Cloud9 Part Ways With LoL Head Coach Max Waldo

On Thursday, December 29, North American League of Legends esports team Cloud9 announced the departure of the Championship-winning head coach Maxwell Alexander “Max Waldo” Waldo. The 23-year-old leaves Cloud9 after two years, having joined the organization in December 2020 as a position and strategic coach.

On Thursday, Cloud9 announced the shock departure of League of Legends head coach Max Waldo, who officially left the North American esports organization after spending two years with the team. Cloud9 has not specified the reasoning behind Max Waldo’s departure, nor has the 23-year-old shared any details of why he decided to leave.

However, Max Waldo has stated that he will now pursue a career in content creation, which he supposedly decided on recently.

“100% my decision to leave, I had an awesome two years with C9 and wish them nothing but the best. I made the decision recently, which is why I was included in their most recent team announcement,” said Max Waldo.

Max Waldo joined Cloud9 in December 2020 as a strategic and positional coach and played a big role in Cloud9’s quest to cement itself as one of the most successful organizations in the North American League of Legends scene. But despite all the success Max Waldo has achieved at the helm of Cloud9, he decided to step away from the scene and leave the team in the hands of Mithy, who returned to the squad as the head coach on November 24.

With Mithy’s return, Max Waldo has moved his position from head coach to positional coach, so while he wouldn’t lead the team regardless of whether he would stay with Cloud9, his decision to leave took the LoL community by surprise.

The young strategist led Cloud9 to the title of the 2021 Spring Split regular season champions alongside Alfonso “mithy” Aguirre Rodríguez and Kim “Reignover” Yeu-jin, but then stumbled at the 2021 Mid-Season Invitational, where Cloud9 finished fifth-sixth, with a 3-7 record in the Rumble Stage.

With Max Waldo taking over as the head coach for the 2022 season, Cloud9 bounced back strong and reached the semifinals of the LCS 202 Lock-In tournament, and finished the LCS 2022 Spring Split regular season in second place. Unfortunately, the team would slip in the LCS 2022 Spring Playoffs, where they placed fourth after losing to the eventual champions, Evil Geniuses (0-3) in the second round.

In the LCS 2022 Summer Split, Cloud9 again found themselves on shaky ground as the team kicked off the split with a 0-3 run in the opening week. Over the split, Cloud9 found some success and entered the second half with a 4-5 record, but despite showing improvement in the latter weeks of the split, Cloud9 eventually finished LCS 2022 Summer regular season in fifth place, with a 10-8 record.

This saw Cloud9 place five wins behind LCS 2022 Summer regular season winners, Evil Geniuses and four behind runners-up 100 Thieves. Yet regardless of Cloud9’s unconvincing regular-season performances, the boys in blue showed up in the playoffs.

In the LCS 2022 Championship, Cloud9 found serious traction, defeating CLG, Evil Geniuses, and 100 Thieves twice – once in the semifinals and again in the grand finals (3-0) to claim the LCS 2022 Summer trophy.

Cloud9’s incredible run then came to a stop at the LoL World Championship, where the NA champions severely underperformed and crashed out of the group stage with a 1-5 record, ending the season with a 15th-16th place finish.

Despite Max Waldo’s shock departure, Cloud9 won’t have to make any major changes to its 2023 LoL roster. The North American esports organization already has a head coach in mithy, who returned to the position after spending one year as an assistant coach of 100 Thieves.

Moreover, Cloud9 already has a fairly stacked coaching personnel, consisting of mithy as head coach, Zixing “Talis” Jue as an assistant coach, Marcin “Selfie” Wolski as a positional coach, and Marius “Veigar v2” Aune as position and strategic coach.