In this first of a new weekly series, David Hollingsworth will give you an overview of each team in the 2017 EU LCS Spring Split, with details on confirmed main team rosters and his thoughts on how each team will fare in 2017…
Info
Team: Fnatic
Location: Berlin,Germany
Coach: Nicholas “NicoThePico” Korsgård
Manager: Finlay “Quaye” Stewart
Analyst: Wolfgang “Wolle” Landes
Last Season: 5th
Start of split roster
- Top: Paul “sOAZ” Boyer
- Jungle: Maurice “Amazing” Stückenschneider
- Mid: Rasmus “Caps” Winther
- ADC: Martin “Rekkles” Larsson
- Support: Jesse “Jesiz” Le
Fnatic Academy Team Roster
- Mateusz “Kikis” Szkudlarek
- Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen
- Yasin “Nisqy” Dincer
- Rasmus “MrRallez” Skinneholm
- Johan “Klaj” Olsson
The Fnatic academy will feature former Fnatic players Kikis and Klaj, along with Nisqy from French regional side Team LDLC, and former Elements and Schalke 04 player MrRallez.
Those familiar with the UK scene with notice the former UK ESL Premiership player Broxah, who featured for both Last Remedy and Epiphany Bolt.
Super excited for the future! https://t.co/UJgMWdMznE
— Broxah (@BroxahLoL) December 1, 2016
EU LCS 2017 player preview
Top – Paul “sOAZ” Boyer
sOAZ makes his return to Fnatic for the 2017 EU LCS Spring Split season, having last played for the team back in 2014 and since spent the last two years with Origen.
During his time with the EU side, he enjoyed much success, including beating CLG in the 2015 IEM X San Jose finals, losing out to Fnatic in the 2015 EU LCS Summer finals 2-3 and placing joint 3rd/4th with his former side Fnatic at the 2015 World Championships.
It has not been a bad two years for sOAZ and even with the teleport nerf he never stopped looking like one of the top, top-laners on the EU circuit. Now he is back and hungry to push on with the new-look Fnatic in 2017 and get the side back to its former glory.
Maurice “Amazing” Stückenschneider
Similarly to sOAZ, Amazing also joins his former Origin teammate at Fnatic, filling the role left by Spirit. Amazing had equal success at Origin as sOAZ did.
Amazing has also spent time in the NA LCS with TSM during the 2014 season, coming second in the summer split but clinching first place in the NA worlds playoffs, ending the 2014 World Championships in 5th, as the top western side.
Shortly after leaving TSM, he was picked up by Origin to form their EU LCS team, and has now joined Fnatic in time for the 2017 season.
Mid – Rasmus “Caps” Winther
Caps will be one of less familiar names on this list for people not familiar with the Challenger Series, or the Turkish league.
He might not be a name that gets Fnatic fans jumping to Twitter; Caps has had a relatively short League of Legends career. But Fnatic’s acquisition of Caps could prove to be a real dark horse this split. He has rather large boots to fill in that mid lane after all.
He started out at Inspire eSports in 2015, before moving onto Nerv after the team purchased the Challenger spot of Copenhagen Wolves. He then joined Dark Passage in the TLC, and now his new home is Fnatic.
ADC – Martin “Rekkles” Larsson
Some say he is the best ADC in Europe, others have always said he feeds off his team. I have always liked Rekkles but felt since Yellowstar originally left, Febiven took a leading role in the team, whereas it probably should have been Rekkles who took that role.
Recent Tweets from Rekkles have show his desire to be a leader on the field for Fnatic and in a recent interview with us, he spoke about his desire to give 110%.
Rekkles will be key to this new-look Fnatic line-up. Whether he will be the in-game leader or not is yet to be seen, but he has experience and is clearly someone the organisation will want to hold onto going forward, to build a team around him.
Rekkles will hope for a good season after a slightly off-form 2016, having picked up MVP awards in the previous two splits prior to 2016. So, 2017 will be the year Rekkles steps out of the dark to lead Fnatic.
Check out our Rekkles video interview and his top 3 tips for improving in League of Legends here
I was a lot more involved in the process of rebuilding the team this time around so if you trust me, trust them.
— Martin (@RekklesLoL) November 30, 2016
Support – Jesse “Jesiz” Le
Possibly one of the most leftfield names on the roster is Jesiz. That’s not due to a lack of ability, but most would have seen Jesiz joining as a sign that he would take up a coaching role within the Fnatic. He’s worked as assistant coach at Immortals last season and as an analyst for Team Dignitas before that. His last playing role was ADC for Gamer2 (G2) back in 2015.
No stranger to a role swap, Jesiz has played in the mid role for Team Coast and SK Gaming. The announcement of Jesiz as the new support, however, might make a lot of sense. Having experience as an analyst and coach, Jesiz now playing in support might be the ideal role for an in-game leader, taking the pressure away from Rekkles.
Jesiz might turn a few heads, most won’t even know him in the EU scene but Fnatic could be onto something – and we all know this is a team that always looks to be at the cutting edge of eports.
EU LCS Spring Split 2017 Preview
Fnatic did not have a great 2016, placing 6th in the spring, failing to build on their second-place IEM World Championship finish versus SKT, and their 5th place finish in the summer. Failing to even qualify for 2016 Worlds must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for Fnatic, as they look to change it up in 2017.
Not only has the team given the roster a shake-up, the team are clearly looking to make changes behind the scenes as well: a job listed for a sports psychologist based in Berlin (where the LoL team is based) has been on the web for a while now. So it’s clear they are looking to improve.
That rounds off this preview of Fnatic for the 2017 EU LCS Spring Split. Make sure to let me know on Twitter what team you want to see covered next.
We would like to thank Jacob Wolf for his work revealing the Fnatic line-up ahead of time and giving us the inspiration for this series of articles.