In League of Legends, Fnatic is one of the most popular and successful teams in Europe. However, everything went wrong during the Winter Split 2023. The LoL team recently released an intimate video about the season’s progression, which starts hopefully but ultimately descends into despair.
How was the mood before the season?
- Fnatic has played quite well in LoL over the last few years: Their game revolved completely around the German bot laner “Upset”: It was said that Fnatic lives or dies with Upset. They were nationally successful but were eliminated early from the Worlds twice.
- Before the season, Fnatic decided to blow up the team: They replaced Upset with the experienced Rekkles, who was once a club icon – and brought a new supporter into the team.
- On paper, Fnatic looked like a strong team with legendary and award-winning players like Wunder (Top) and Rekkles (Bot). Additionally, they had Humanoid in the mid lane, who had won 2 championship titles with Mad Lions.
How did the season go? It went terribly. Fnatic could only win 2 out of 9 games and was eliminated as one of only 2 teams during the regular season.
The season ended with 4 consecutive losses.
Fnatic starts the season with hope – but everything derails
What can be seen in the video: Fnatic’s video shows for 21 minutes how everything actually goes wrong.
At the beginning of the video, the team finds itself anew, radiating optimism. There’s a long scene showing a table tennis match between the experienced bot laner Rekkles and the Spanish jungler Razork. Both are joking around, teasing each other, and the mood seems to be good.
As the first defeats come, they try to project optimism. Rekkles sets the tone: Everything is fine, they just messed up a few matches, it happens. It just needed to go a little differently, then they would have won the match.
When victories are also lacking against the weakest opponents, the optimism seems increasingly strained, and the mood seems only to be superficially good.
In the end, there are motivational slogans: “We can only win now – everything we lost is already lost.”
After the season is completely ruined, the camera captures the disappointment and despair among the players. People are crying, staring silently into the camera. When the audience is shown, disappointment and horror can be seen on the faces of the fans. The manager tries to ease the situation: It’s a new format, it’s just 3 weeks, and if they make adjustments now, they can still salvage the year.
The pressure is palpable and everyone deals with it differently
What makes the video so special? In the video, you can see how the players cope with the high pressure and how the mood changes throughout the short season.
There are different strategies for how players cope with the defeats. This is well illustrated by the 2 players who are most featured in the video:
- The experienced Rekkles suffers introvertedly. He is always aware that the fans see him and expect more from him. Rekkles says he is dissatisfied, feels he needs to do more. He plays at most mediocre – that’s not enough.
- The Spanish jungler Razork (22) keeps joking around, making strange “cock” jokes, fantasizing about whether he would get banned if he just flashed into 3 opponents now. Even though the others often respond little to him, the camera continually focuses on the 22-year-old, who tries to keep the mood alive in the team.
The other players like Wunder or Humanoid seem to be trying to cope somehow with the situation.
What caused the terrible season? There are surely several reasons. Later it was learned that the team composition didn’t go well, because the supporter “Rhuckz”, an inexperienced player, was already set, and Fnatic had trouble finding an ADC who wanted to play with him.
In the video, it also seems that the team had long felt they were playing quite well, and they just needed a bit of luck.
The fans seem to be targeting the team manager Dardo, who promises “changes” in the video. In the comments on the video, some Fnatic fans wish that a change in the team would involve replacing him.
You can wonder how the season would have gone with Upset:
