London-headquartered esports organisation Excel Esports have today announced their League of Legends roster for the 2023 LEC season.
Excel have made a number of changes to their team, having retained the services of bot-laner Patrik and bringing new players in to the other positions.
The roster features:
- Top: Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu (Romania)
- Jungle: Andrei “Xerxe” Dragomir (Romania)
- Mid: Vincent “Vetheo” Berrié (France)
- Bot: Patrik “Patrik” Jírů (Czech Republic)
- Support: Raphaël “Targamas” Crabbé (Belgium)
Excel have let go of their former players Markoon, Nukeduck (who has gone to 100 Thieves), Finn (who left for Astralis) and Mikyx, who they signed in January 2022.
With this latest round of signings, Excel said they hope to ‘build upon its success in the previous spring and summer splits’, where Excel finished in fifth and sixth place, respectively.
Excel reached the LEC playoffs for the first time in early 2022, then Excel reached the Summer LEC 2022 playoffs too, but didn’t manage to progress from either.
Vetheo was named MVP in the LEC 2022 spring season, with the most eliminations in the league, and Targamas supported his former team G2 Esports in becoming champions of the LEC 2022 Summer Season in what was his first year in the competition.
Excel have also retained Youngbuck and Nelson as head coach and coach respectively:
The team is also backed by former Astralis Jungler Xerxe, who has been competing in major global League of Legends tournaments since 2016, and Odoamne, another veteran and former 2022 LEC Summer Season champion, who has competed in 478 games across his decorated career.
These players are joined by Patrik, who has remained a core part of the team and has helped push Excel to new heights since joining in 2019.
Excel can also reveal that they have invested in a new HQ for the team located in Berlin, Germany that will help to support its development and performance in future competitions. This HQ will act as a homebase for the team and its resources will be used for training and creating media content. More details on the new HQ will be released in the future.
Tim Reichert, COO at Excel Esports, said:
“Whilst we are proud of how we performed this year, we believe that this new roster has what it takes to help fulfil our vision of being a top three ranking team in the 2023 season.”
Tim Reichert, Excel Esports
“Players such as Vetheo and Odoamne represent such a diverse mix of talent, and we can’t wait to see how the team will perform when unified together under the Excel brand starting with the Winter Season early next year.”
The news comes after Excel left the NLC and disbanded their academy team, JD XL.
The NLC is the EMEA Regional League (ERL) for the UK, Ireland, Malta and Nordic countries.
In other recent Excel news: Excel Esports announce women’s Valorant team
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.
