Team Vitality coaches Mac and Pad on new LEC roster, fearless draft and 2025 ambitions: ‘What we want, what we’ve hired for and what we’re coaching for is a team that never gives up – a team that always finds a win’

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Photo by Michal Konkol/Riot Games

With high expectations and fresh talent joining their ranks, Team Vitality are looking to build on their legacy and challenge for top honors in the 2025 LEC season. 

In this interview with Esports News UK, British Head Coach James ‘Mac’ MacCormack and Danish Strategic Coach Patrick ‘Pad’ Suckow-Breum, both of whom started in the UK LoL ecosystem years ago, open up about the team’s preparation for the new season. But first…

Who is on Team Vitality’s 202 LEC roster and staff line-up?

Vitality’s 2025 roster is a mix of fresh faces and seasoned LEC veterans. The new line-up includes standout players from the LFL academy team, such as top-laner Kaan ‘Naak Nako’ Okan (Türkiye) and mid-laner Mateusz ‘Czajek’ Czajka (Poland), alongside returning players like jungler Linas ‘Lyncas’ Nauncikas (Lithuania), bot laner Matyáš ‘Carzzy’ Orság (Czechia), and support Zdravets ‘Hylissang’ Iliev Galabov (Bulgaria).

On the staff side, the coaching duo of Mac (UK) and Pad (Denmark) are joined by coaches Luka ‘Lukezy’ Trumbić (Croatia) and Christophe ‘Kaas’ Oudheusden (Belgium). The former three have past experience in the UK League of Legends scene, on teams like Last Remedy and Bulldog (Mac) and MNM Gaming (Pad and Lukezy), while Kaas was with GiantX in 2024.

Vitality also have French data specialist Milan Morisot, plus German duo Erik Olbrich (team manager) and Andy Zajimovic (esports manager).

Interview with Mac and Pad on new roster and 2025 LEC

ENUK: Hi guys, Nice to see you again! How have you been?

Pad: Very good. Busy, busy, busy! Even though we had a long off-season, there hasn’t been much of a break.

I mean, 2025 is going to be even more chaotic. One of the things I wanted to discuss with you guys is Fearless Draft because that’s going to be insane, and I have no idea how someone like a staff could prepare for that. Can you tell me a bit about what you’ve been working on?

Mac: I think for Fearless Draft, it’s just impossible to predict what it’s going to look like. If you asked me, for example, “Is Fearless Draft going to be a good thing for a player like Adam or a bad thing for a player like Adam?” I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know. I think people’s gut reaction, their knee-jerk reaction, might be that it’s bad for him, but I’m not even sure that’s the case.

I think the only way that you could realistically practice it is by practicing it, right? I don’t think that theory is going to do us much good here—at least for me personally. I think you just have to run a bunch of scrims, practice best-of-fives in Fearless Mode, and see what ends up happening. I don’t know if it’s better for really adaptable players or if it’s better for really specialised players who can blind-pick their best champions and not care about counterpicks. I’m not sure. The thing that I think makes it impossible to tell is there are 169 champions in League of Legends.

Even with a locked number of bans, the number of possible combinations of champions in League of Legends is just impossible to master. It’s not feasible. The number of unique combinations of champions is—I don’t know, probably some ridiculous number, because that’s how math works. It ends up being insane, and that’s why I think if you look at a lot of drafting models, there are models which can predict drafts and the winners of drafts, even without taking the strength of teams into account.

With 85-90% probability, you can predict the winner of a draft, but there are too many options for human beings to be able to do, which is probably a good thing as to why they don’t let people draft on stage with iPads, because they’d probably do a better job than us.

Predicting Fearless is just, I don’t know, maybe it makes it more simple because there are a few variables, but I don’t think so because the variables are constantly shifting every single game. It’s not possible to track that many variables in game five spec. You’re going to have 50 champions. It’s not possible for a human being to track that number of variables. 

So how do you help the players get ready for situations like this?

Mac: They have to develop instincts. They have to figure out things that they just feel good playing. It’s as simple as that. I think you have to turn it from a science into an art. It’s just about players trusting their gut instincts and playing champions that feel good for them.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how teams, especially at the beginning of the year with new rosters, adapt to that. How do you help your team create the bond that they need to have in-game before they enter the stage?

