Peacemaker’s Undeserved Hate!
Topic: Peacemaker coach recent events; CS:GO
Luis Tadeu, better known as peacemaker, is a former Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player and now Global Offensive coach. Ahead of recent news stating that he was let go from the Complexity roster, he has received a substantial amount of hate, most commonly coming in the form of calling him a “team destroyer” and giving him the nickname “troublemaker.” Here is why we don’t agree and think those negative comments are exaggerated.
Recent News
On November 30th, Complexity announced via their Twitter page that they were parting ways with their head coach peacemaker, marking the end of his short-lasting four months on the team. Following many player changes in 2021 and albeit now finally separating from their entire roster (with the exception of Justin “jks” Savage, who remains on the bench and is set to leave soon), Complexity Gaming will not be leaving the scene as they are close to signing current Copenhagen Flames, sources told EsportFire. As for peacemaker, however, there have been many rumors flying around saying that he will likely join the fully Brazilian “Last Dance” (among others reported by Dextero.com) team which currently consists of four out of five players as it stands on December 5th, 2021:
- Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo
- Fernando “fer” Alvarenga
- Ricardo “boltz” Prass
- Lincoln “fnx” Lau
- ???
- Luis “peacemaker” Tadeu (Coach)
Further evidence proving that is not only the timing of all players being teamless and the constant teasing on social media, but also during one interview peacemaker did with HLTV.org near the beginning of 2021, where he was asked that if he had the ability to build his own team, would he pick players from Brazil or other countries, to which he responded to: “I would love to work with Brazilian players, and one of my ambitions for the future is to work with a Brazilian team. It’s where I came from and I didn’t stay in the scene as much as I would have liked."
Big Heart, Bigger Brain
If you were told something negative about s1mple from a random person on Twitter but something positive from electronic, who would you believe? Of course, any sane person would agree that electronic is a more credible and trustworthy source as he has been teammates with s1mple, knows him on a personal level, and is far more aware and knowledgeable of any incident that may occur rather than getting an incorrectly painted picture as an outsider would. That was the exact reaction of the public ever since peacemaker’s negative reputation first came about several years ago— while the Twitter keyboard warriors mostly reiterated each other’s two or three mostly invalid points, the people who actually knew peacemaker spoke up and stood on his side.
So, although it may look like that peacemaker is hated following the comments he received on social media and Twitter especially, he is actually a very well-liked and respected figure within the entirety of the Counter-Strike community. There was nothing but positive comments from his former teammates and players regarding him:
Jakob “JuGi” Hansen, one of peacemaker’s teammates back during their time on Heroic in 2018 came out of a two-week inactivity period on Twitter to stand by his former coach, stating: “peacemaker is one of the greatest out there. You gotta respect this guy with the work [and] effort he put into the game and [he has] always been a good teammate.”
Fellow Danish Patrick “es3tag” Hansen (not related to JuGi), who also played under the coaching of peacemaker with the 2018 Heroic roster, further emphasized on JuGi’s points: “I would like to say he’s a hard-working coach who will put his heart and soul into any project … all the hate is severely unjustified,” Patrick added.
Not only were such statements made from his former teammates, but from staff and other esports personalities that don’t necessarily wield as big of a platform yet have an opinion that is just as valuable as that of a player; Complexity’s CS:GO General Manager Graham Pitt made it very clear that none of the trouble the org’s roster ran into was peacemaker’s fault, tweeting out: “Really key to note that peacemaker doesn’t hold any responsibility for the demise of the previous roster and the whole narrative that he destroys teams is ridiculous.” He also added onto what JuGi and es3tag aforementioned: “He [peacemaker] was an exceptional coach who put his heart and soul into the team to try and make it succeed.”
So, while he has consistently put in his maximum effort, it clearly wasn’t his fault, at least not entirely. The issues must have lied within the whole team, and while they are all individually talented, the team chemistry just wasn’t there, which could be seen as one of the core weaknesses of the roster, and is also the reason why Complexity is now choosing to acquire an entire roster that has been playing together for several months now.
While k0nfig and blameF are a very strong duo, especially showing that after being picked up by Danish powerhouse Astralis, their surrounding environment wasn’t so great. An Australian jks, a Blugarian poizon, and a Brazilian Coldzera seemed like another Cloud9 Colossus roster that on paper, hosted players with great individual firepower and statistics, but when on the server unfortunately could not perform up to expectations. That is why, after Complexity briefly brought in es3tag and made their roster 3/5 Danish, they immediately saw stronger results and became a hot topic for a couple of events until it was later revealed that they were already planning on revamping their roster. Still, they are choosing to sign the fully Danish rising Copenhagen Flames roster, who showed some very promising performances before and during the 2021 PGL Stockholm Major. It will be interesting to see how that squad will perform under the new team banner.
False Allegations
Peacemaker has never “destroyed” a team. Simple as that. Admittingly, he never considerably elevated one either; but to go as far saying he was the main cause of a roster’s failure is a huge exaggeration that is blatantly false. As a coach, he has been on exactly 10 teams since the end of 2015 and he will likely be joining his 11th soon; but let’s take a look at his bigger name organizations and how their results compared before and after peacemaker joined.
