This was supposed to be the "Golden Age." CLG entered the split, as they have before, flying on the wings of hope. With CLG re-energized at every position, having the sharpest early game in the NA LCS, fans finally dared to hope that maybe, just maybe, Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng and the rest of his team would earn the trophy that's eluded them for years. But things didn't go as planned. The weaknesses identified at the start of the split never went away, and as teams leveled up their game going into playoffs, CLG was left behind once again. The team finished a disappointing 5/6th after a crushing 3–0 defeat at the hands of Team Liquid and playoff nemesis Xpecial. CLG fans are back to where they started: wondering what it'll take to finally get it right.



I spoke to Doublelift at LCS on Sunday after the games, and he spoke very candidly about his personal feelings about his split, the failings of the Counter Logic Gaming organization, their problems as a team, and where they go from here.

First off, it's been a week since the games. How are you feeling; what's your mental state these days?

Feeling pretty bad still. It's really disappointing, you know, 'cause I think we had a pretty average split. A regular split. Even though we were tied for first and second place the entire time, it didn't feel like we were improving too much, and I was always really frustrated with that fact. When we lost at playoffs, I knew I didn't act quick enough, or there was some sort of failure within the organization. It was really obvious to me really quickly that we weren't improving enough, and again, it's just an entire several months of work that I put in – that everyone put in – that kinda went down the drain and didn't end in any good results. Still pretty frustrated, and trying to consider what kind of changes I need to make, or the team needs to make.

You say you weren't improving throughout the split, but right up until the end of the split you were up at the top of the rankings – a lot of people were ranking you as a top 2 team NA. What do you think you needed to have been improving on internally that you weren't able to get figured out?

Well, our ability to beat top teams was pretty abysmal. We were 0–2 TSM, 1–1 C9, 0–2 TL, 1–1 TiP; that's not a good winrate. Especially going 0–2 vs TSM and TL, is just really really bad. You come into the split really strong, and you're able to beat all the bottom teams and none of the top teams, and that's just really frustrating. Because in the end, you have to beat ALL of the teams to be first and make Worlds. So I would just say that it was really obvious to me at the time. I was like, “Why can't we beat these top teams?” There was some kind of failure going on with leadership, and changes need to be made, but they just weren't made quick enough. I think we got really really happy, like overly happy, with beating teams we should be expected to beat. In my opinion, that's like being congratulated for putting gas in your car, or eating breakfast, it's pretty normal. You should be able to beat these teams on a daily basis easily. If you want to be a top team that shouldn't be a surprise. That should be an expectation.

Going into this season, CLG really talked about how they wanted to have 5 players who all got along with each other and would be able to work through difficulties and not start to hate each other. What was the environment in the CLG practice house like once you guys started to struggle?

The environment's pretty good actually. I think we succeeded in that goal, in having 5 players who work well outside the game and are able to talk and sort out differences. Still, we're not all best-friends-holding-hands day-to-day but we can talk to each other pretty easily, and it seems like a positive environment. I think the change that also would've worked, other than doing that, would've been to get a coach. A coach is there to make sure your relationships are fine regardless of whether or not you can inherently get along with each other. We kinda doubled up on that, so now our team environment is very very positive, and we're all just trying to pump each other up.

With that great environment, why do you think you weren't able to fix those problems you'd identified throughout the split?

At the end of the day, improvement is all relative because every pro player in the world is improving. Whether you're in the Japan start-up league or in OGN, it really doesn't matter where you're from as a pro player: your job is to improve, so everyone is always improving. It's about the rate you're improving. You want to accelerate your improvement. So yeah, I saw some small improvements, but across the split people from the very beginning had highlighted that we have really poor team fighting and relied solely on getting a lead early so we don't have to team fight fairly when the game is even or when we're behind. That was a problem that persisted throughout the entire split we never actually fixed. I think that's pretty unacceptable for 8 or 9 weeks to pass by, that's like a two month span of time, and for our team fighting to only barely improve. Not only that, but there's a lot of problems – and I don't want to go too much into detail about or weaknesses as a team – but we definitely had a lot. Our only real strength came from our early game, and that was just because we picked up really good players who knew how to lane well. I don't think that's really considered a strength of the team as much as “Okay, we have pretty good players, they know how to win lane, that's good for us.” Team-oriented things that I think should be improved on, like working together, and being able to coordinate a play, and shotcalling, and leadership are things that I find to be the most important and that CLG has struggled with the most.

Who does all the shotcalling throughout the games?

Link and Aphro do pretty much all the shotcalling throughout a game.

Do you think spreading out shotcalling might help, or is that pretty solid?

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with having one, or possibly two, shotcallers. I've done a lot of talking to people who are on wildly successful teams in their region and the best teams in the world like SKT and Samsung White, and these teams always have a primary shotcaller and supplementary shotcallers for when their primary shotcaller is at a lack of expertise or tilted, then the supplementary shotcallers can jump in and kickstart the primary one back up. The problem is we've had the same shotcallers for two years, and the way they interact with each other is a little bit inconsistent. That's why we have so much shotcalling and leadership issues, and we've always been really inconsistent at playoffs... technically we've been really consistent at playoffs, because we just always lose. That's definitely our big problem, the way that we function as a team fundamentally – the way we've built it up – is probably wrong.

In seeing that, I know Hotshot tweeted big changes were coming and you've alluded that you're considering big changes. I know you can't say anything here, but is a roster change on CLG likely going into the summer split?

