LOUD's Head Coach Romanilly: "We will make LOUD great again"

The start of the VCT 2026 season has been anything but smooth sailing for LOUD. Despite retaining four out of five players from their VALORANT Champions Tour 2025 - Americas Stage 2 lineup, LOUD is officially the first team eliminated from VALORANT Champions Tour 2026 - Americas Kickoff.

For newly appointed LOUD head coach Gonzalo "Romanilly" Manzano, a lot of their troubling points didn’t come from the level of teams they were up against. Nor did they come from being outplayed in their three matches. Many of their shortcomings stemmed from fundamental “rookie mistakes” that teams usually work past.

“The mistakes that we had were rookie mistakes, but those are things that we only need time to solve,” Romanilly said. “It was complicated with the little time we had.”

The past year and a half has been a difficult period for LOUD, who have struggled to gain any competitive traction since their 4th-place finish at VCT 2024 - Masters Madrid. The team went 1-9 collectively through both VCT Americas stages in 2025. The team’s most recent match victory on stage came during the VCT Americas Stage 2 during their series against Leviatán back in Week 1.

As a result, LOUD swapped out in-game leader Robbie "RobbieBk" Boerkamp and acquired both Sebastián "Darker" Cicuamia and Romanilly from LAZER, hoping these additions to the pre-existing core would be enough to propel this team. Instead, everything heightened pre-existing issues.

“First thing that comes to my mind is the experience that we have with players like cauanzin or pANcada being a world champion,” Romanillly said. “But this is pANcada’s first year as an IGL and cauanzin’s first year as a second caller.”

Constant adaptation and change at the LOUD camp

Several things proved to be stumbling blocks for LOUD. The team's head coach went on to describe the new adaptations players had to make going into VCT Americas Kickoff 2026. From Bryan "pANcada" Luna and Cauan "cauanzin" Pereira assuming leadership positions in the team to newcomer Darker learning to play in a Portuguese-speaking lineup for the first time, the circumstances weren’t there for LOUD to excel in Kickoff.

These especially came to a clash during chaotic moments on the server that require “microsecond” decision-making.

“If you don’t make a decision fast, you are probably going to make a mistake,” Romanilly said. “50-70 percent of our mistakes come from communication, but beyond that it’s also personalities in the team as well.”

“I think we’re still missing a few pieces and a few more things that I would love to practice,” Romanilly said. “It’s just time that we need.”

Struggling to enjoy VCT Americas debut

That lack of time has made it difficult for Romanilly to truly enjoy his VCT Americas debut. Romanilly has established himself as a veteran coach, having gained his first experience by briefly coaching for Leviatán in 2021. Since then, he has established himself as a top coach in Tier-2 Americas through his strong work at 9z Team and EXL. Much of how he built strong lineups came from his natural competitive nature. That “competitive nature” is also why it is difficult for him to enjoy anything about finally making it to the Tier-1 level until he can show results.

“To be honest, I don’t know the city yet because the only thing I’ve been doing here is working,” Romanilly said. “One of my objectives was to get my first win in VCT, and after that, I would go into the city and go to a few places. I don’t know why my head works like that, but my job always needs to come first.”

LOUD head coach Romanilly will now use the two-month break to their advantage as the team aims to fix their “mistakes” ahead of VCT Americas Stage 1 2026. LOUD will be looking to improve upon their 11th-12th place finish at Kickoff as they move forward into the next stage of the year.

“I’m a really competitive person,” Romanilly said. “So until I win at least one game, I think I’m going to stay in my house working every day.”

Regardless, finally making it to the VCT Americas stage as a coach has been nothing but a dream for Romanilly. That dream and LOUD’s trust in him as a coach are why he really wants to help lead the organization back to their winning ways.

“The fan support from LOUD is something that really does heighten everything, and it’s amazing,” Romanilly said. “I really want to be allowed for a long time, and I want to do great things for this organization.”

To close out the interview, Romanilly just had one final message for LOUD fans and supporters to close out his VCT Americas Kickoff 2026 chapter:

“I want to say sorry to the fans. I know these last three matches weren’t what you were expecting,” Romanilly said. “The only thing right now I can say is that we are going to make changes that we need to do to make LOUD great again.”

It will be interesting to see if LOUD can bounce back from their showing at VCT Americas Kickoff 2026 and make a deeper run in Stage 1.

Be sure to follow THESPIKE.GG for more VALORANT esports content like that as teams fight for a spot at VALORANT Masters Santiago.

Cover Image via Sage Datuin with base image via Christan Betancourt