For most of last year, Team Liquid was considered the best League of Legends team in North America. It was the first TL roster in years that didn’t form around superstar imports — and it was the first TL team to claim an LCS trophy without Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng. If it weren’t for one of the craziest backdoors in NA history, the team might’ve won back-to-back.

Going into 2025, TL retained its roster, expected to remain untouchable at the top of the LTA North, alongside FlyQuest. On paper, TL should’ve cruised smoothly to international appearances off of domestic dominance. Instead, fans got a rollercoaster.

TL narrowly qualified for the Cross-Conference Playoffs in fourth place after a rocky debut in the LTA North bracket. Then, the team somehow leveled up and got it together in São Paulo, earning a trip to Seoul for First Stand with the Split trophy in hand. However, their subsequent last-place finish at First Stand wasn’t just their worst international performance as a roster; it was one of NA’s worst in the game’s history. TL’s shocking collapse was a heartbreak for fans, and it was even more devastating for the team.

Yuuji in, UmTi out?

Seemingly scrambling in the days before the Summer Split, TL began holding tryouts for mid laners and junglers, splitting scrims to isolate issues and improve their cohesion. Many in the community saw this as a sign that UmTi — by far the most-criticized player on the roster — was on his way out. Instead, TL started the split without making changes.

Instead, a month into the split, just when it seemed from the outside that the team had started to gel again, Team Liquid made a change: Yuuji, the best prospect in the NACL, would be the team’s 6th-man jungler. Yuuji played two regular-season games before becoming the starting jungler in every playoff series, seemingly benching UmTi. By the time Shopify Rebellion eliminated TL, the team faced a torrent of controversy and confusion.

Less than a week later, TL finally broke the news: UmTi had chosen to leave the team for personal reasons. In the end, he’d played a single game in the Split 2 Playoffs: a match-point Game 3 against Cloud9. In his exit interview, UmTi detailed struggles with PTSD, months of insecurity and self-doubt, and a long healing journey — back home in Korea, he’s on his way to feeling like himself again. With the dust finally settled, it became clear that Yuuji joined TL in no small part to help alleviate pressure on the beleaguered and beloved veteran, but it wasn’t enough.

For UmTi, continuing to compete was not an option. He needed to get out.

But it wasn’t just UmTi struggling — the whole team, save perhaps Yeon, could’ve edited together a highlight reel of mechanical misplays and baffling decisions, even after Yuuji came in. Instability amidst brutal losses eroded the team’s confidence, slowly compromising their trust, synergy, and willingness to grind.

The team's internal struggle: A timeline

In the offseason, TL management already worried about UmTi’s motivation, mental health, and stability, but they were confident they could help him adjust. At first, things were good.

“From my perspective, being away from home in such a stressful environment can take a toll on you. That said, UmTi came into the split in great condition. I was really, really happy with how we started the split.

And then I saw that these things started to take an impact on his confidence and then impact how much he could play the game, and how much he could just engage with League of Legends in general.”

— TL Head Coach Jake “Spawn” Tiberi.

Split 1 had a condensed format, and UmTi was already struggling before the team booked their São Paulo win. It wasn’t about making fewer mistakes; it was about forgiving himself after messing up and ignoring the public criticism that followed. First Stand, unfortunately, only increased the pressure to achieve that ephemeral perfection.

In Seoul, the 2-0 loss to CFO was a breaking point, at least according to Head Coach Spawn. Individual mistakes and discordant decision-making left TL looking like shells of themselves and behind the scenes, their confidence and trust in one another began to erode. Hoping to isolate issues that persisted with different iterations of the roster, TL held tryouts for mid and jungle. The team was open to making changes, but the goal was to facilitate improvement and shake things up. Yuuji surpassed all expectations, though, earning a spot as a 6th-man who would participate in scrims, adjust to the new environment, and prepare to play on stage throughout the split.

“I'm not gonna rewrite history and be like, ‘I had so much foresight knowing that UmTi wouldn’t be able to continue,’” Spawn explained,

“I'm always the optimist in stuff like this until we cross the line — until then, I'm gonna work with him to get [...] comfortable competing again.”

The tryouts had done their job: TL had thoroughly assessed the market, patched major issues ahead of the split, and found a prodigious rookie to bring in as a 6th man.

Yuuji was brought in to support UmTi’s recovery, not to replace him.

“About three weeks into Split 2, [...] things were coming to a head. That’s when I was like, ‘Okay. This is no longer [trying out a player for] an active six man roster — this is going to be a six man roster, but if the next domino falls, I know that it would mean UmTi stepping away from the game.

