TL Steve confirms Liquid LCS roster “will be different” for 2023 after superteam failure
Twitter @TeamLiquidLoLAfter Team Liquid’s 2022 LCS superteam failure, co-CEO Steve Arhancet has confirmed that the roster will change for the 2023 season.
2022 has been a bad year for League of Legends superteams. Across the globe, we’ve seen some of the most stacked rosters in the game’s history fall short of a domestic title, or even a qualification to the 2022 World Championship.
One such roster was none other than the LCS’s Team Liquid. They acquired a mixture of North American resident veterans and European import superstars to build their 2022 LCS roster, with the aim of being the ‘NA Superteam’ right on time for a North American World Championship.
The failure of that roster was nothing short of spectacular. Not only did they fail to win a domestic title in either Spring or Summer, they failed to secure their spot as one of the LCS’s three World Championship representatives.
With Team Liquid’s long offseason well and truly underway, the organization released a video detailing their failings in 2022 and their plans for 2023. In the video, co-CEO Steve Arhancet confirmed that changes would come for the LCS roster, and apologized to fans for the disappointment of TL 2022.
The method behind the madness
In the video, Arhancet went into detail about the rationale behind the superteam.
“Going into this season, I was completely enamored by the idea of building a roster that would potentially be the best roster that the region has ever seen. After participating in Worlds so many times and falling short, going 3-3 in groups, North America being the host for Worlds was such an incredible opportunity for the organization to demonstrate our excellence and continue to build on our legacy.”
He explained that building the 2022 roster had been a multi-stage process that had involved “spending a lot of money” as well as getting commitments from partners and stakeholders that “this was the year”.
This level of investment and the importance of the superteam project was also conveyed to Liquid’s players. However, investment alone is not enough to guarantee the success of a project, and Steve admitted that he was “disappointed” in the outcome of the experiment.
How will Team Liquid rebuild?
Team LiquidIt was practically a given that fans would see some changes to the Team Liquid roster for 2023.
That has now been officially confirmed by Steve, who states that “the roster will be different”, and that they’ll no longer be relying on the superteam formula. They will look to “build” players using Team Liquid’s existing infrastructure, and will abandon the “superteam” concept almost entirely.
“Building superteams has always kind of worked for us to a certain degree, but I think times are changing.”
Although it’s unclear as of yet what “building” players will look like for Team Liquid, their Academy has seen incredible success this year. They won LCS Proving Grounds in Spring and Summer, and finished first in the NA Academy Summer split.