Fnatic Academy tumbled out of the EU League of Legends Challenger Series qualifiers this week.
The team finished at the bottom of group A with four losses and one win, which they picked up against SK Gaming.
So what went wrong for Fnatic’s academy side? Well, they’ve only been playing together for a few weeks, and were only officially announced earlier this month.
It’s worth remembering they only just about made it into the qualifiers. They finished third in the open qualifiers, behind Low Priority and K1ck Black, but with the Fnatic name obviously comes high expectations.
ADC Sébastien “Exork” Lamorte recently admitted in an interview that the Academy team were “far from LCS level – really far”, but still expected them to qualify for the Challenger Series.
On paper, the line-up was impressive. Experienced British jungler Matt “Impaler” Taylor and Fnatic’s former first-team support Johan “Klaj” Olsson were joined by top-laner Jorge “Werlyb” Casanovas and mid-laner Hicham “SozPurefect” Tazrhini. But for some reason, the players didn’t seem to get results on the Rift.
Surprisingly, Klaj was probably the most out of form player in the team. As team captain calling the shots, perhaps the pressure got to him after he left the first team. He started off with a 1/6/4 score in the first game against Low Priority, and other than a decent 1/3/16 score against SK Gaming, didn’t really turn up in the qualifiers.
The carry players didn’t carry and step up where required, and Fnatic were unable to turn things around, crashing out disappointingly in last place.
While it’s likely Fnatic Academy will now disband, it will be a shame for Fnatic to give up on its second team so quickly. Coach Jean-Francois “Nuddle” Caron is already looking for new analyst roles on Twitter as he heads back to his home country of Canada.
Perhaps the roster will be rejigged and, who knows, maybe the team will even be pushed into a national league somewhere.
Misfits, on the other hand, topped group A with four wins and one loss. Formerly known as the Renegades Banditos, the ESL UK Premiership champions will play against ESG tomorrow (Friday May 27th at 2pm CEST) as they attempt to qualify for the Challenger Series proper.
You can see Fnatic’s Challenger Series matches and what went wrong here:
- Fnatic Academy vs Misfits
- Fnatic Academy vs SK Gaming
- Fnatic Academy vs Tricked Esports
- Fnatic Academy vs Melty
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
