Even though Cloud 9’s 2022 World Championship campaign in October was definitely not what the organization was hoping for, Cloud 9’s League of Legends squad saw the potential needed in the roster to continue their contract for one more season, almost entirely as the same lineup.
In an announcement video made by Cloud 9’s CEO Jack Etienne, he broke down all of the major switch-ups to Cloud 9’s main active roster. Something quite interesting is that he went into extreme detail of how the process of selection and decision-making happened, mainly after the team sat down as soon as they got eliminated from Worlds 2022.
Jack stated via the announcement video:
“We had a situation where pretty much every player was happy with the performance of their teammates,” “Of course, there were things that we could improve on, but they really wanted to run it back again. The one change that we ended up doing was just mid lane.”
Cloud 9’s target as their new mid-laner is Dimitri “Diplex” Ponomarev, he recently played in France’s regional league “LFL” being a part of Team Vitality’s Academy roster, and is set to participate in his LCS debut with Cloud 9. C9 Jack said the German native youngster is a melee enthusiast who is mostly known for his team fighting, mechanical prowess, and adaptability thanks to his huge champion pool.
Staff member Alfonso “Mithy” Aguirre Rodríguez will also be returning as Cloud 9’s head coach, while ex-head coach Max Waldo is switching his priorities into a top lane positional coach.
However changes were not only made for Cloud 9 main active roster, the team’s Challenger squad is getting changed all around, including the likes of Aaron “FakeGod” Lee, Tomio “Tomio” Chan, Lawrence “Lost” Hui, Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam, and Korean youngster Jang “EMENES” Min-soo being part of the academy lineup. Former Cloud 9 assistant coach Seong “Reven” Sang-hyeon will be taking the helm as the academy’s new head coach.
Cloud 9 is making a statement with this decision of keeping almost the same roster in their main squad. The team received a lot of criticism once Worlds 2022 rolled around, mainly suggesting the lack of proactiveness, weird strategies, and lack of win condition when playing. Nevertheless, the organization sees the potential to do something great and will continue to support this roster going into the 2023 LCS season.
Cloud 9 will be fighting against a lot of different lineups going into the next season, but with synergy not being an issue for the roster, we expect them to have a strong start on the Spring Split.
Don’t miss out on the rest of our content as we’ll be covering the entirety of the League of Legends competitive scene plus other tournaments and sharing our esports picks with you!
Don’t forget to bet on esports at BetUS Sportsbook & Casino. We’ve plenty of lol odds for you to take a look at and fully enjoy.
