From a world championship team to the dark horse, coach Vren is ready to show what he can do.
For Team Spirit coach Vren, he’s traveled a long way around the world to end up back where he was a year ago, on the MLBB world championship stage. From the Philippines, to Indonesia, and then to Russia, it’s been a busy year for coach Vrendon “Vren” Pesebre.
This is the furthest coach Vren has been away from home and in a totally different environment to boot. But when asked how it’s been coaching for a CIS team, coach Vren seems to have settled in quite nicely.
“Nung una, like any foreign team that I coached, medyo nahirapan ako sa language barrier kasi they speak Russian,” he shared.
Lucky for Team Spirit coach Vren, he has Mathaios “Kid Bomba” Chatzilakos on the team who can speak English and Russian fluently. As he explained, “So I had a translator player in the team which helped a lot in communicating with them. I’m actually having a lot of fun, everybody in the team is pretty chill. They all have their own unique personalities. So nage-enjoy naman ako coaching for Team Spirit.”
If anything, coach Vren is even more excited to be competing on the M-series stage once again. “I can possibly be the first coach to be a back-to-back M-series champion,” he says cheekily, alluding to the fact that his former team and previous world champions, Falcons AP.Bren, couldn’t make it to M6.
The Dark Horse Rising
The CIS region has always been seen as underdogs with massive potential in the pro MLBB scene. Time and again they’ve been able to make upsets and deep runs in international tournaments and that stems from their desire to face better opponents.
“Sa tingin ko, kaya yung region nila ay dark horse ay kasi nandun yung gutom nila makilaban sa mga SEA teams,” said Team Spirit coach Vren. “Sa region nila, wala talagang competition. We only scrim two times a day and only against S-tier teams. So I think that’s why they’re always able to prove themselves in international tournaments.”
That drive to keep improving and face tougher foes really shows now that Team Spirit’s made it to the playoffs. They may be a dark horse but Team Spirit came to M6 to win and coach Vren believes there’s only one thing left they need to improve on.
“I think consistency lang kailangan nila. They still tend to get overly excited — yung tinatawag kong emotional power spike. Many players have this in big tournaments. That’s the only thing we need to cover up if we want to succeed in M6.”
Banner photo from MOONTON Games.