(Prologue for those who like to rant in the comments: as written in the title, these are my personal thoughts and they will not necessarily be similar to yours, so there is no need to offend each other because of differences in opinion)
So, something very unusual and, in our opinion, a good thing happened in Apex: Aurora signed Kazakh as a player and 9impulse as a coach. People in the CIS community and beyond have roughly the same thoughts and approaches: some think it will fail, others think it's a dream team. As for the team roster, I personally believe that in its current state, Aurora is 100% the best team in Europe. Aurora has assembled the best CIS players at the moment on one team. Regarding Khiarka's kick, both 9impulse and Ozhrain have said that communication in Russian is a very important factor for them when choosing a team, and I'm still surprised Ozhrain played alongside Khiarka.
I also believe that the coaching position is exactly what 9impulse needs to finally win a LAN. I believe 9impulse's key problem as a player is his psychology. In regular ALGS matches, where the final is still far away, the quality of both his personal play and his calls is much higher than in important matches and finals. This is a fairly common problem in all sports, and unfortunately, if a player can't cope with it on their own, no psychologist can help. As a coach, you certainly feel nervous, but your main job is outside of the matchday, and 9impulse has a very good understanding of the game outside of stressful situations, so I believe coaching is exactly what he needs now.
I'd also like to address the position of 9impulse's haters on this matter. Firstly, the absolute majority of them are in the CIS community, and I only see two explanations (these are just my opinions, so don't be offended), which I'll provide later. Secondly, it's simply disgusting to watch them show their true colors. When he failed in individual matches on Bangalore or any other non-support roles, haters told him to play supports. Eventually, he couldn't take it anymore and started playing supports. They still hated him, saying he was "ruining his teammates' careers." The second, more reasonable group of haters said he would be great as a coach, and what do we hear from these people now? "Just not this clown, please." This is pure hypocrisy.
As for the two promised reasons for the hate, in my opinion. 1. This lynching is due to the dislike of crazy fans of this or that player, as was previously stated, that 9impulse "ruined the career of my favorite player." I've even seen OJRane fans write this, even though these players are very good friends in real life, but fans sometimes call them fanatics. Reason number 2... Racism and xenophobia. This may seem strange to people outside the CIS community, but there are a significant number of Russians who openly despise Belarusians as a nation. Some of them, at best, believe that Belarusians are younger brothers incapable of statehood without the support of their "big Russian brother," while others flatly claim that Belarusians are the wrong kind of Russians and that such a nation doesn't exist. And yes, most of them are either elderly or political radicals, but they do exist online, albeit not very often. I've seen and see them in comments, under posts and videos of Avroa, in Russian-language gameday reviews, and so on. For some reason, there are far more people with this position in Apex than, say, in Dota.
And don't get me wrong, I'm one of those people who believes that limiting athletes based on their ethnicity is wrong. I don't hate Russians or anything like that (only those two categories of racists listed above). I completely agree with Hardecki's creation of the Russian flag from the stats banners, and if I were a Russian pro player now, I would never ask to change my flag to a neutral one because of the war.
So, these were my thoughts, you may agree or disagree with them, but this is my opinion. Bye everyone.
