Ferral, known for his coaching roles on sno0ken Knows and IDK, will now be moving up to the titan PENTA Sports. In our interview with IDK, Ferral noted that he never intended to become a coach/analyst, yet he now finds himself as the analyst for a top Pro League team.
Coaching was not something I wanted to do initially, the reason I started coaching is because I was underage and wanted to broaden my view of the competitive scene and gain experience whilst still being underage and playing for Aquila with Leon.
He served as the coach for the sKnows squad during their Y2S3 (now called Season 6) season, before the team split apart into two squads, then-known as the Swedes and IDK. The Swedes, now Chaos, claimed the Season 7 Pro League spot while IDK, joined by Ferral, went down to Challenger League.
In Challenger League, Ferral served as the squad's fifth player until he stepped down to a sub/coaching role. Meepey cited real life issues for Ferral's move in a Tweet announcing their search for a fifth player, a spot eventually filled by Elemzje. Throughout the Challenger League season, the squad never lost a map and were only taken to overtime once. In relegations, they defeated Team Oplon and made their move back up to Pro League.
Now, just days before Season 8 kicks off, Ferral will be making the move to another Pro League team, PENTA Sports. Everyone in the competitive scene is aware of PENTA's dominance as three-time Pro League Champions and Six Invitational 2018 Champions. Yesterday, PENTA had also announced the permanent signing of Kantoraketti, and have now further strengthened themselves with Ferral.
PENTA Sports raises the Six Invitational 2018 trophy
As PENTA go through the season, Ferral will be working alongside coach Shas[O]Udas and the rest of the squad of Pengu, Fabian, Goga, jOONAS, and Kanto as an analyst. As for IDK, meepeY has tweeted a farewell and a statement that they are not currently looking for a replacement. We spoke to Pengu about the move, and he cited the necessity of a dedicated analyst.
We picked up an analyst since Shas is doing A LOT of things in a lot of different areas, he is the coach, analyst, strategist, he does map bans, studies opponents, and does all/most of the administrative stuff with our org and within the team. Shas is a full-time person just like the rest of us, but the time and work he puts in is far beyond all of us, perhaps even combined. We wanted to give Shas a "load off" and make him the most useful in his best areas, while supplementing him with an analyst where they can help each other, and so they can throw ideas at each other. Ferral was the first that came to mind. I know his work from before he joined IDK, he has always had a taste for strats and ways to utilize game mechanics. He plays the game on a daily basis on a rather high level, which gives him the mindset to utilize things AT that very level. A lot of coaches aren't very good players to the best of my knowledge, and I don't think it helps that they aren't, so this is definately a plus. Ferral also effectivly works as a sub player, let's say if someone crashes/has issues/is busy, which means we can avoid another "Shatte" situation with a loan contract from a different pro team, and can effectivly throw in our analyst as a player who has access to strats, callouts & works well within the team. We've done this before in the past, first with BKN (who is now with EG) and after that with Blas (he was with us in Brazil where we placed fourth/third), so it's not new to us, but we definitely drew some inspiration from the most recent Liquid roster change, which was adding a 2nd coach/analyst, Silence.
Pengu's statement has been lightly edited for clarity.