T1 suddenly received bricks after the screen instead of the unexpected person in the LCK Cup 2025
As is known, in the heroic battle between T1 and KT Rolster, also marked as a historic milestone of 1000 games of Faker, the reigning champion of Worlds 2024 was surprised to let Gumayusi reserve and for Smash to replace. Although T1 won convincingly and Smash was the best player, this team still had to receive “bricks”.
Gumayusi was unexpectedly absent in the match against KT.
Accordingly, many fans were dissatisfied when T1 suddenly turned the squad without any signs or notifications before. And another reason was given, that Gumayusi was always considered to be “sacrificed” for his teammates, so from here, the controversy broke out towards T1.
After the battle, coach Kkoma explained that he replaced him to diversify tactics.
The situation was more serious when in the recent recent squad, T1 failed miserably until Faker stood up to command his teammates and T1 had the first time “replacing the general in the line” in this team history as well as LCK.
But the fans themselves do not accept this.
“Idolization” players contributed greatly to the current “brick” T1
In fact, T1 always combines fan meeting with the schedule of the players and the benefits of the audience to buy tickets is the exchange with the players after the match. Therefore, it is possible to understand the disappointment of the audience when not being able to witness the familiar player playing. In addition, the exchange afterwards without Gumayusi also contributed to “adding oil to the fire”.
But also from here, the dark side of the “idol turned” the player was clearly revealed. In other sports, it is normal for stars to sit out for BHL to conduct a tactical test. It was Faker in the past that often rotated with Easyhoon for coach Kkoma to test tactics.
In the past, Faker had rotated with Easyhoon.
However, the current League of Legends in Korea in particular is very different from the time when Faker or anyone of SKT T1/T1 can be pushed to the bench. There will be many viewers to cheer on a team just for 1, 2 players in the team. It is also because the fan meeting activities helped these fans to buy tickets more. Therefore, when T1 wanted to turn the “idol” players, serving the fans as much as they could be what they had to do.
But T1 did not meet the requirements of fans in the early announcement of Gumayusi's absence. Fans may also understand the problem of testing, but what they need is a notice and T1 does not meet this.
But when T1 wants “Idol Hoa”, they must serve the fan as much as possible to ensure the rights of both parties, especially fans.
The LCK Cup itself does not affect too much of the main prizes like MSI or Worlds. And it is the LCK BTC that also determines that this prize has one of the purpose of Fearless Draft testing. The move of T1 for professional sports is easy to understand, but if they have an early notice, then perhaps everything is not to the point of controversy, but in the end, Gumayusi and Smash are the people who are under the most pressure.