It wouldn’t be a VALORANT offseason for Cloud9 without just a little bit of drama. For the second season in a row, the team made more than one late roster move that caught fans off guard. Now though, the team looks to capitalize on the sophomore season of one of last year’s breakout stars in Francis “OXY” Hoang.
At VCT Americas’ Media Day, C9 coach Ian “Immi” Harding spoke to Insider Gaming about OXY’s year two expectations and the new additions to the roster. He also spoke about the necessary culture shift that C9 needs to reach the next level.
The following interview has been edited slightly for clarity and length.
IG: A breakout season for OXY last year. What are you hoping to see him do more of in 2025?
This year we’ve been working on a lot of his teamplay, his comms, him actually saying what he wants to do in a round. He has a really good read on the game, but last year he was still getting used to using his own voice. Discipline as well; when we have those two-man advantages, we don’t want him throwing his life away because he wants to get the clip.
We’ve been working around him a lot, and he’s playing an overall better game right now.
IG: Another new addition is v1c, who had a stellar campaign with Shopify. What about his game did you see that you think will impress on the tier one level?
One of the things I feel we lacked last year was firepower and good attitudes. With him he has a great attitude, and great comms which I didn’t expect when trialing. He mid-rounds, he has great ideas, he always wants to help out the coaching staff, he watches VODs back.
But he can shoot. He can really shoot. Now we have shooters on this team. That was the big thing. For smokes players, it was [between] him and Zander, but we didn’t even get a chance to try out Zander. I think all the players that have come in are helping the coaching staff, whereas last year it wasn’t quite like that; we would bring some ideas and they would just get shut down.
IG: Were there specific players that weren’t receptive to ideas and weren’t providing enough firepower?
I don’t want to name names, but the team’s the team now. I just think our culture last year, which I can be to blame too as well for, wasn’t the best. And this year this is something we’ve really worked on; myself, Guglielmo “GUGLi” Carraro, and especially Mitchell “mitch” Semago coming in. The culture of the team is much, much stronger and in a better position.
[With mitch], it’s still early days, and we’re still learning a lot about each other, but it’s very good. He’s a similar caller to vanity; he can read the game really well. But the things he brings outside the game: he always wants to work on stuff, he wants to work on fundamentals, he wants to make sure we’re not losing ecos. We’re very in sync with that now. He’s bringing out the best of me and I hope I’m bringing out the good in him too.
IG: It took more than a few dramatic steps to get to this roster you have now. Now that it’s together though, what makes it stand out compared to previous rosters?
Everyone’s on the same page. We’re having practice days where we’re getting up at 9 am and we’re not finished until 7 pm just because we talk about everything and we’re making sure we’ve got everything right. Obviously a big factor is that we don’t have that much time, and now [a new] agent is coming in.
They just want to win and they’re all young and they’re hungry. And going into the offseason that’s what I wanted: young, hungry players that wanted to win and a leader who would help me set the culture to the way it should be.
Has Cloud9 improved enough to reach the international stage this year? Let us know on the Insider Gaming forum.
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