then we'll sit down and we'll look at what is the best way. So like I said, it's the next six months where we'll be learning again and seeing how this goes, and then we'll have a much clearer idea after TI, but it's going to be exciting, that's for sure."
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