LCS Summer 2020: How Jatt’s First Split as a Coach was a Success

By s. samek | Aug 25, 2020

League of Legends. Photo Courtesy of Riot Games. /

Team Liquid made a bold move adding Jatt as their new head coach and it paid off massively with an LCS Coach of the Split award.

At the beginning of the Split, I covered how the addition of Jatt to the League of Legends coaching staff for Team Liquid was a gamble. This is Jatt’s first time in the league as a coach and I wasn’t sure if this move to either be a good one or fail miserably. Now that Jatt and the other TL coaches have won LCS Coach of the Split, it’s clear that the gamble paid off.

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Just comparing the records in spring (5-13 and finished in ninth place) versus summer (15-3 and finished in first place heading into the playoffs) shows how good a job Jatt did. This 10-win swing gave TL the most improved record in the LCS.

Liquid had four of five team members make all-pro teams, with support Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in being on the first team. They also have three of the final ten members in the MVP voting pool in mid laner Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen, top laner Jung “Impact” Eon-yeong, and CoreJJ.

Thanks to this turnaround the Team Liquid coaching staff won the Coach of the Split award by a landslide. They received 121 points in the voting, ahead of Cloud9 with 62, and Golden Guardians with 25.

I think that is an accurate vote. Sure Cloud9 had a decent split, but they did fall off after a 17-1 spring. Golden Guardians did win one more game and finish one position better than they did in spring, but it doesn’t seem like enough to have the coaching staff earn votes.

There is a question of how much of Liquid’s turnaround was due to the players and how much was related to the coaching staff. Even with Team Liquid being called boring for their late game scaling compositions or lack of champion pools they did win the most games out of any LCS team this split. So even if your not a fan of Liquid’s strategy or playstyle it resulted in wins and that can be attributed to coaches making the right calls.

So to me, the coaching staff put the team in a much better spot this split and earned the accolades. Jatt as head coach should be proud of leading Liquid’s turnaround and a return to form for many of his players. I can’t see why he wouldn’t earn the award over any other staff in the LCS.

Why no one picks Team Liquid to win the Playoffs. dark. Next

Team Liquid has already secured a trip to Worlds for the third year in a row thanks to Jatt’s incredible coaching. Now, he is going to face an even more difficult task: getting Liquid out of groups.