In League of Legends, Worlds 2022 is coming up and Team T1 makes a serious decision: Despite a strong season, the coach is changed: Choi “Polt” Seong-hun is promoted to General Manager, and Bae “Bengi” Seong takes his place -woong (28). The former world-class jungler had won 3 world championships alongside midlaner Faker.
Why is it so difficult with the coach at T1?
Most recently, under the actual manager Polt, they had apparently found their way back to their old strength as a coach, but they are now throwing him out too. And that right before Worlds 2022.
He’s the heart of T1, Faker:
T1 has no luck with the world champion coaches
How did Polt become a coach? After T1 missed participating in the Worlds in 2020, the team had hired two “world champion coaches” again.
But in the summer of 2021, in his role as general manager, Polt fired the actual “super coaches” because of failure:
The new interim coaches were able to save the season halfway: they took second place in South Korea and made it to the semi-finals of the Worlds.
Before 2022, T1 needed a new coach and chose Polt on December 3, 2021 (via inven).
LoL: T1 Buys Faker 2 Awesome World Champion Coaches – Fires Them After Just 7 Months
Polt is 18-0 in the spring, but fans still want him kicked out
Here’s how it went for Polt: Polt led T1 to a clear championship in Korea in the spring of 2022, with a spectacular “undefeated” season:
Actually, there was little reason to complain about Polt: There was a championship and a second place in the league and at the MSI.
Fans hire truck to demand coaches’ sacking
Why was there criticism? The really big successes were missing, the title at the MSI and most recently in the league.
Because T1 has an incredibly good team, it couldn’t be down to the players, but criticism spread to Polt.
Although things were going so well for Polt on paper, fans were constantly dissatisfied with the coaching team: A truck was even rented in August to protest against the coaches with illuminated messages (via inven).
It said the coaching team was “incompetent” and “too inexperienced” to lead the current team. The selection of coaches in drafts has been criticized again and again.
The head of T1 countered: In the past, “experienced, successful coaches were hired”, but they failed.
Polt, 34, mused that he was more a manager than a coach and didn’t have much experience as a LoL pro or coach before T1. The fans were already against him when there was talk of promoting him to coach in November 2020. It was better to get two world champion trainers, but they failed at T1.
3-time world champion as a player should fix it now
This is the decision now: Polt is promoted back to “General Manager” and is now tasked with managing all of T1’s teams.
Bengi is used as the head coach for the pros.
Who is Bengi? Now 28, Bengi is a club legend for T1. He played there from 2013 to 2016 and together with Faker he took the team’s 3 world championships:
T1 says Bengi learned under the “greatest LoL coach” of all time. And have the full support of T1.
The decisive factor for the change is apparently the lost LCK final against Gen G.:
LoL: Gen G. beats T1 and becomes champion – Featuring 3 players from a hyper-talented team that broke up in 2019 due to a scandal