100 Thieves jungler William ‘Meteos’ Hartman has explained why he thinks Cloud9 replacing Zachary ‘Sneaky’ Scuderi is “the biggest mistake they could make.”
Cloud9 made one of the more controversial changes of the off-season heading into 2020 when they announced that they had replaced long-time bot laner Sneaky with former TSM player Jesper ‘Zven’ Svenningsen.
Sneaky was the last remaining member of the original Cloud9 LCS line-up of 2013 – which also featured Meteos – that was still with the team, but he faced quite a lot of criticism over the 2019 season by viewers who saw him as one of the weaker links in the roster.
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Having competed as the bot laner for one of the top teams in the league over so many years, however, many also felt that Sneaky could still be a valuable piece of the team, and with Zven himself having at times underwhelmed on TSM, the change wasn’t met entirely with approval from fans.
It seems Meteos shares that sentiment, as during a player roundtable ahead of the start of the LCS Spring split he explained why he thinks Cloud9 have made a big mistake.
“Getting rid of Sneaky is the biggest mistake they could make, because this dude is insanely good. He will handle any situation you give him. If you give him resources he will hard carry, if you put him in the worst situation possible he’ll make the best out of it.”
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Sneaky even had numbers to back his position up, stating that for Summer 2019 Cloud9 had the lowest jungle proximity to bot lane of any team, suggesting Sneaky had less support than most bot lane players.
Meanwhile, most other teams followed the lead of Team Liquid and put a lot of focus into the bot lane, meaning that Sneaky would often have been playing with a significant disparity in jungle pressure between himself and his opponents.
“If you look at C9’s stats from last split, they had the lowest jungle proximity to bot lane of any team. TL is a team that only plays bot lane, and everyone copies TL, so it’s like you’re playing 2v3 the whole game and they’re still taking TL to game five in the finals. Sneaky is insanely good and he’s been criminally underrated for pretty much his whole career. I think the fact that they finally got rid of him, I can’t imagine it’s going to be an upgrade.”
Meteos discussing Sneaky starts at 7:12 for mobile viewers.
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Unfortunately for fans of Sneaky, after being replaced on Cloud9 he won’t be appearing in the LCS for the coming season, instead choosing to become a full-time streamer for the time being.
That being said, he has also stated that this decision “is not a permanent retirement,” and that he might return to professional play in future should the right opportunity arise.
