Team Liquid has parted ways with its head League of Legends coach Andre Guilhoto. The seasoned League coach joined Liquid prior to the 2022 season but has departed the organization after just one season.
This season, Liquid put together a “superteam” of five veteran League players, all of whom had experience on both the domestic and international stages. Across Liquid’s starting lineup, all five players had reached the World Championship at some point in the last two seasons. Moving forward, though, Liquid intends to use its internal development programs instead of looking toward free agency for success.
Guilhoto has coached four teams in the LEC and LCS over the last five years, never staying with an organization for longer than two seasons. In spite of this, he’s earned a reputation as one of the best Western League coaches and should be expected to find work for the 2023 season.
“I don’t regret anything,” Guilhoto said in a published exit interview with Liquid. “I think that I learned a lot this year and if I put myself in the moment again, without the hindsight, I would probably have made very similar decisions to the one that I made. I felt like this year I consistently did my best at that moment, so I don’t regret putting in as much work as I did.”
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Guilhoto was originally brought on to Liquid in an effort to spearhead the team’s goal of creating a “superteam” that could dominate North American League of Legends on both the domestic and international stages through a combination of veteran players and experienced coaches. Guilhoto had proven he could work with veterans before on teams including Origen and Immortals.
Liquid came just one game away from qualifying for Worlds this season, ultimately losing out on North America’s final berth at the tournament to Evil Geniuses.
Despite missing out on Worlds, Liquid posted one of the strongest individual records in NA this year, holding a win-loss of 52-29 in games across the season. For their efforts in the Spring Split, Guilhoto’s coaching staff was recognized as the best in North America during the first half of the year.
With their elimination from competition in 2022, Liquid owner Steve Arhancet announced that the team’s roster will undergo changes before next season and the goal of building a superteam will be tossed aside in favor of developing their own talent. Last week, the team released AD carry Steven “Hans sama” Liv. Arhancet also acknowledged that the strategy of building superteams worked for the organization in the past, but that “times are changing.” This season, Liquid had the intention of “building a roster that would potentially be the best roster that the region had seen in the last decade,” according to Arhancet.
