After a rather tumultuous victory against NS in a 2-1 series on the 2nd of July, we learned during press conference on the 5th of July, and after suffering an 0-2 loss to DRX, that “Faker is taking break for at least two weeks.”
Amidst the unfortunate news that Faker will be out due to wrist injury, the head coach for T1 (Bengi) resigned from his position. So not only is the team missing their star mid-laner but also their head coach who took them to the finals of last year’s Worlds. In Faker’s place is the 17-year old mid-laner Poby who has stepped up from T1’s academy team. As for the new head coach, “Tom” Jae-hyeon will fill the shoes of Bengi as the interim head coach.
Although there is still much uncertainty surrounding the future of the T1 organization as the Summer split nears the halfway point, the loss of an integral part to the team’s success (Faker) resulted in an 0-2 series loss against DRX. DRX, currently in 7th place (3-7), was by no means a challenging prospect for the T1 team. In fact, during the Spring season’s split, DRX finished in 9th place, just one short of last place. Even so, T1 was annihilated by DRX. According to Bengi, who at the time of the DRX loss was still the head coach, the team “did not have ample time to build chemistry” between the new 17-year old mid-laner and the rest of the team. This lack of chemistry apparently spelled the demise of T1 in their match against DRX. It does make sense that T1 would struggle due to missing chemistry in the mid-lane because much of the shot-calling comes from Faker. Faker is the leader of the team, and when a team loses their leader, they begin to suffer unaccustomed losses. Continually, Bengi’s intuition that the team suffered a horrible loss to DRX due to a lack of chemistry shows how much the T1 organization will miss him.