Kazu
Name: Kazuta Suzuki
Birthday: May 25, 1994
Role: head coach
Kazu is a veteran in the LJL scene, he has been around since the LJL’s formation in 2014… in one way or another. He often switched between being a support and a coach, even just as recent as in 2021. For the LJL 2021 Spring Split, DFM signed the star mid laner Aria, but Steal still needed another split for his residency. Because of that, Kazu played most of Spring instead DFM’s main support, but they still won LJL and had the memorable MSI 2021, where he beat C9 and got really close to beating the reining world champions, Damwon. But, after the split, Steal got his residency, and Kazu went back coaching for good (for now?).
He’s one of the most respected Japanese coaches, guiding DFM to the historic Group Stage appearance at Worlds 2021, and giving them the 5th LJL title in a row in 2023 Spring.
With that being said, even in coaching, he changed roles a few times, he used to be DFM’s secondary coach, but after the team’s slump, he stepped into the head coach position and stayed there since. He described the change as “the team likes to troll, so they need someone who is also a little bit of a troll, and play with less seriousness”.
Running storylines with Kazu
Kazu was known for retiring a lot. Between 2014 and 2015, his role often changed, being DFM’s analyst or support, until he retired as a player and fully coached DFM in 2016 Spring. But his first retirement wasn’t long-lived, as he returned to play support for SCARZ in 2016 Summer and stayed there for 2 splits, before switching teams and playing for V3 Esports until the end of 2018 Spring. Going into 2018 Summer, he retired as a player, and joined DFM’s coaching team, but had to return to playing again in 2021, when DFM acquired the star mid laner Aria, and needed a resident support player, until their jungler, Steal, got his residency. After a memorable MSI run though, he (once again) retired from playing and since then Kazu is DFM’s coach. He often joked about coming back once again, posting tweets such as “If I wrote something like I’ll play as a player, you would think I’m just joking. So I’ll say, I’ll be a coach tomorrow, let’s go!”.
Kazu was born in France and lived there until collage. He spoke Japanese at home, as well as both French and English in his everyday life. Because of that, he’s fluent in all 3 languages, and gave interviews in French and English too, besides his Japanese ones.
Kazu is a big poker fan. He has been playing poker for a long time, which recently gained popularity among many LJL pros. After winning DFM’s 15th title, during his off days he entered 3 different poker tournaments, from which he won all of them.
After the Finals, Kazu revealed that DFM were scrimming VCS teams Saigon Buffalo and GAM Esports throughout the Playoffs. After GAM Esports won VCS, Coach HanKay shared on his Twitter that DFM were the best scrim partners. These interactions sparked the friendship between the two coaches, and later on HanKay also joined Kazu’s MSI Draw Show reaction stream, saying “DFM is very good friend to GAM so I wish both of us can play well this MSI!”
Later on, when Kazu found out they will face PSG and have to cancel their scrims, he asked HanKay in chat if they could scrim, which he refused since GAM had “football day”.
Then, both coaches joked about having football scrims in London, as well as Valorant, Lost Ark, Overwatch scrims (everything, but League of Legends), which cemented the DFM – GAM friendship even more.