C9 VALORANT coach explains why the superteam never got off the ground

Fresh off of securing a coveted partnership with Riot Games for one of its 10 VCT Americas slots last September, C9 announced its "heavy hitters" 2023 VALORANT program, headlined by the star-studded additions of Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker, Jordan "Zellsis" Montemurro, and new head coach mCe.

Commonly dubbed a superteam from its inception, C9 were expected to not only contend for Americas supremacy, but also be a sure bet for Champions 2023 at the end of the year.

However, despite the team looking strong, coach mCe wasn't so sure. In an interview with Dot Esports last week, he broke down the reasoning behind C9's decisions to shake things up.

"I think the biggest thing is people underrate comfort and systems," mCe said. "If you have a guy that's very comfortable on three agents and he can play it well and that's a meta agent [pool], you're just instantly going to be better."

Just over four months and two preseason LAN events after forming, the new regime's run came to an abrupt end. After falling in a heavyweight battle against DRX in the second round of VCT LOCK//IN, C9 mutually parted ways with yay. A week later, the org announced the departure of its long-tenured in-game leader Anthony "vanity" Malaspina despite other members of the team reportedly expressing their desire for him to stay.

While C9 gave little clue as to why it dropped vanity, org owner Jack Etienne and mCe appeared in a video at the time to explain how yay's release was mainly a result of issues involving changing roles and overlap - something many within the VCT community and El Diablo himself appeared to remain highly skeptical about.

MCe reaffirmed to Dot that the org is operating with a long-term view in mind, and confirmed that he thought C9's LOCK//IN roster just wasn't all that well-equipped to handle the ever-evolving meta due to conflicting agent roles.

"I just think leaf is incredible on a duelist role," mCe said. "It fits him really well, his personality, his play style, everything. He was performing really well on sentinel and he likes sentinel but it's like, 'Would he be better in this role?' It's [about] trying to find comfortability."