Yiliang ‘Doublelift’ Peng has launched a scathing attack on CLG for their oversight when handling jungler Jake ‘Xmithie’ Puchero’s visa, back before the 2015 League of Legends World Championship.
The retired AD Carry took to his stream on September 1 to comment on a Reddit thread mentioning that, despite having the highest number of Worlds appearances of any player at eight, he was only able to make it out of the group stage once, when he played as a support for Epik Gamer back in Season 1.
Doublelift put much of the blame for CLG’s early exit at the 2015 Worlds on the management for how they handled Filipino-American jungler Xmithie’s visa for the event, which was held across four European countries: France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Germany.
After coasting through the NA LCS Summer playoffs, CLG secured the region’s top seed at Worlds. However, the team’s preparations for the event were far from ideal: Xmithie was a doubt until the last minute, with CLG announcing at one point that the jungler would miss the event due to “unresolvable visa issues”.
“Xmithie got f**ked on his visa because CLG was the worst org in existence,” Doublelift said.
“We had to scrim the entire bootcamp with [substitute mid-laner] HuHi jungle or Xmithie on 300 ping. It was a really bad time.”
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The issues
Xmithie still made it to Worlds through the efforts of the community and the Philippine eSports Organization, but CLG finished third in the group — which also included Flash Wolves, KOO Tigers and paiN — with a 2-4 record.
According to Doublelift, CLG simply started the visa application process for Xmithie too late.
“We’re about to qualify for Worlds, we’re going to the [NA LCS] final,” he said. “The organization had like a week or a month to apply for his visa so that we can go to Worlds in case we win.
“The org is so dogsh*t that they didn’t even think about it until after we went to the bootcamp. We just won and we’re so hyped for Worlds and they’re like, ‘Actually, bad news, guys. We didn’t apply for the visa and it looks like Jake is potentially not going to play at Worlds’.
“We’re like, ‘What the fuck? You guys have one job.’ That was crazy. I was super mad.”
Doublelift ended up leaving CLG after that event and went on to play for Team Liquid and TSM, adding seven more LCS titles to his name before retiring from professional play in November 2020.
