Cloud9 have found their midlaner. Hailing from Hanwha Life Esports (HLE) Challengers, Lee "Loki" Sang-min will be making his Tier 1 debut in North America next year, according to Sheep Esports sources. After failing to qualify for Worlds 2024, Cloud9 (C9) moved quickly to replace the star carries it lost — once again, the perennial North American organization is making its title ambitions clear. C9 also considered Kang "Saint" Sung-in, midlaner for Dplus KIA Challengers, for the position.

Loki entered the Korean competitive circuit at the start of 2022 with HLE Academy, the Tier 3 roster of Hanwha Life Esports. After only one split in the LCK Academy Series, he was moved up to HLE Challengers as a substitute under Jo "Roamer" Woo-jin, HLE's starting midlaner at the time. After warming the bench for most of 2022 and 2023, Loki was promoted to starting midlaner following Roamer’s move to Team Liquid Challengers for the 2024 season. Loki had a decent inaugural year in the LCK Challengers, with fourth-place and sixth-place finishes in the Spring and Summer playoffs respectively. His most played champions in 2024 were Azir, Tristana, and Yone with 11 unique champions (min. 3 games played).

Things don't always go according to plan

2024 was supposed to be Cloud9’s year. The return of Philippe "VULCAN" Laflamme along with the addition of Joseph "jojopyun" Pyun shot the team up to the top two on every preseason power ranking. A shaky regular season and a third-place exit from the Spring Playoffs led to the benching of C9 veteran Ibrahim "Fudge" Allami and the departure of head coach Alfonso "Mithy" Aguirre Rodríguez. To fill their shoes, the organization brought in Park "Thanatos" Seung-gyu from Dplus KIA Challengers and returning head coach Bok "Reapered" Han-gyu.

With the mid-season changes and a format change to best-of-threes, Cloud9 showed signs of a return to form, securing the second seed and a first round bye coming into the Summer playoffs. Unfortunately, their form didn't last long — they lost 1-3 to FlyQuest in the upper bracket and then had their season ended early by 100 Thieves in four games in the lower bracket. For C9, 2024 was an unacceptable failure.

Two weeks following the end of Cloud9’s season, Sheep Esports reported Kim "Berserker" Min-cheol was set to leave the team after three years with the organization. Just four weeks later, it was reported that jojopyun will play for KOI next year — a historic move set to make him the first North American starting player in the LEC. The loss of two superstar carry players left C9's roster feeling unstable heading into a year of change in North America. Their first addition was Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen, returning in his original role as AD Carry. Days later, Nicholas "Inero" Smith was chosen to be the Assistant Coach under Repeared. With only one spot left to fill, the team has settled on Loki to round out the roster. With the majority of the team remaining intact, only time will tell if Cloud9 can return to their former glory.

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