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Inside a pro team’s bootcamp: fourteen days before the finals
Esports Paid

Inside a pro team’s bootcamp: fourteen days before the finals

Ten hours a day, five players, one house near Malmö. Four days with team Northwind before the biggest match of their year.

Leo Bianchi · 4 min read

The house is at the end of a road outside Malmö, and from the outside it looks like a holiday home. Inside, there are five desks in one room, a kitchen with a meal plan on the wall and a whiteboard that nobody is allowed to photograph. For 14 days before the world finals, this is where team Northwind lives.

We were the only reporters allowed in. We stayed for four days.

Ten hours a day, six days a week. The seventh day is for sleep and one walk.
Ten hours a day, six days a week. The seventh day is for sleep and one walk.

8:30, breakfast

The day starts with food and no screens. This is a rule, and the coach, Astrid Holm, made it after the team lost a semi-final two years ago.

"They used to wake up and open their phones," she says. "By nine, they had read 200 opinions about how bad they were. Now nobody looks at a screen before ten."