Esport – League of Legends – Caps: “We have a method to get there”

“Together with G2 Esports, you’ve just won the LEC – the winter segment of the European Championship League of Legends, of which you were huge favorites beating MAD Lions KOI (3-1) in the finals. What is the prevailing feeling after this victory?
Rasmus “Caps” Winter: I’m very happy, indeed. But there are many lessons to be learned from this final. MDK played really well, caught us off guard. We are going to take a week off there, so it would be easy to forget about it, but I think it can really help to get stronger for spring break.

You didn’t expect this much resistance from MDK?
They played really well and I didn’t expect them to do so well. They were very aggressive. We were thinking about how they could play early in the game and they always found an unexpected way to attack us. After the first defeat Game, we started feeling a little tense, however we managed to calm down for the next one. We haven’t shown the face I like.

At least this match was fun, which isn’t always the case, because we felt weak. We had a bit of a scare, third and fourth were close… these are great matches to win and that’s why I’m very happy with the end result.

Even if you are sometimes put in trouble, you still seem to benefit by a good margin after a quarter of an hour of play has passed, especially Team battles…
That’s for sure, or at least that’s the feeling after this final. We were a lot better than them in the endgames, which was one of our big focuses in training this year. There’s still work to be done, but it’s definitely something we’ve improved on. Perhaps it was to our detriment Early Games

Where we are sometimes overwhelmed… we have to think about it.

How much did this spring break mean to the team? You have never hidden the fact that your aims are more international…
It was really important. We already have a spot in the Mid-Season Invitational (a mid-season international tournament, for which G2 qualified due to this victory), It’s really good for the club, because they can already start organizing the logistics. And as a team, our goal is to win as much as possible, to advance as much as possible.

You talk a lot about your performance during these finals, but are you satisfied with your winter segment overall? You finished first in the regular season and lost just two games in the play-offs…
As seekers, we never want to say we are satisfied otherwise we quickly become complacent. There are endless things we can improve on. on the whole division, we identified a few issues that we needed to fix, which luckily didn’t cost us. I’m still happy with the win, first place in the regular season, but I think we have to do better. And we all want to do better.

It’s been years since we’ve done anything at Worlds and MSI. Even last year, when we were very dominant in Europe, we did not come close to a good result. There is definitely a long way to go if we want to beat the best teams in the world.

Even though I don’t want to downplay our performance and I’m very happy with the work my team has done this winter, I think we have to do better, learn from our play-offs and our finals… we haven’t had any. limit, we will continue to progress again and again.

Do you already feel like you’ve moved on from last year? To be better than the G2 of the summer of 2023?
I think we have made a lot of progress. Our understanding of the game is really good and what we can do with it is also a little better. We understand what it takes to be the best and this is already the first step. We’re still a long way from there, but at least we have a method to get there. Earlier we lacked this, when we destroyed our matches, we destroyed our training and we thought we were reaching the top.

There are still a lot of glaring bugs to fix, and with all that in mind, I’m already looking forward to the spring split. I’m having a lot of fun playing right now.

Do you think the lack of adversity in Europe could be a hindrance to your progress? For a year and a half, you seem unrivaled…
It’s not the best split in league history, that’s for sure. But everyone is really trying to improve. MDK’s development for example is crazy, and from what I hear behind the scenes, it’s because they invest so much. Last year, Romain (Bigard, Team Manager) Started posting stats of teams canceling training in front of us: since then, it’s come a long way, people are taking Screams More seriously. There is still work to be done, but other teams have woken up and seen that there is work to be done.

I also think we’ve never lost at Worlds or MSI because of the low level of our region, at least in my opinion. If we lose, it is because we did not try hard enough or were not creative or innovative enough.

Now that you’ve confirmed your spot at MSI, will your approach to the spring segment change? Will this allow you to experiment with new things in your matches?
I think we will do the same things, but it will be less stressful. If we had lost the final, apart from the disappointment, we had a sense of urgency to find out what went wrong.

There, we can be more relaxed. Not distracted, but focused on the long term. We’ll be able to use the regular season to try things out, which we’ve already done this winter, where we’ve focused on ourselves. midgames And it really paid off after a few weeks. Once I get to MSI I’m ready to take one step back and two steps forward. »