Every year Worlds means two things for the competitive League of Legends scene. The first is that the greatest League of Legends tournament is back once again and the other is that the season is almost over. When a League season is over it means it’s time for the great rosterpocalypse where all your favorite players leave all your favorite teams and even though Worlds is still in full swing, the rosters changes have already started.
After a long and tumultuous year, TSM’s head coach Kim “SSONG” Sang-soo left the organization. This meant that TSM head to find a new head coach to fill the empty position. Yesterday the team announced that it has done so by hiring Tony “Zikz” Gray, who is the former coach of TSM’s long-time rival CLG.
TSM announced the new acquisition with a video in which Zikz introduces himself as the new head coach for TSM and also goes a bit into detail on why he decided to become part of TSM following his departure from CLG.
Zikz is a very respected coach and one of NA’s greatest. He definitely deserves the credit that he gets considering he won CLG two North American LCS titles and brought the team all the way to the MSI 2016 finals. However, the end of his career at CLG was not as fantastic. The team looked very shaky throughout the season which finally resulted in Zikz leaving the team during the LCS Summer Split.
Just like CLG, TSM had their own struggles although nowhere near as severe. Although coach SSONG did fantastic when he was still on Immortals, he seemingly never found his place within TSM and was quietly removed as the team’s on-stage coach although not released from the organization. TSM also failed to make Worlds this year and never got into a domestic final which marks it as the worst year in the organization’s history.
Hopefully, the Zikz success with CLG will be able to translate over to the TSM organization. Although TSM had it’s worst year of all time the players still looked quite strong and with some solid coaching TSM might once again reign as the North American king of the LCS.
