TL Spawn: “If I’m [a TL fan], I’m pissed off. If I had a Reddit account at the moment, I’d probably be unleashing.”
Q: Is this the toughest moment of your time at TL, in your view? With fans and community jumping on everything at TL for weeks, it feels insanely tough to lose like this.
Spawn: Definitely the toughest moment that I’ve had since I joined the team, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with the fans. In fact, I’ve said the opposite the whole time I’ve been a coach, and I’ll continue to say the same thing: When we play like shit, which we did today, I welcome the criticism from fans.
We’re so fortunate as Team Liquid to have a very passionate, caring fan base. When we go places, like when we were in Brazil earlier this year, the fans showed up. So I can’t be critical of them — when we play well, I feel like we get a lot of love and adoration.
When we play bad, obviously people are gonna be annoyed. I’m annoyed! If I was a fan of TL — which I am — like, I’m pissed off.
If I had a Reddit account at the moment, I’d be probably be unleashing. So, you know, it’s nothing to do with the fans. It’s just us.
Q: In a general, out of game sense, what’s going wrong?
Spawn: Yeah. We had a shit split. Our practice sucked. I probably didn’t do the best job of getting the team aligned and united until last two weeks of the split.
Q: How much of that lack of alignment do you think is because of the jungle swaps?
Spawn: Very little. Actually, I think the jungle swap made us more aligned, to be completely honest. When I look at the team at the moment, [we] just don’t have clear ideas about how we wanna play the game. We’re not very united in that regard.
If you listen to the shot calls, it’s very indecisive, very fragmented. A lot of umms and ahs. A lot of people not trusting each other.
So I think that the reality of the situation is, when you come in, and you train hard, and you practice hard, then that builds trust [and] positive circuits within the team. When you train like we’ve trained this year … We’ve made no secret of it. We’ve had a rough split in terms of scrims. When you have a rough split in terms of scrims, it creates bad habits, creates distrust, creates people not following shotcalls. It makes it harder.
Q: Was UmTi able to be swapped in today? If the jungle changes helped align, why wasn’t the 6 man roster used?
Spawn: I can’t really talk about the UmTi stuff today. So, you know, I’m sure you’ll see some news soon, and we’ll talk about it then.
Q: If the team alignment only started in the last couple weeks, and you’ve been here for over a month, how much of that is your presence in-person? Could it have happened more than two weeks ago?
Spawn: I wish. Like, genuinely, I wish. And, guys, if it was as simple as me getting on a plane and coming over and fixing every single issue on the team, like, what? Do you think Team Liquid wouldn’t just pay for the flight [to get me] over here and fix all the issues?
The reality of the situation is we have more on the team than Jake “Spawn” Tiberi. We have a plethora of coaches, and then we have Core and Impact within the team itself. We need to do a better job of getting our pieces working together.
Obviously, I’ve been here for, what? Four, five weeks now? Somewhere around there. I’ve been here for a while. And it’s not like we’ve magically turned into the best team in the league.
I’ve always said the “Spawn buff” has been a myth. I don’t really believe in it, to be completely honest.
What I believe in is hard work. What I believe in is a team showing up every single day with clear goals, and practicing those goals in scrims, and making sure that we’re giving a 110% into the game. And I think that League of Legends — like all sport — really respects effort. When you put in effort, you get rewarded.
And I think that that’s a good reflection of our season.
Q: A lot of focus has been on mechanical mistakes by players like Impact and APA — it sounds like you think cohesion and trust are more problematic than issues like mechanics, though. Is that accurate?
Spawn: No. That’s not true. I think, mechanical issues are actually pretty high on my priority list as well. When I say effort, I mean, like, grinding out games on different champions.
We’re in fearless. We need to have deeper champion pools. We need to do all these things. So, no. I definitely agree with the community sentiment there that we can be better individually. And I actually say it all starts with individual prowess.