And I need to be prepared for that, as a coach.’”

— Spawn

No one realized it at the time, but as the team whipped themselves into shape at the start of Split 2 — splitting scrims between Yuuji and UmTi, committing to night blocks nearly every day, and grinding as hard as they could in solo queue — they were only increasing the pressure on every other position. It wasn’t just UmTi falling behind; the team’s cohesion only deteriorated faster under the new, grueling schedule.

Negative loop

In Spawn’s eyes, they’d fallen victim to a negative feedback loop. As individuals on the team made more mistakes, everyone stopped trusting one another to do their jobs at different points in the game — at least subconsciously. Over time, their split-second calls became increasingly mismatched; every time you lose a fight that you should win, you’ll make a more desperate or passive decision next time.

“Last year, we felt like we were the best individual players — when you think, talk, and work with that mindset, the plays you go for make more sense, because you're playing more aggressively. Then they start working, and those plays build trust — it's a positive feedback loop.”

— Spawn

TL’s teamwork, once the cornerstone of their success, was dysfunctional well before UmTi stepped away from competition. “I think that even in the past, when we weren’t playing the best individually, we always had a really strong team game,” Spawn recalled.

“But when the team game started to fall away, people started to have … less fun playing together, is the way I’ll put it.”

Time for a break

“After competing at First Stand, you probably have seven days off, then you come back and you’re straight back into scrims. And then your idiot Australian coach is telling you, ‘Yeah, by the way, we're trying out a mid laner and a jungler. We're doing all these extra things.”

So, like, everyone's just in ‘Win Now’ mode. I’ve said this before, but pressure is good — pressure makes diamonds, but pressure breaks rocks in the process”, Spawn explained.

In 2024, TL grinded their way to the top of the league. Their mistake was thinking the same strategy would work again. “I think it’s simple,” explained CoreJJ, “The other teams were better than us — they were improving, and we weren’t. We were staying the same.”

They spotted the problem, obvious in hindsight, far too late: No amount of dedication in solo queue, scrims, or review would fix issues with mindset and burnout.

New beginnings

In the end, UmTi’s departure made the decision for them.

“We were actually 100% committed to Yuuji for the last two weeks of the season. That was really, really good for our team. We went away from our 3/2 split in scrims between junglers. We went away from night blocks, so the guys were getting a lot more rest and coming into the day a lot more recharged”, Spawn recalled.

“I’d say, overall, it was a much more positive environment — and it had nothing to do with UmTi leaving.”

— Spawn

CoreJJ saw it the same way as Spawn — their last two weeks of practice before elimination were the most improvement they’d seen in months. Without UmTi, their competitive goals had to be revised; instead of scrambling to make progress, they had the space to focus on long-term improvement as a set of five players.

Integrating a new player on short notice is hard enough, but TL had played back-to-back tournaments across three continents in a matter of months. Like everyone else, they expected to reach the podium and fight for the right to represent North America at MSI — even if Yuuji debuted at an absurdly high level of play, he was still a rookie and wouldn’t be able to fix the team single-handedly. Implicitly, the change meant refocusing on Summer Split, alleviating at least some of the omnipresent pressure to perform.

Read more — Yuuji's story: Mongolia to MVP to LTA

That didn’t make elimination from Split 2 sting any less, CoreJJ going as far as to call the loss to Shopify Rebellion their lowest point as a team. “I think we knew CFO was a very strong team, we weren’t as sad about losing,” the veteran support recalled. “Losing to Shopify was much worse.”

With a month and a half before their next stage game, TL had time to focus on resetting ahead of Summer Split. Spawn emphasized staying away from playing the game seriously — and staying away from each other, at least in any competitive context. For most players, time to breathe, touch grass, and lead a normal life can be invaluable; every team not attending the Esports World Cup took at least a month off after Split 2. TL, however, was back to scrims in two weeks.

Spawn joked that it would’ve been hard to keep the players away from the game any longer than that — anger and regret are fuel for motivation. According to CoreJJ, at least, the break was more than long enough. With MSI teams seeking consistent scrim partners, the team had far stronger practice partners than the LTA North can normally offer, giving them a head start on improvement without having to wait for other teams to return from their breaks.

Going into Split 3, they’ll have honed their skills against some of the best teams in the world without the drawbacks of travel and competitive burnout that seem inevitable for FlyQuest and Cloud9. Team Liquid's roster, rife with potential, is once again being doubted. Historically, that’s where they thrive. 

“By the start of Split 3? Of course — I’m confident we’re gonna be the best team in the LTA. I’m not gonna lose two splits in a row.”

— CoreJJ

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