MAD Lions LoL head coach Mac to miss Worlds 2023

❘ Published: 2023-10-09T21:50:16

Riot Games

MAD Lions had a misread on the meta in Shanghai, coach Mac admitted.

MAD Lions’ LoL team will have to do without James ‘Mac’ MacCormack at Worlds 2023 as the coach will not be in South Korea for the showpiece tournament.

In a video posted on MAD Lions’ YouTube channel, Mac explained that he will not be joining the team in South Korea as he and his wife are expecting a daughter around the first week of November.

“It’s obviously a hard decision, not one we took lightly,” he explained. “Owing to the fact that the baby can come before the due date and there can always be complications, not being there is a risk that I didn’t want to take.”

Mac added that he will provide remote assistance to the team “as best as I can” and that the rest of the coaching staff will handle increased duties during the event. Patrick ‘Pad’ Suckow-Breum, the team’s strategic coach, will be the acting head coach in South Korea.

MAD Lions’ Mac to miss Worlds 2023

Mac has been a mainstay at LoL World Championships since 2019, when he was the assistant coach during Splyce’s quarter-final run. He took over as head coach after Splyce rebranded as MAD Lions and notably coached the team to a playoff appearance at Worlds 2021.

That was without a doubt the most successful year in Mac’s career to date, winning both LEC splits and overseeing a semi-final run at MSI, where MAD Lions were one game away from reaching the title decider.

MAD Lions won the Spring split but then collapsed in the Summer

MAD Lions have had a bumpy season after bringing in three new players at the end of 2022. The team finished runners-up to G2 in the Winter split and won the Spring split, but then fell out of form and were eliminated in the Summer split in seventh place. Their MSI 2023 run also ended in disappointment following 0-3 thrashings by T1 and G2 in the playoffs.

MAD Lions had to settle for Europe’s third seed at Worlds after losing to a Fnatic side fielding a stand-in in the lower bracket final of the LEC Season Finals. The team still has more than a week left to prepare for the Worlds Play-In stage, with Pad promising that fans will see “a very bombastic and in-your-face kind of MAD Lions” at the event.