UK-based eSports organisation Fnatic has brought Johan “Klaj” Olsson on board as its new League of Legends support player.
While Swedish player Klaj is not hugely experienced in the competitive scene (he played for MYM for a few months last year), Fnatic said in a statement that “his lack of on-stage game time is made up by his hunger for success”.
Despite not being well known on the big stage, Klaj (formerly Klajbajk) has been playing League since season 1 and is known in the Challenger solo queue scene.
“We also feel that Klaj and Rekkles will have improved communication as they will surely create a closer bond in and out of the game,” the org added.
The arrival of Klaj means that current support Lewis “Noxiak” Felix, who joined in December 2015, is dropped to the bench as a substitute player.
“Building a third League of Legends roster in three years has been a difficult task,” Fnatic explained in a statement on its website.
“When looking for our new support this year, as well as all of our new players, the bar was raised extremely high. Yellowstar was not only our shot caller, he was also our team captain and the most experience player in Fnatic. We knew it would be difficult for us to find someone to replicate what he did for us, yet we embarked with the new roster with high hopes.
“When taking on Noxiak, who stood out as the best candidate during his trial phase, we knew our shot calling system had to change. The burden of responsibility fell onto Rekkles, who despite having a great strategic mind and being a good communicator, was put into a difficult situation due to the micro-intensive nature of the ADC role.
“Furthermore, despite last week’s great results and overall improved performance, we had to look at our long-term goals. We are already planning ahead to develop a team capable of reaching Worlds and need to have players we feel will perform together at the highest level. In order to develop our team in such a direction we felt that a change to our line-up at this point was required, and therefore made the decision to move Noxiak to a substitute role.”
Noxiak added: “We didn’t live up to the expectations and struggled to find synergy with each other. Every new team struggles in the start but I feel like we did not fix those gaps fast enough.
“Martin and I have different approaches to the lane phase and the game in general and neither of us could adapt to the other one’s style 100 per cent even though we really tried.”
Klaj commented: “I’m really thankful for the opportunity that I’ve been given and I’d like to personally thank Brokenshard for helping me develop as a person and a player. I’ll do all I can to live up to people’s expectations and trust.”
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.