Pad: Yeah, I mean, we just make sure that we have strong preparation for our bootcamp. Right now, we’re in Paris for our cultural bootcamp, so we’re not playing a lot of League of Legends here. When it’s time for the December bootcamp, we want to make sure we figure out what kind of League we play, then slowly specialise and start adding champions.

Honestly, we’re not preparing very differently from how we would normally prepare for a new split. We just want to make sure we play good League of Legends. If we do that, then we have players who are good enough at playing a decent number of champions to slot them in.

I think Fearless Draft will be really fun. The thing I’m looking forward to the most is how it can make a best-of-five series more exciting—it’ll give us more games without stagnation. I think that’s great for League of Legends, and it makes me very happy.

Outside of that, like Mac said, it’s hard to predict. Take a player like Adam—people might think Fearless Draft isn’t great for him, but he’s also picked up a couple of meta champions recently which put him in a strong position. When two of the major meta champions are out, when the Ornns and the Gnars are gone, suddenly, people will have to pick champions someone like Adam has his specialist counterpicks into.

It’s hard to know exactly how it’ll turn out, so for now, it’s still a new science to us. We’re just going to approach it by making sure that, first and foremost, our team plays good League of Legends, and then we’ll adapt to Fearless as well.

Mac: As for trust in general: trust is something that’s earned, right? It’s our job as coaches to streamline that process and provide some guide rails. For example, when we go into bootcamp, we facilitate discussions between the players about what’s most important to them. What are their non-negotiables? What are the things that would cause a loss of trust between them?

The players need to commit to upholding the standards and values they agree upon and hold each other accountable for keeping those promises. From there, trust is an ongoing process.

It’s not like you spend a month building trust and then say, “right, we’ve got it now, so let’s focus on League of Legends.” Trust comes from the values and culture you create as a team—it’s about what you do. You have to do the right thing consistently and ensure the players agree on what those standards are. That’s what we’re doing right now.

I know that both of you are very focused on creating a strong team culture. Even in our last conversation, that was a major point of discussion. How is it possible to build trust within a roster when players change every year? 

Pad: For us, it starts with being useful to our players. We make it our mission to serve them as best we can. A cornerstone of this is something Mac emphasises every year: distinguishing between equal and fair treatment.

Equal treatment is what you remember from school, where your math teacher treats everyone the same, regardless of their ability. But fair treatment? That’s about meeting someone where they are. It’s about helping players learn in a way that works for them.

Some people learn by watching, some people learn by reading. Some people learn by getting a big fat hug before a presentation because they need human touch. And that’s how we create trust – by treating every single individual like the most special motherfucker out there.

Mac: And to achieve that we need to listen. A big part of our early process is observing, asking questions, and understanding each player deeply. Yes, we talk a lot about our vision and values, but once that’s shared, we turn the focus to them.

We always start by seeking their perspectives—what motivates them, what challenges them—and tailor our approach accordingly. Empathy is crucial here. Then, we lead by example, showing we’re worthy of the trust we’re asking for. Conversations with players often focus on what I commit to give the team, as much as what I expect from them.

Something you mentioned earlier, Mac, really caught my attention. You said you ask players what helps them build trust with others and what breaks it. I’m not asking you to share those personal details, but have you noticed any trends—especially with younger players—around what fosters or erodes trust?

Mac: The number one thing? Hard work. It’s natural because, in League of Legends, there’s no limit to how much you can practice. To succeed, you often have to grind 15-16 hours a day, consistently, for nine months straight—while living in a confined space with your teammates. If you’re putting in the effort and the guy next to you isn’t, that breeds resentment.

I think in any sport to get the maximum reward you have to sacrifice the maximum, you have to give 100% of yourself and that’s something that becomes very apparent if there are a bunch of people doing it and one guy who’s not. It is really, really bad for the team and that’s something that is pretty universal.

Pad: Another big one? The inability to take criticism. We’ve seen this create massive rifts, where players shut down communication entirely. When players stop talking to each other, it’s disastrous—not just for the relationship but for the entire team dynamic.

What is something about your team you’d like to share with your fans, which could potentially lead more fans to rally behind Vitality?

