Zven apologizes for not shaking hands with Yeon after LCS win: ‘I was a bit out of line’

Cloud9 faced off against Team Liquid today in their last game of week four of the LCS Spring Split, a crucial game for both teams. A win for C9 would tie them for second with Evil Geniuses after a shaky start to super week, while Liquid wanted to break out of the middle of the pack, currently in the bottom half of the standings. After 41 minutes of action, C9 emerged victorious, with support player Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen exchanging heated words with his opponents afterwards.

Walking over to shake Team Liquid’s hands, Zven opted not to shake hands with the bot lane, simply stating “back to academy”, firing shots at Sean “Yeon” Sung, who had previously played in Team Liquid Academy since 2020 before his promotion to the main roster.

So I’d like to apologize to TL and Yeon and thank them for firing me up, made the match more exciting👍 gg
— Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen (@Zven) February 18, 2023

Zven later apologized for his actions on Twitter, stating that he found it distasteful to trash talk mid-game, but realized how his response was also out of line. Yeon later replied, finding no offense from Zven’s actions and explaining how he likes to keep the trash talk in-game.

The first all-chat incident of the match started with C9’s mid, Dimitri “Diplex” Ponomarev, who typed “xDDDDD” after securing an advantage in the laning phase. Incensed, Yeon fired back after an early game tower dive at bot lane and the fight for the second drake, which extended Liquid’s lead to a 2,000 gold advantage and four kills to C9’s one. Yeon proceeded to call C9 “worse than our academy team” in all chat, confident with his 1/0/3 score on Lucian as TL extended their lead.

Despite the rough start, C9 rallied back at the fourth drake, taking two kills and a subsequent Baron at 26 minutes, flipping the gold lead in their favor. C9 would go on to finish the game with this momentum as Zven claimed his 1900th LCS career assist and a 1/2/10 score on Rakan.

C9 returns in week five of the LCS as the third match on Thursday, Feb. 23, viewable on the official LCS Youtube and Twitch channels. They will face Golden Guardians, who also won big in super week with a 3-0 record, starting the second round robin of the Spring Split.