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London’s large rat population is growing. Los Ratones’ League of Legends team have assembled this week for a Los Ratones bootcamp, ahead of the NLC Winter finals in Nottingham this weekend.
Los Ratones, the star-studded roster formed by popular UK content creator Caedrel, have already qualified for the grand final of the Winter 2025 Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC), the EMEA Regional League for the UK, Ireland, Nordics and Malta.
Now they’re gathering for a bootcamp.
The bootcamp is taking place at Caedrel’s and Los Ratones GM Kieran Holmes-Darby‘s old stomping ground: the GiantX HQ in London.
Kieran is a co-founder of Excel, while Caedrel was a former player and streamer for them, prior to Excel’s merger with Giants Gaming (where they became GiantX).
Kieran previously signed Caedrel to Excel, back when he was a mid-laner in the early days of the LEC.
Now they’re back, using GiantX’s bootcamp space and PCs powered by Nvidia 4080 graphics cards.
“Hopefully we’ll have the streams on all day every day, and you’ll see the boys doing their stuff,” Caedrel said on stream this morning.
The team are planning both off-stream and on-stream scrims with other teams.
“We have some rats in our basement,” GiantX added on Twitter. “Welcome Los Ratones to the GX HQ.”
Los Ratones manager Caedrel, plus top-laner Thebausffs, mid-laner Nemesis, ADC Crownie and support player Rekkles are all at the GiantX facility in London this week.
Los Ratones general manager Kieran Holmes-Darby is there, and Alex ‘Synygy’ Winton, freelance player manager and UKEL founder is also involved.
Synygy has joined Los Ratones as their team manager for the bootcamp and NLC grand finals.
However, one player is missing from this week’s bootcamp.
Velja’s visa assues ahead of NLC Winter LAN finals
Los Ratones jungler Velja has been absent from the bootcamp this week due to visa issues.
Will Velja play at the NLC Winter Finals LAN in Nottingham in March 2025? Los Ratones are set to play the winner of Nord vs Bulldog on Sunday March 2nd.
It’s not 100% clear if Velja’s visa issues will be resolved in time for the NLC finals this weekend, but it’s likely he will be playing remotely, while the other four players will be on stage at LAN at Nottingham’s Confetti X broadcast facility.
Velja isn’t the only NLC personality with visa issues. NLC caster Solari has announced she will not be at the NLC finals in Nottingham this weekend.
Esports News UK will be reporting news and providing coverage of this weekend’s finals.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He has almost two decades of experience in journalism, and left Esports News UK in June 2025.
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 also previously worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation.
