Maurice “Amazing” Stückenschneider has experienced more in his professional competitive League of Legends career than most players, coaches, teams, or anyone else.

From the moment he started competing seven years ago all the way to his current role as academy manager on FC Schalke 04, he’s been through a lot. He’s gone from the Challenger Series to the EU LCS, he’s defended against relegation, he’s been relegated, he’s worked with Riot on the analyst desk, he’s been to Worlds on EU teams and also on TSM, and now, working for Schalke, he’s a manager. You can look across all competitive regions for someone that’s been experienced that much, and you’d be hard-pressed to find them.

Amazing has been playing on a professional competitive level for seven years. Throughout that long career of coaching, playing, it’s not always been great, Amazing told Dot Esports. In fact, looking back, he has quite a few regrets. And if Amazing could go back in time, he’d zero in on one thing that he’d change—his time with TSM.

Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve

Starting in 2014 when he joined TSM’s starting lineup all the way into 2016, Amazing’s career has been intertwined with the North American powerhouse. Amazing had some of the best memories of his career playing with TSM. He said that qualifying for the Worlds in 2014 was his all-time favorite moment in his career (even if the team’s performance at the tournament was a disappointment).

“When we played [LMQ] in the semifinals and qualified for Worlds, I remember just slouching in my chair, falling off of it,” he said. “I remember just sitting there on the floor thinking about how we made it to Worlds. It was such a great moment for me.”

So in 2016, when he declined to rejoin the team to go on for another year on Origen in the EU LCS, it shook him harder than he expected.

“If I could talk to past self in 2016, I would tell myself to join TSM,” Amazing said. “I shouldn’t have joined Origen, that was my bad. And also, I shouldn’t have treated people in my life like replaceable beings. That’s actually something I only learned recently.”

That year was the beginning of the worst stretch in Origen’s history. Just one year after a miraculous tear through Worlds, the team stumbled to the gutter of the EU LCS standings and had to defend their spot in the top league in a promotion tournament that summer.

That year wasn’t just rough for Amazing because he chose the wrong team, however.

“There was a person at the end of 2016 that I didn’t treat correctly that was very supportive of me,” he said, without going into further detail about the relationship. “I should have cherished that person a lot more than I did, and honestly, I should have cherished my work more than I did, too. That’s something I would tell my younger self.”

Struggles with self

Things didn’t really improve for Amazing, however—2017 and 2018 were perhaps even more difficult.

Amazing has spoken out about these years before, primarily on social media, but even that only provides a glance from the outside. It was at this time that he joined the Mysterious Monkeys, and shortly after that, the team tanked. From then until he joined Schalke as the team’s starting jungler halfway through 2018, he struggled to find a spot back in the LCS.

At the same time, he struggled with illness, issues in personal relationships, and a broken sense of self. With all that weighing down, his performances on MM. It would have been a tough go for anyone, and although Amazing says his life has turned around for the better, it’s still a harsh time to revisit.

“Sometimes you press so hard into who you want to be that you lose who you are,” he said. “I had become dishonest with myself for the first time in my life over what I thought I could and couldn’t do, and I ended up overloading myself. Essentially, I ended up being burnt out.”

Dissociation is a disconnection between you and your thoughts, feelings, sense of identity, or memories. Many of us have experienced it, found ourselves acting in a way or in a situation that just doesn’t feel like you. You may not even know who “you” are or what you want, and it can be a difficult feeling to push through. This ate up most of Amazing’s 2017.

Amazing was burnt out—and he’s hardly the first player to feel that way.  In North America, William “Meteos” Hartman and Ryu Sang-wook both took breaks due to burnout in the last couple of years alone.

Amazing points at joining MM as the start, and once the burnout began, everything else followed.

“Once you’ve burnt out, you become incapable of interacting properly with fans, friends, family, your girlfriend, and whatever else,” he said. “That year, I also became quite sick.”

Amazing has Hashimoto’s disease, which causes the immune system to attack the thyroid as if it were a threat to the body. This can lead to some serious issues, including hypothyroidism, which can seriously slow the body’s metabolism.

“Although it’s more in-check now, it wasn’t then,” Amazing said. “Beyond that, I had a girlfriend, we broke up, it was a bad breakup, and that was bad. And then I was basically phased out of the LCS, so it was like three horrible things all came together at the same time.”

Luckily, 2018 eventually turned around for Amazing. Between his good memories on the analyst desk, which he described as feeling less like work and more like “friends hanging out and making a show,” and joining Schalke, the year actually held some of the fondest moments of his career.

The comeback kid

But none of that could top walking into the finals stadium in Madrid with Schalke at the end of the Summer Split. The fans couldn’t get enough of him, chanting his name over and over—even after they lost to Fnatic. This was the only time fans had ever cheered for him so heavily after a loss in his entire career, Amazing said.

The energy the fans brought felt like his reward for leading the team to where they stood. Even in defeat, he felt incredible. So much so that he chose to remain with Schalke in 2019 despite not being offered a starting role on the team. He was moved to the role of head coach and manager of the Academy roster, or, in his words, “playing Football Manager”—a hugely popular soccer management simulation—”in real life.”

“The amount of influence I can have, particularly on other people’s careers, and to help new players become professionals is something I’m really looking forward to,” Amazing said. “Back when I was in their shoes, I didn’t have anyone helping me, but I would have liked to.”

The fact that he gets to grow into this particular role excites Amazing for two reasons. For starters, there’s a load of nostalgia behind working for the Schalke org. The Schalke soccer stadium is very near to his hometown, and he actually grew up with his father working on the stadium as a construction worker. That holds immense sentimental value to him.

He also enjoys working for Schalke because of what he feels the team represents. To Amazing, his team is fueled by honesty, integrity, and hard work, which is exactly what he would like to represent as an individual.

“Schalke brings this hard work mentality that I don’t think many orgs have,” he said. “In NA, you have hard working teams, but it’s too much about social media and showing off. I don’t want to be paid for what my social media is worth. I want to work the hours I need to work, I want to be treated fair and with respect and honesty.”

Honesty and respect are good, but being connected to a traditional sports team doesn’t hurt either. Amazing has big plans for his career post-esports, with a dream to eventually manage a basketball team. Sure, soccer isn’t basketball, but getting his foot in the door of a sports organization is a helpful first step.

Whether he’s in esports or otherwise, Amazing’s regrets, trials, and tribulations have planted him exactly where he is today. He’ll always be someone that looks back and wishes he would have done things differently, he told Dot Esports, but at least he can now enjoy where he’s headed.

All photos via Riot Games

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