In League of Legends the US club Cloud9 has fired its coach Nick “LS” de Cesare. A puzzling decision, as it seemed from the outside that the season was going excellently for Cloud9. Cloud9 had won 3 out of 4 games and appeared to be exceptionally strong. Coach LS had even changed the meta of LoL with innovative ideas. Now the club has released a statement regarding LS’s termination, which has already garnered over 1.1 million views within a few hours.
This is the situation:
- Cloud9 is considered an “extraordinary, progressive team that explores new paths” in LoL. LS is an analyst with progressive ideas about LoL: He says that players and coaches in League of Legends have no idea about the draft.
- Cloud9 signed LS in 2022 as the coach of its professional team, apparently giving him free rein to reshape the roster into an unusual 10-man team, relying on his innovative ideas for the draft and lineup. Everything seemed to be going well, the team won 3 out of 4 games and was considered a favorite for the USA title. The coach’s ideas on how to think and play LoL were discussed and implemented worldwide.
- But shortly before the last game, Cloud9 fired the coach. There is no real justification. The game against a supposedly easy opponent was promptly lost by Cloud9.
Despite all efforts, collaboration did not work
What does Cloud9 say now? In a clip to the fans, Cloud9’s head, Jack Etienne, talks about LS’s firing. The central sentence is:
“The reason we got to this point with LS is that Cloud9 has developed a system over the years on how we want to coach and lead our team. And despite our best efforts to work with LS, we could not implement it in reality.”
Jack Etienne, owner of Cloud9
Otherwise, there is no real information. It is also said that they completely trust new coach Max Waldo. The highly praised Waldo then says that the goals will remain, and Cloud9 should perform well internationally.
Players from Cloud9 speak to the camera that everything is great.
“I hate PR”
How is this received? The video has an extremely high number of views but leaves many viewers disappointed. There are no indications of what exactly went wrong between LS and Cloud9.
Generally, there is a lot of confusion, even among the biggest LoL experts. The German Maurice “Amazing” Stückenschneider says, for example: “I hate PR. You raised more questions than you answered.” Stückenschneider criticizes the lack of transparency in connection with the severity of the problem.
The expert’s statements resonate with what many say: A huge video that says nothing, but with great lighting, another user remarks.
Especially puzzling for many people is that Cloud9 has actually done everything to become the perfect organization for LS and has implemented his ideas for years, only to now fire him. Yet the results were so good.
People say: Now someone comes and really changes something, has even succeeded, and then he is fired.
What is behind this: It is noticeable that even close friends of LS or the players who have greatly benefited from him say in the aftermath of the firing things like: “Well, it had to happen” or “This had been brewing for some time.”
Apparently, something must have occurred during the daily routine, as it shows: Something is simply not right
LS is apparently recognized as a “thought leader” and “strategist.” However, it could be that Cloud9 expected other things from their coach that LS could not fulfill.
However, it is incredibly difficult to speculate here.
At the moment, one must accept that we will not get definitive answers on the topic. One fears that it could become the next big unresolved mystery in gaming, right after “Why did Twitch actually ban DrDisrespect?”