Mac: We would love it, and this is something that we’ll be taking as coaches, a bit of a kind of responsibility and a bit more of an active role in actually making sure that we do connect with Vitality fans, because Vitality has awesome fans.

Our fans are so wholesome, they’re so kind, they’re so understanding, they’re so supportive. I love the fanbase, and it’s not been easy being a Vitality fan for the last few years, put it that way. So massive respect to the people who’ve stuck with Vitality, at least from the League of Legends perspective.

But the thing that we would absolutely love is for our fans to be able to really connect and identify with our values as a team.

And part of something that is going to really shape our team this year is that what we want and what we’ve hired for and what we’re coaching for is a team that never gives up. We’re coaching for a team that always finds a win. That’s the aim and it’s a really, really lofty aim, but we’re searching for perfection in that area.

That’s the thing that actually we really, really care about is that our players have the tools and the mental fortitude and the mental resources and the training to always be able to see an option and find a way.

And at the core, that’s essentially what we’re looking for—an optimistic team—and that, for us, is the thing that is going to generate results. And actually, that process is much more important than results. So I would love for our fans to be able to feel proud of being part of a team that is like that and that values that.

And for me, what a lot of that translates into is:

And I would love for our fans to be able to celebrate that with us. Celebrate the fact that our players, and I promise you they will be willing to do this, that our players are willing to go back in as five people with 10% HP and die through each other even when it blows up in our face.

That’s going to happen a lot. But I would love for our fans to be able to celebrate those moments with us and really help us commit to being bold and being ourselves and being the people that we are. 

Look at Carzzy and Hylissang. I would love for our fans to be able to celebrate the playstyles of those guys. I remember this year when we played against certain teams, I won’t name names, there were fans cheering and chanting Hylissang’s name whenever he died. And that broke my heart because that’s just the opposite of good League of Legends to me.

So I would love for our fans to be the opposite of that. I would love for our fans to be cheering and supporting our players every single time they do something aggressive and proactive and bold. Even when it goes wrong, we go to our Valorant team’s matches, Pad and I cheer the absolute loudest when we lose a round. And what comes out of us is, guys, you’ve got this. You can do this next round, you can do this. Right? That’s what comes out. And I would love for our fans to be part of that with us.

If you were to share one fact about each of your players going into 2025 with the fans that could help them better connect with the players, what would it be?

Mac: Naak was kind of on the verge of being a pro volleyball player, and everyone in his family has played volleyball competitively. His hands are twice the size of mine. It’s insane. Then for Lin (Lyncas) there is not much that he doesn’t know about rap, any genre of rap. I put on the most obscure British rapper – this guy has a hundred followers or something – and Lin knew who it was.

And it’s not just like, it’s not just English rap he’ll know. Polish rap, French rap, Spanish rap. Lin just loves rap and he knows so much about it. 

Pad: Czajek is good at every single game.

Mac: That’s true.

Pad: He’s good at World of Warcraft, He’s good at Counter-Strike. He’s literally good at every single game he’s ever touched.

Mac: Yep. And he is so passionate about them as well. It’s one of the things we liked about him. He just loves figuring out how games work.

Pad: He loves talking about any games, optimisation, min-maxing, and he is our smiley boy. He smiles at anything. He is so easy to be around. He’ll die for the team a lot this year, while smiling!

Mac: He’s such a massive team player. And what people don’t know about Carzzy at this point is private life.

As for Hylissang, that’s a tough one.

Pad: Shrimp chips! 

Mac: Oh yeah, Hyli loves shrimp chips, and chocolate. Hyli is the biggest chocolate consumer on the entire team. And one of the things that I love about spending time with Hyli is that he’s so happy with the smallest thing. If you give Hyli a chocolate bar, he will remember that you gave him a chocolate bar for three years and he’ll be happy for the next hour at least. He’ll just be like, nice. This is great.

Related article: Could we see an LEC 2025 event in the UK? We ask Riot

Cecilia Ciocchetti

Hi, I’m Cecilia! A freelance writer mainly focusing on League of Legends and its esports scenes. Find me at events interviewing anyone who has a story to tell, from players to the talented people working behind the scenes. Do you also have a story to share? Reach out to me via Twitter.