I just know what Hotshot said is definitely true. I didn't see the tweet myself, but there definitely are gonna be big changes. I don't know if it's gonna be roster changes, or if it's gonna be management, organization, coaching changes or whatever it is, but there need to be big changes within the team because the way it's set up right now... it needs to be completely uprooted. Something needs to change about the way we think as people – as teammates – or... just anything. I've taken a working role on the team. If they want me to be a team player, I can be a team player. If they want me to be a selfish player, I can be a selfish player. But I'm not dealt a lot of responsibility, because it's shifted on other people. I'm totally fine with that – it's not like I'm power hungry and want leadership or anything like that. I just want something that works. And what we've been doing for a very long time just simply doesn't work.

From a managerial perspective, what would your ideal management environment be for CLG?

I would just say a lot of communication and oversight and a lot of feedback loops. Right now, there's no loop. It's a one-way street where the management doesn't exactly oversee the coaching, and the coaching just kinda trickles information into us. There's not really any circular loop that feeds back and then everyone can improve. The way it's set up right now... the reason our improvement stagnates so quickly is just there's no communication within the company. That's why I say the way it's set up is probably wrong.

So during your day-to-day it's you guys, you talk to Scarra, he talks to the leadership, and not that much information gets related back to you?

Well, day-to-day we just talk to each other as players. Sometimes we'll talk to Scarra and sometimes he'll talk to us, and that's pretty much where it ends.

So Scarra doesn't take as much of an active role in your day-to-day practice as some other coaches?

Yeah, I'd say Scarra definitely takes a more passive role. He's very good at understanding where you're coming from and absorbing information, but much less authoritative. He has a lot of authority on the team and when he tells me to do something, I just do it without questioning it too much. But he doesn't utilize that with an iron fist as much as some of the other coaches I see, who are just literally bossing people around. So I feel like there is a middle ground there, and Scarra has a lot of authority and has a lot of respect in the organization, but he is a little bit light fingered. He always wants to make sure first that we're happy with the way things are going, and I think overly so. Sometimes you have to do things you're uncomfortable or unhappy with for the good of everyone.

Going forward, you've been taking a lot of flak online about this stuff. You're somebody who's had an open relationship with the community for a very long time. Are you used to that at this point, or does it still get to you?

I think having a relationship with the community is almost never one way. You can't dip your hand in there and not get burned sometimes. I don't get affected when it comes down to my play too much, but in terms of my mental state it's pretty frustrating when any time we lose... I'm the face of CLG, so naturally I'll be blamed for a lot of or all of our failure, and I don't think it's fair, personally, because I'm biased and it's hard to be objective about that sort of thing. I just get really frustrated at the situation, because I put a lot of work in, y'know? And in the end we just couldn't pull it through.

I think right now most of the flak has been going onto Link and to Xmithie, especially after some of the Sejuani ults that he missed got replayed over and over again. Is it hard for the players in the team to avoid putting the blame on one person for the failures, and does that affect the relationship after a hard loss like that?

I think that whole concept is pretty overplayed. You don't have to be a genius to know that Xmithie missed those Sejuani ultis, and he himself knows that he did that. So it's maybe a little bit salting the wound, but he already knew he messed up, and Link already knew when he messed up. Everyone knows, for the most part, so it's not that bad, as much as people think. You don't do something as destructive as say “You missed all those Sejuani ultis, you suck.” It's like “We should practice it more, so you can be more consistent. How can I help you cover up your weaknesses?” It's more constructive than that.

In general, people were surprised that Link was brought back at first but he really showed people up at the beginning of the split when he was playing really well. But again this split, he petered out towards the end. Why do you think this pattern with Link, and CLG in general, tends to repeat?

I think Link is just a product of the environment, where it's really hard to improve. Some of it's on him, but most of it's on the way things are within the team. It's really difficult when you go into the split when you win everything to still think critically about your mistakes all the time. Sometimes you wanna just relish the moment. We're all guilty of that, and we need essentially a loop of people telling us that “No, winning is acceptable, it's not something that you should be proud of.” So it really just comes down to leadership.

The CLG fans are really die-hard passionate about this CLG team. Do you have any words of encouragement, anything you'd want to let those fans know going forward into the months before the summer split?

Nothing that you guys won't hear from me directly, but mostly just that there's gonna be a lot of changes like Hotshot said. And if there weren't a lot of changes, then I probably wouldn't stick with CLG. Because I'm 10 times as frustrated as our most passionate fan about the way things are going. Not just the organization, but me personally: I feel really stagnated. I haven't really accomplished anything or moved forward in a really long time, and that's probably the most frustrating thing in life – when you feel like you're just in the same spot that you were before. I'm gonna do everything that I can to fix that, and I'm gonna start taking a more active approach. Instead of trusting that the status quo is gonna work and that the way things are is just the way things are, and trusting in management, I'm gonna take a way more active approach to talking with Hotshot mostly and to make sure that everyone's doing what they should be doing.

In spite of that frustration, you're definitely determined to continue playing for the forseeable future to try and get that success?

Yeah, I'm definitely determined to keep playing and keep playing on CLG. I really do believe I was born to be a player, and I don't see myself with any team other than CLG. There's a lot of people who encouraged me to work for a company such as Riot or be a streamer, but that's not me. I was meant to be a pro player.