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![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Waxangel/misc/lygfbanner.jpg)
Banner picture totally unrelated; Photo by silverfire
With new Korean recruits like Genius and backed by a to-be-announced sponsor, Team Love Your Girlfriend looks to make a late splash in the StarCraft 2 scene.
Just a month ago, LoveYourGirlfriend was not a team most people had heard of. That all changed when they abruptly announced the signings of Korean players like Genius, Tassadar, and Mamuri when every other team seemed to be trimming their rosters.
The same question was on everyone's mind: What the hell was going on? When did a previous unknown team get such a huge roster of players?
To learn more about this mystery team and their intentions, I e-sat down with Pascal Anton, the owner and co-founder of LYGF, and James "FosTA" Foster, LYGF's SC2 Manager.
DarkLordOlli: Talk to me a bit about your team origins and where you came from in SC2.
Pascal Anton (owner and co-founder): I started LYGF with a friend of mine during the HotS beta, as a clan. When Pulse eSports was about to disband, we merged with them. That's where James came in. That merging was a big boost for both parties.
DLO: You've recently turned heads with a few big signings. What made you decide to take that big step forward into the competitive scene? Is it a passion project or are you looking for a return?
Pascal: Let's say it started as a business idea that I was passionate about (laughs). I'm definitely looking to make a return with it eventually but for now, the players have to be happy first. I didn't go into it inexperienced, I do have my own business and invested my money into LYGF.
James "FosTA" Foster (SC2 Manager): I was on LgN before they fused with FXO so this is not the first team I'm working on. It's definitely a passion project for me.
DLO: A big question that pops up whenever a rather unknown team starts signing player is "are they being paid?". And if so, "where's the money coming from?". Can you talk me through that?
Pascal: I was actually a bit surprised that people were saying that we came out of nowhere. We've been around for a good 5-6 months, even paying players for that amount of time. But we found an investor that is going to fund the entire professional team. Which means I won't have to invest any money anymore.
DLO: Now, about the signings themselves. You recently announced the addition of players like Genius, Tassadar, Mamuri and Bubble to your professional roster. How do you decide who to sign?
James: The main goal was always to establish a team that's able to compete in teamleagues such as ATC for example. And we'd been looking to sign a big Korean player for a while to really define ourselves as a professional team. But at the same time we were looking out for "middle tier" Koreans in the Korean GM league who we thought had potential.
Our translator "Kidding" used to live in Korea and he knows a lot of professional Korean players well. He's familiar with a lot of talented players and was able to help us decide who to approach. From there on we looked at our budget and asked ourselves what we could offer to who, and so on. There's always an idea, a dream in mind before we break down the possibilities and so forth. We work out a business plan for each player that contains what we can offer them and what goals we have in mind for that specific player.
Pascal: Oh and Motok. People should be talking about him a lot more because he's really, really good. But people seem to forget him a lot when talking about our signings.
James: Yeah, definitely watch out for Motok.
DLO: How did you eventually make contact with these players?
James: That was different for all of them. For Genius for example it took us about a month to contact him and talk to him about joining our team. He'd been teamless for a while so we'd been interested in signing him. We had to ask our way through a few Koreans to eventually reach him. He was immediately interested but requested that his friend, Sia (previously on NSHS and Zenith) could join as well. We were never going to say no to that opportunity.
Tassadar's story is different, him and Pascal have been friends for a while. They talk a lot and have been keeping in touch. One day Tassadar messaged Pascal, he said he was interested in our team. He was on fOu back then though so we told him that joining would be impossible right now. He knew about that of course so the conversation didn't bear fruit at first. We're not the sort of team that would try to steal players away from someone else. A day later however, fOu disbanded so we immediately got back to Tassadar and talked about it again.
DLO: An important thing for any team out there is definitely creating an image, a profile for yourself. There's teams that define themselves through their results in teamleagues and individual leagues and there's teams that are more focused on being close to the community and focusing on creating content. What type of team is LYGF going to be?
Pascal: We're really trying to do both of them. If you think about it, one really helps the other and both are equally important, at the very least from a business perspective. For example we're going to have a new website going up very soon, we're getting our players to stream a lot more (the Koreans too!) and we're going to have an AMaA on Reddit to clear up almost everything. We're trying to be active on Twitter as well as Facebook to stay in touch with the community.
DLO: An ask me almost everything?
James: Well, we wouldn't like to go into details about contracts for example.
DLO: So what happens if a girl joins the team?
James: Nothing would really change, we just hope that... if she had a significant other that she would love them.
DLO: No LYBF tag?
Pascal: Someone already took that so no (laughs).
DLO: Got it. Now for the fun part. Any shoutouts, where can people follow you? All that fun stuff.
James: You can follow us on Twitter @LYGFsc2 and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LoveYourGirlfriend. There's also a Youtube channel to check out (youtube.com/lygfsc2). Thanks to sc2replaystats.com and to our new sponsor who's going to be announced very soon. So stay tuned!
Pascal: And definitely tune into some of our players' streams. For example, you can watch Genius at twitch.tv/genius3016 and Tassadar at twitch.tv/tassadarfou.
If everything goes the way LYGF says and hopes, then they have a bright future. However, by now we know it's all too easy for things to go awry in esports. All that remains is to wait and see what happens.
