In a media scrum after League of Legends Japan League (LJL) representatives DetonatioN FocusMe were kicked out of contention in the Mid-Season Invitational 2022, DFM Head Coach Kazuta “Kazu” Suzuki shared some of his thoughts regarding their journey and future.

Q: Kazu, you’ve been with DFM off and on for a long period of time; can you tell us a little bit about your growth as a coach over the years, and the growth of DFM as an organization?

Kazu (translated): So as a coach, I believe it was eight years ago I first joined DFM, and I think I became a coach four years ago. And I’ve gotten to experience a lot, both as a coach and as a player in the team. And as a team performance, we get to, win a lot of domestic leagues, and we get to lose domestic leagues a couple times as well, but we get to improve our performance over the years, and last year, I think we had good international result. And the new member that recently we had, they’re fitting to the team pretty well, and I think we’re doing okay as a team at this moment.

Q: What are some of the learning points you’re going to take from MSI and apply to the summer split?

Kazu (translated): One thing I can assure is that obviously it reflected on our result at MSI, but I think we have big problem on our strategy after mid-game, so we need to work on that and prepare for the next split.

Q: Today ends DFM’s MSI run, but you have fans all over the world. What would you like to say to them?

Kazu (translated): So, I honestly think that we disappointed a lot of fans all over the world,  but we would like to reflect on our performance, and then improve it, win the summer, and come back to Worlds.

Q: In the last game, what do you think was the decisive mistake your team made that — so that Team AZE managed to reverse the advantage and get the victory?

Kazu (translated): So, the biggest mistake that  I can think of is the, around the second tower in the mid. We won the team fight, and we got the inhib, and we should have recalled that – right there, but the team decided to stay and tried to get the Baron, and, not be able to get the Baron and result in to that – that ultimate fight that we lost with a lot of gold in our pocket, and I think that was the turning point of the game.

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