Like, let’s take that last game, for example. I think that we have a pretty hard top lane matchup, but Impact has won it in the past, and then a pretty hard mid [matchup] that Eain’s won in the past. And then I would say our early game in bottom lane should actually be stronger in the 3v3. So if we’re winning those lanes because we have better individual players and we get the Grubs, and then we can make them just play small map into small map, you know?
Can they actually defend against Ziggs? Can they break K’Sante on the weak side from behind? I would say probably not. But then we play poorly. We never even get into that stage of the game, because they get grubs. Then all of a sudden, they’re up tempo. And can they break Impact easily, is the answer to that.
And can we push on the other side? The answer is no. So, yeah, I think that individual play is actually huge in a game like League of Legends. I’d actually say it all starts at individual play. And, individually, I felt like I had best in class last year, and they should be commended for that.
And, this year, I don’t think we have had best in class, and that sucks, and we gotta work on it.
Q: Does that mean roster changes are the solution? Can they even happen when you have players as iconic to TL as Impact, Core, and Yeon?
Spawn: I mean, it’s always possible to change stuff. Changing the roster is the easiest solution to any issues, to be completely honest.
Should we change the roster? I have no fucking idea.
I just watched the game 10 minutes ago. We got beaten. I’m probably emotional, so, you know, not the best headspace to answer that. But, I mean, I said it after the end of last playoffs when Eain said “No one on the team is replaceable.”
I said everyone on the team is replaceable. Hell, I’m replaceable. If the community sentiment is right and Dodo and Steve are just wasting their time with me as a head coach — which, personally, I don’t think they are, but obviously I’m biased. I’m in the Jake camp.
But, yeah, I mean, no one is irreplaceable on this team, and Impact is not Team Liquid. He’s played for C9. He’s played for EG. He’s played for FlyQuest. CoreJJ is not Team Liquid.
Team Liquid is a bigger thing than these individual players.
And, you know, if that’s what it looks like, that’s what it looks like. But, you know, I think that, at our best, we are the best team in the LTA — but I don’t think we’ve been anywhere near our best for the last four, four and a half months.
Q: How do you fix the “NA solo queue is bad” problem with players wanting to grind? Is there even a solution?
Spawn: I mean, everyone plays in the NA ladder, though. So, what’s our excuse? Cloud9, FlyQuest look hell of a lot better than us at the moment. They’re on the NA ladder too. So, if you’re number one, I think you can make that excuse of, “Maybe we couldn’t compete against Korea because of the ladder,” but when you’re just competing domestically…
And, look, we had three internationals to get better as well. So, yeah, I don’t think the NA thing is an excuse.
Actually, people are gonna say, “Spawn just wants these guys to sit down and grind the game 24/7.” That’s not actually what I’m talking about when I talk about effort.
If I say, “Hey, Arsh. Push against this wall,” and you start pushing, and I say, “No, I need you to give me some more effort.” That doesn’t mean you need to stand against the wall and push it for 24 hours a day. It just means that when you’re pushing, you need to push as hard as you possibly can.
So what I’m talking about when I’m talking about effort is, you know, we come into Game 1 of a series in scrims or whatever, and we’re playing at 60% capacity because we’re not awake, because we haven’t slept well the night before, or we haven’t eaten breakfast — or we ate breakfast too late. Or, you know, you play 5 solo queue games, but then I check and you’re playing [something] troll, you know?
What I want is that, when we’re engaged and we’re playing the game, I want us to play the game to the best of our ability to get the most out of that game. And then if you cannot do that, then I want you to step away from the game and actually put effort into recharging. Like, that’s what’s important as a coach.
I don’t coach 24 hours a day. But when I am there coaching, I try and put as much effort and as much focus as I can into the task before going away. So, you know, I’m not saying we need to play more, I’m saying we need to play better. We need to do the things that we currently do better.
Last year, we did that as a team. I would actually say we have done more night blocks this year, and played the game for longer, to try and get out of our slump.
But I would say last year, we put in more effort: We had more conversations about the game; we were more aligned; we had done all the little things better to be the best team.
