The new coach of the Korean LoL team T1, featuring superstar Faker, has set some ambitious goals for 2021 in League of Legends: He wants to destroy his former team, DAMWON Gaming, which he led to become world champions. The problem: DAMWON looks incredibly strong in 2021 and has already won a tournament.
This is the situation: Yang “Daeny” Dae-in (27) was the coach of DAMWON Gaming in 2020 and became world champion with them. DAMWON Gaming was outstandingly strong at the Worlds 2020, with Showmaker probably being the star of the event. Additionally, they had excellent players like jungler Canyon and top-laner Nuguri. They were a class above everyone else and easily rolled over the European champions G2 Esports in the semifinals.
After becoming world champion, Daeny, along with his coaching colleague Lee “zefa” Jae-min (32), left DAMWON Gaming to join the Korean cult team T1.
T1 could not qualify for the World Championship in 2020. Now Daeny wants to lead them back to the top of the world.
Creating the best team in the world, now he must destroy it
This is what Daeny says: The new coach was asked how his first days at T1 are going. He has so far expressed enthusiasm. When he was at DAMWON, he had to build the best team in the world from scratch. Now at T1, he is already working with some very talented players, which he really enjoys.
DAMWON plays the fastest LoL in the world. Daeny now wants to introduce this fast play style at T1 as well. But even if he can’t achieve that, his goal is now to destroy the team he created.
When asked why he has 3 junglers at T1, Daeny laughs. He will prioritize the “Mid-Jungle” duo at T1. He needs a lot of backup junglers if he wants to take down Canyon, the jungler of DAMWON Gaming. Therefore, he has assigned specific missions to his junglers.
What is T1 doing with Faker? Daeny laughs again at this question. He says: “That’s a secret!”
“The God of LoL”
How does T1 plan to beat DAMWON? Daeny says he can’t reveal too much. The secret strategies must not be disclosed. But his biggest goal at DAMWON was for every player to be able to carry the team. The team needed to merge into one unit.
He has already said that DAMWON Gaming are the villains, and he wants to stand over their corpses in the end, so he now thinks about how he can eliminate them.
At the press conference, T1’s top-laner Canna said:
“When Daeny first came to the team, he said he was the God of LoL.”
Canna
Indeed, Daeny understands so much about LoL that he could truly be considered the God of LoL. For this, the players of T1 need to be able to fully absorb all of Daeny’s feedback.
But Canna actually believes: They could win the LCK in the summer.
What are T1’s chances? They currently do not look good at all. DAMWON Gaming consisted of many young players in 2020, who were mechanically incredibly strong and only lacked experience, especially in playing in front of large audiences. It seemed that the team gets stronger with each match.
DAMWON Gaming has already started excellently in 2021. They lost their star top-laner Nuguri to FunPlus Phoenix in the transfer market. However, they acquired FunPlus Phoenix’s top-laner Khan. They also extended the contract of support player Beryl.
Additionally, they have kkoma, the former coach of T1, who is also considered clever and experienced in strategy.
DAMWON Gaming already demonstrated how well this new combo works at the first tournament of 2021: They won the KEsPA Cup convincingly. They played 11 matches and lost only one game in the semifinals.
For T1, however, it was a completely different story; they were eliminated in the group phase and could only win one of their 4 games.
T1 also faces the challenge in 2021 of how to handle Faker: He is a mega-star in South Korea, but already 24 years old. Last year, the 17-year-old mid-laner Clozer took over parts of the season for him and triumphed in the mid lane while Faker sat on the bench.
LoL: Team puts the best player of all time on the bench – only wins now
