Just a few minutes ago, the League of Legends team Gen.G Esports unexpectedly announced the departure of coach Choi “Edgar” Woo-beom – who previously led the team as head coach, reaching the finals of the World Championship in two consecutive years and winning the championship in 2017.
Notably, this decision comes shortly after Gen.G Esports’ defeat to T1 in the LCK Spring Finals 2020. The reason given is that this coach wishes to take time off after many years involved in the professional League of Legends scene.
Along with kkOma, Edgar is one of the longest-serving coaches with a professional League of Legends organization in Korea, first with Samsung Galaxy and later renamed Gen.G.
Under the Samsung/Gen.G banner, Edgar became the second coach after kkOma to have more than one World Championship title. These were two championships in 2014 with Samsung White (although Edgar was not the head coach at that time) and notably the championship in 2017 with Samsung Galaxy.
Additionally, he led Gen.G Esports to achieve a rather “special” record, which has even become a hallmark of this team, that is qualifying for the World Championship three consecutive times from the regional qualifiers.
To assert that Edgar is one of the greatest coaches in professional League of Legends would not be an exaggeration, yet in the past season, the weaknesses in Gen.G’s ban/pick phase – the reason for their disastrous defeat to T1 despite having a 2-ban advantage in the finals – can be largely attributed to this coach.
Although not stated outright, some Gen.G players have subtly hinted that the team’s strategic ban/pick was quite poor, and many viewers also agree with this. It seems that Edgar has somewhat been “out-meta,” and perhaps when he could not help his team achieve the success they hoped for, parting ways became an understandable choice for this coach.