Last Saturday, we learned the dismissal of Nick “LS” De Cesare, head coach of Cloud9’s League of Legends roster and this, just before their match against Counter Logic Gaming in LCS, which greatly shook the world ofesports. This is Max Waldo who later regained his post. This decision has therefore raised many questions in the League of Legends community, C9 having at this time given no explanation concerning the reasons which led them to make this choicewhile LS was only coach of the team only since last december. This news therefore surprised the community but also LS itself, who was only informed a few hours before the official announcement of C9, he confides on his social networks.
So it’s no wonder fans were outraged faced with such a lack of communication on the part of the American structure. It will still have taken several days for Cloud9 to react to this controversy and finally provide explanations as to the reasons that led them to dismiss LS. It is on social networks, on the night of February 22 to 23, that we find so Jack Etienne, the CEO of Cloud9, in a video explaining their decision. According to him, Cloud9 has recently built a system allowing coaches and the organization to work together, which LS would have refused.
The reason we got here is because Cloud9, for years, has developed methods on how we like to train and operate our teamand despite our best efforts, working with LS to try to come to terms and a common vision of how this should work, we couldn’t make that actually happen.
I think it is important to note that all players, coaches and management were aware of these issues and frustrations, and that many efforts have been made on both sides to try to resolve these problems over the past few weeks. Unfortunately, as time passed, it was really obvious that we were unable to find a resolution and come together to solve this problem. We decided it was important to make a change and release LS at that time, so that we can move forward and focus on the future.
We know that making this kind of decision now is not ideal. We wish we had more time to write a fuller statement ahead of Saturday’s game. Unfortunately, we just didn’t have that time at our disposal, and we saw that it was better for our team and for our players to make this decision now rather than let the frustration build.
After this statement, many fans continued to be outraged on social mediareturning to the communication problems of Cloud9 which according to them, are not transparent enough regarding the case of LS. This answer is not sufficient for the community and does not give enough details about what really happened.
For LS, this situation put him off coaching on League of Legends. In one of his last streams, he confides to his viewers that this short stint at C9 would be his last experience on the League of Legends competitive scene as a coach. Even though he finds himself laid off, he considers his time spent at Cloud9 as a success, considering that it will have moved a lot of things in a very short time.
With the arrival of Max Waldo as head coach, we are waiting to see how Cloud9 will fare in the LCS as they face off against Dignitas, 100 Thieves and FlyQuest this weekend for this 4th week of the 2022 season, being currently 3rd in the LCS standings.