MaRin, the 2015 world champion and Worlds MVP has been let go from Topsports Gaming and is allowed to explore new teams and opportunities. The former SKT T1 top laner had a very disappointing year as he spent the majority of it on the bench. Topsports Gaming announced the following regarding his departure.
“After a brief evaluation with the team, we decided not to renew his contract. As the oldest member of the team, MaRin did well by becoming the pivot of the team. We are thankful for everything; we’ll remember him. We truly wish for his success in a new team that he joins.”
Although MaRin’s first few weeks in the LPL on the Topsports roster were quite successful, he was quickly overtaken by China’s young and rising top lane players. At the end of his first split on the team, the squad ended up in the last place of the LPL standings. During the summer split the team did relatively well but MaRin was benched during this time period and instead served the team as a player-coach. Topsports eventually made it to the LPL playoffs at the end of the summer split but was quickly taken out by RNG who ended up winning the whole thing.
As a long-time League of Legends fan and player, it’s quite sad to see a player as MaRin fail on the professional stage. One of the reasons that he left SKT T1 after winning the championship with the team was to stop living in Faker’s shadow and instead show the world that he can also win in a team without Faker. Sadly for MaRin he’s at best a mediocre top laner right now instead of the number one top that he set out to prove he was.
Whether MaRin aims to join a different team is still unconfirmed. Maybe he enjoyed working as a player-coach and might start looking for coaching roles instead or maybe he wants to build up his career streaming. If he does decide to continue as a player, chances are slim that he will be able to join a top Korean team seeing his mediocre performance during the past season.
