It’s been a tumultuous season for Team Liquid fans. But luckily for them, they’re getting some good news as the League of Legends team enters the final week of the 2021 Summer Split.
Jungler Santorin will be making his return to stage play after missing five weeks of competition, Liquid announced today.
The 24-year-old veteran announced in June that he’d be stepping back from the starting lineup due to ongoing medical issues that have plagued him since the 2021 LCS Mid-Season Showdown. Over the past five weeks, Santorin has taken the time to rest, while also visiting multiple specialists to try and figure out the cause of these “debilitating symptoms.”
Liquid’s Academy jungler Armao has been playing in his stead over the course of the season with mixed results. The team has a 13-11 record through the summer but has already locked in a playoff spot with a 25-17 overall record throughout the entire year. Without Santorin, the team has won eight of their last 15 games.
The team was also dealing with the absence of superstar top laner Alphari during a majority of that time period, which made some of their games a lot harder than they might have been with their full roster. These absences, combined with the resignation of Jatt as the team’s head coach, led to a ton of inconsistent performances. Liquid haven’t looked nearly as strong as they did in past seasons, but with their full lineup back in action, we could see an uptick in their play.
This is, however, the last weekend of the regular season. Even though this past summer was elongated due to the new format of the LCS, Liquid fans should hope that three days is enough time for the roster to get back the same level of synergy and cohesion that they showed off in the previous split. It’s also unknown if Santorin will be splitting time with Armao, similar to how Alphari split time with Jenkins in his return to the lineup.
This weekend features a trio of tough matches for Liquid as well, with the team facing off against a surging Immortals squad, a Cloud9 team looking to bounce back after a disappointing loss to TSM, and an Evil Geniuses lineup that’s won seven of their last nine matches.
You can catch Santorin in action when Liquid take the stage against Immortals in today’s second-to-last match on the official LCS channel.
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