In a press release, Team Liquid announced that Lucas “Santorin” Larsen will be stepping away from the team due to health reasons. This comes as it was already known that he was dealing with serious migraine issues. Jonathan “Armao” Armao will be stepping into the role similarly to how he did during the 2021 Spring LCS Playoffs and is anticipated to be in that position until Santorin is healthy enough to return to the team.
During the Team Liquid press conference, Team Liquid Co-CEO, Steve Arhancet, made it clear that Santorin’s health trumped everything else. The team is doing everything it can to assist him and find the root causes to these issues. They also made it known that he had been playing and practicing with these migraine issues for some time.
At the exact same time as the Santorin announcement, it was also announced that the team’s Head Coach, Josh “Jatt” Leesman, had resigned as well. Jonas “Kold” Andersen will be the interim coach. For many fans this came as a complete shock considering how well the team had played under him. During his time with Team Liquid, the team was 30-15 with a Worlds appearance and an LCS Finals appearance. While the team had been struggling lately, it felt like there was something more going on under the surface than just performance issues.
Fans were also hoping that Barney “Alphari” Morris would be making his return tomorrow, this is not the case. The plan is to still have Alphari come back against TSM on Sunday, June 27. Although it seemed their there was still the possibility that this may not be the case as well. According to Arhancet, Alphari is going through something tough and it has been hard on him to play.
Team Liquid now have a tough road ahead of them without Santorin, Jatt and potentially Alphari. With all of the changes and already being two games behind TSM, who are in first place, Team Liquid will have to fight without many of the parts that they have been used to having.
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