Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam recently re-joined Cloud9’s League of Legends team as an assistant coach, but the 23-year-old almost played in the LCS under a different banner this season.
Zeyzal was just a few steps away from joining Dignitas for the year, he admitted in an interview with Esports.GG. He had to back out at the last minute due to personal reasons, though.
“By all means, I had pretty much reached verbal confirmation that I would be starting for Dignitas,” Zeyzal said when discussing the offseason. “We pretty much went through to the last day where I got the contract.”
Deals like these rarely fall through at the last moment in the LCS. But Zeyzal had a justifiable reason to back off. “Without giving too much detail, death in my family kind of shook things up,” he explained.
Without a team for the 2022 LCS Spring Split, Zeyzal remained on the market before joining C9 as an assistant coach. While the official announcement was made on July 16, he admitted he had been on board with the team since the 2022 LCS Spring Playoffs. “The idea was like preparing to see if I wanted to be onboarded for next split,” he said.
Zeyzal didn’t immediately make a big impact when he joined C9, however. He explained he didn’t want to change the team’s dynamics and gameplay during the playoffs and just wanted to reinforce “good habits.”
Right now, Zeyzal is “focused 100% on coaching,” but hasn’t ruled out a return to competing in the future.
