What Caps and G2 learnt from MSI 2023 after BLG loss, getting banned from Nando’s, saying ‘innit’ & receiving our East London farewell gift

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Before MSI 2023 got underway in London a couple of weeks ago, in our first Caps interview we spoke to the G2 mid-laner about his team’s chances and East London culture, which led to UK grime artist JME tweeting ‘Man like Caps’.

Yesterday, we got the chance to catch up with Caps again after G2 were knocked out of MSI 2023 by BLG, and asked him about what he learnt from MSI, the upcoming LEC Summer split, Worlds and lots more. Plus, we wanted to give him a London-themed present to mark his experiences here in the UK…

Thanks for talking to me again Caps and it’s sad to see G2 exit MSI 2023. What were your reflections on the match?

Caps: It was definitely a disappointing series because it felt like it was within our grasp.

In most of the games we were kind of falling behind a lot in the early game, but they gave it back to us, we got some good fights, but we weren’t really able to close it out, so it feels disappointing, thinking of what it could have been.

Yeah, that game three teamfight at the end felt like it was the pivotal moment of the series, it looked like you were going to win the game up until that point.

For sure [it was the pivotal moment], I think game one and three were especially winnable, so I’m really sad about those.

I’m also disappointed with our early game because we were falling quite far behind. And while we were getting back into the game against BLG today, I feel like if we had played against Gen.G next, we would probably not have got those openings. So that’s why it’s disappointing.

What have you learned from MSI 2023 in London?

I think this MSI has been good for us, we learned a lot from it, even though it was quite short for us. And I think we took a lot of lessons that we weren’t able to perfect, but we now have all of summer to really optimise it.

In the BLG series, a lot of the things we learned, we kind of unlearned – or weren’t able to execute in the high pressure situation, with all the stress of the game.

But now, with the LEC 2023 Summer Split [approaching], we have a lot of time to get comfortable with that, try and pick up some more things from the LPL and LCK, and hopefully just do better at Worlds.

It sounds like you can be positive going into the summer LEC split, and confident of going to Worlds and maybe making an impact there.

It really sucks losing, but I think our eyes were definitely on Worlds, and I think we have a very obvious way of improving. For me, there are obvious things I can do a lot better on, and I think if I do better on those, and we do better as a team with certain concepts like the LPL and LCK are doing very well, then we’re caught up.

It’s no easy task because the teams we’re playing are really strong, and they’re going to improve before Worlds, so we’re gonna have to improve even more than that.

We have a bar to reach now, and I’m sure the bar will be even higher at Worlds, but as long as we reach that bar, we are at least a bit closer.

I’m going to try and lighten the mood a bit now. When we spoke before, ahead of MSI, about East London culture and grime music, it led to grime artist JME tweeting you saying ‘Man Like Caps’ and Caedrel featuring our interview on his stream. What did you take from that?

Definitely. [G2 jungler] Yike introduced me to JME, because both of us watched some Sidemen – and JME has spent time with the Sidemen.

So Yike introduced me to a lot of his music and it was nice. I think London has been nice to us.

It’s been amazing to see so many fans actually as well, there is a surprising amount of fans around and it’s been awesome!

I really liked it, I would love to stay another week and win the final, but it is what it is.

You said to me before that the home crowd would be important, do you feel like they really got behind you well here at the Copperbox Arena in London?

The crowd was nice for us, especially in these kind of games where we were messing up early and falling very far behind, it feels very bad. But having the crowd cheer for you makes it a lot more hype and energetic, and when you lose games like that third game, or when there’s pauses and stuff like that, it nulls it.

All these moments, it feels really insane to have the crowd cheering. I’m just regretful we didn’t win and we didn’t do better.

We interviewed Hans Sama at MSI the other day, and he didn’t know what Nando’s was. What’s your Nando’s order of choice?

So actually we weren’t allowed to go to Nando’s, because it was like fried chicken, so we were banned from it [by G2].

But I’ve been in London before, like seven years ago, I think, back in 2016, so I’m not sure what exact order I would take, but I do like spicy food, so I’d probably go for something pretty spicy!

You did pretty well in my cockney rhyming slang test in our first interview, have you learnt any other slang since being here?

I mean, we like to say ‘innit’ now (laughs), that’s the one we like to add into a few sentences!

That’s great to hear! Thanks for talking to me – is there anything you’d like to add, before I present you with a gift?

It’s been a disappointing month or so, right, after we lost to Mad Lions (in the LEC Spring 2023) and lost again here today, we didn’t really get to do the damage that we wanted to do.

I think we learned a lot, but you can’t really do much with that for now, that’s more for later, so it feels pretty bad, but I will keep my head held high.

I think we still have like half a year and I really want to make good use of it. So, sorry again for what has happened from ourselves so far, but we will try our best to do better and we’re gonna come back strong going into the Summer LEC.

Thanks Caps – and for soaking in the London spirit. As a parting gift from us at Esports News UK to mark your time in East London and our interviews together, here’s a signed copy of ‘Christmas Drillings’ by the Sidemen featuring JME.

Thank you, thank you! Maybe this is the music I’ll listen to when I grind for the LEC summer split!

Dom Sacco

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.