UK organisation exceL Esports have been putting out announcement after announcement since joining the new LEC, there’s risk of this site becoming exceL News UK.
But there’s arguably no bigger story in UK League of Legends right now – and it’s clear to see something special is happening at the org.
Now a swathe of players and management have returned home to exceL Esports (plus some other new faces have joined) ahead of the inaugural League of Legends European Championship (LEC).
Firstly, Joel Holmes-Darby (pictured right), brother of exceL MD Kieran, has returned to the organisation as direct of esports after a stint at Gfinity as franchise lead.
Joel said: “My responsibility will be for the performance side of the business. For me it’s all about our teams, our players, our coaches and our managers. How do we come together as an organisation to take a group of individuals and make them the most effective team they can be?
“I’m most excited to prove ourselves and to the rest of the world we have earnt our way to where we are, and we still have so much more to give.”
In terms of coaching staff, Mapache and AngelArcher (pictured top left) are on board as analysts, with the latter rejoining the organisation.
You can check out our interview with AngelArcher when she was working with Berlin International Gaming (BIG) here.
Furndog and Just Jon retain their positions as head coach and performance coach respectively, with Barnetto as general manager.
It’s also nice to see that the UK League of Legends scene has finally won over Jarge, who has been appointed strategic coach. Unlimited, meanwhile, has joined exceL as academy coach.
Speaking of the academy, exceL have announced five more players. Three of these are returning players: top-laner Send0o, jungler Taxer and ADC Innaxe, while two are new: mid-laner Special and support player Mystiques.
They join the initial five exceL players (most of whom are expected to be the first-team in the LEC). These are Expect, Caedrel, Exileh, Kasing and Jeskla.
“How do we come together as an organisation to take a group of individuals and make them the most effective team they can be?”
Joel Holmes-Darby
Top-laner Send0o said: “Getting the chance to make it back to the biggest European stage with exceL is like a dream come true and working with Expect like back when we were in the same team is an even greater dream come true.
“People will compare the situation to [that of] Soaz and Bwipo, except Expect won’t need to break his arm for me to get some games in with the main team.”
Check out our interview with Send0o from earlier this year here.
exceL now have a pool of ten League of Legends players, meaning there’s more competition for places.
The org will field a team in the LEC and also a team in the LVP UK league, which gets underway in 2019 and will include the likes of Fnatic this time round.
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.
