After weeks of speculation, Team Liquid revealed their jungler for the 2023 LCS Season, along with the rest of the roster.
For the 2022 LCS Season Team Liquid had built one of the most expensive rosters in the North American competition’s history. Signing two big-name imports from LEC (Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau and Steven “Hans sama” Liv) and the best-ever NA mid laner Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg meant that Team Liquid was pushing heavily for success in the 2022 LoL World Championship, held in US first time after six years. Unfortunately for the organization and its fans, the team couldn’t find any regional success, except for the Lock-In tournament. And with the failure to qualify for Worlds as the final nail in the coffin, TL decided they would go in a different direction, according to the organization’s co-owner and co-CEO Steve Arhancet.
Many in the community took this as a sign that Liquid wouldn’t be spending much and instead would focus on their Academy team. TL Academy was seen as one of the best teams in the Academy system, winning both Proving Grounds splits in 2022. While this turned out to be partially true, the organization still made two big signings for their top side of the map in the end. After many weeks of rumors hinting at a fully Korean-speaking roster, Arhancet confirmed the rumors in a video they released today. Team Liquid is signing the 2022 LCS Spring MVP Park “Summit” Woo-tae and the jungler for the World Champion DRX, Hong “Pyosik” Chang-hyeon. The full Team Liquid roster is:
- Top lane: Park “Summit” Woo-tae
- Jungle: Hong “Pyosik” Chang-hyeon
- Mid lane: Harry “Haeri” Kang
- Bot lane: Sean “Yeon” Sung
- Support: Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in
This year comes with a promise — we will work harder than ever before.
Introducing, Team Liquid Honda 2023.#TLWIN pic.twitter.com/xkrxkvLAuX
— Team Liquid Honda LoL (@TeamLiquidLoL) December 2, 2022
Team Liquid roster will be Korean-speaking, including their rookies
When fans hear fully Korean-speaking, they might be reminded of another team, LMQ. LMQ was a Chinese team that moved to North America back in 2014 and competed in the NACS and NA LCS. But Team Liquid is a bit different than LMQ.
First of all, they still decided to promote two players from their Academy team. Haeri and Yeon were both highly regarded prospects during their Academy tenure, and it also helps that both are resident players with Korean proficiency. Team Liquid also re-signed CoreJJ, another World Champion and one of the most experienced players in the region. With a veteran like CoreJJ at the helm, Team Liquid is probably looking to find the perfect balance of imports and young native talent, which was the recipe for Evil Geniuses’ success last year.
And CoreJJ’s experience will be important throughout the season as Team Liquid decided to take a risk with their head coaching position and signed the retired top laner Jang “MaRin” Gyeong-hwan. MaRin is the third World Champion in this Team Liquid roster, he won the trophy with SK Telecom T1 back in 2015. This will be MaRin’s first step into a coaching role, but despite his inexperience, it looks like TL and Arhancet have a lot of confidence in the LoL veteran. To help with the transition, Team Liquid brought in former Cloud9 coach Kim “Reignover” Yeu-jin as well. Reignover is another former pro player who played in Korea, Europe and NA, and also coached in NA and EU.
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