Tempo Storm, a fully Brazilian team at the time consisting of HEN1, LUCAS1 SHOOWTiME, felps, and boltz, was the first strong team that peacemaker was signed to as a coach. Before joining Tempo Storm, the team had played 8 events together, only placing 1st in two of them (25%), one of which was an Open qualifier event, and the other being a B-tier tournament. Comparatively, after joining the team on February 10th of 2016, the core played 12 events, placing 1st in 6 of them (50%), one of which was the S-tier CEVO Pro League Season 9, where they took down SK Gaming 3-1 in the finals. Additionally, in the final 2 events that the then coachless team played in 2016 after pacemaker left Tempo Storm, they placed 1st and 2nd in two A-tier events; it is important to note those as his coaching effects were still in play since both events were only played within a couple of weeks of peacemaker’s departure. Overall, he had good coaching success on his first serious team that was unfortunately short-lived following a mutual agreement that it would be best for him to step down from the team.
On Team Liquid, peacemaker had to make the adjustment of playing on a team that would be facing off against around the board stronger opponents; and while they had a couple good runs, it wasn’t enough for the Dutch org. He competed in five S-tier events and on average, finished in 7th place (inflated statistic due to a 22nd place finish serving as an outlier). Peacemaker’s most notable event on Team Liquid was taking them to their and their region’s first major final but unfortunately, they only finished as runner-up at ESL One: Cologne 2016. Credits where they’re due, while peacemaker was an important piece to reaching the final stages of the tournament, a lot of the team’s success is thanks s1mple, the Ukrainian prodigy who was brought in hopes of winning a major for both himself and the organization.
Perhaps his shortest stint, lasting only three weeks, his time on NRG Esports was very short-lived due to conflicts that appeared after NRG was in the process of refurbishing their roster, all later explained as due to having “separate vision for the future,” per Liquipedia. He only had the time to coach for two minor events, where they finished 5-6th in one and 8th in the other. This can be very much compared to his time on Complexity, where he was not the one in full control of the roster changes and after players went in and out of the team and not being given the time to adapt, he was parted ways with after a short period of time, proving a recurring problem in NA CS.
His next team was not any better; he only spent two months on Misfits Gaming and despite leading the team to a handful of podium finishes, they were not any significant events but were still slightly better than the 4th-6th average placement across before peacemaker’s joining. Again, not his fault but rather overall poor management whether it be from the organization itself or just unfortunate situations that he kept being placed in with zero control over.
Next, during his time with TyLoo, his team’s best result was a 2nd place finish at the Asia Minor Championship in Boston of 2018; but besides that, a first place in the C-tier was of no value or meaning to a team that is supposed to be China’s top talent representative. Peacemaker came out with a TwitLonger post and was open about the struggles of the team, claiming that a “huge difference in style and mainly the language barrier” were the two main obstacles they could not overcome on top of health issues getting in the way of the Brazilian coach.
Then came Heroic, which he was able to represent for half a year. During this time he was actually improving the team by quite a margin, and in all of the 10 events he coached for them, they had two 1st place finishes, four 2nd place finishes, and never placed below 4th place (with the exception of the 10th tournament, ESL Pro League S7, where they finished 8th. He was immediately dropped after the poor Pro League results but then brought back about half a year later for a slightly longer eight months, where unfortunately the team scored no achievements worthy of mention.
Finally, it was Mad Lions, the only team who offered him a home for over a year, and ironically the team he was most successful with; which albeit being one tournament, was still a massive achievement for the team. He was able to win the premier season of Flashpoint, beating out the likes of Cloud9, MIBR, Chaos EC, GEN.G Esports, Copenhagen Flames, and more. Moreover, they took home a fruity $500,000! He eventually left the team after his contract was terminated later that year.
His last of the bigger orgs was Complexity until now leading up to his free agency.
Peacemaker And The “Last Dance”
After years of unfortunate events, peacemaker can finally set a name for himself as a tier-1 coach if he is to play with the Brazilian “Last Dance.”
The current four of five anticipated players have all played alongside each other during their times on Luminosity Gaming and SK Gaming and most have even won not one, but two majors. Their team chemistry and bond will instantly be stronger than most tier-2 teams.
Peacemaker has longed for coaching a Brazilian team, and when he will finally be able to coach Counter-Strike legends, he will not have to start from scratch; they’ll have an advantage as he won’t need to bring all of his experience to the table as they all have a lot of previous experience on their own. The youngest expected player on the roster, Ricardo “boltz” Prass, was previously coached by peacemaker back in 2016 under the Tempo Storm banner.
As a coach, peacemaker’s most successful team (excluding the $500,000 won from Flashpoint S1 with Mad Lions) was the fully Brazilian Tempo Storm. Now that he could be back to an environment he is comfortable in, one that has no language barriers and should be stress-free with hundreds of thousands of fans cheering them on, they could be a team to look out for.
Who knows, he may actually be a troublemaker.
Information powered by Liquipedia
