In League of Legends the transfer season is in full swing: Teams are reshaping for 2023. The most successful and renowned professional player in Europe is the Croatian Luka “Perkz” Perković (24), who has been incredibly successful for years. However, his plan to form a new superteam in France went horribly wrong in 2022 – now Team Vitality wants to do everything new in 2023, at least almost everything: Perkz is allowed to stay.
Why is Perkz considered the greatest player in Europe?
- Perkz played for Team G2 Esports from 2015 to 2020, first in the midlane, then in the botlane – and won almost everything there.
- Perkz was 8-time champion in the LEC, teamed up with his biggest rival Caps and even brought G2 to the finals of Worlds 2019. When he left G2 (for allegedly 5 million euros), he quickly clinched a championship in the USA with Cloud9.
- Perkz is considered an absolute leader and someone whose engine always runs at 100%. When he left G2, the team crumbled and has not fully recovered to this day: In 2021, they did not qualify for Worlds, in 2022 G2 disappointed.
Super team in France was supposed to tear everything apart – instead, it tore itself apart
What was the plan? In 2022, a super team was actually supposed to emerge in France with Team Vitality, meaning a team with outstanding individual players. To this end, they picked up some of the best European LoL professionals available on the market, brought Perkz and top-laner Alphari back from the USA, but it simply did not work.
Despite the gathered firepower, the team did not harmonize and played no particularly good role in the LEC: Perkz and Alphari were even said to have lost some of their class in the USA and were still chasing their form.
So they changed the strategy, even brought in some Koreans and Chinese, but that was still not enough.
The Team Vitality that was supposed to lead Perkz to a world title failed already in Europe. They couldn’t even qualify for the playoffs.
This is now the plan: Team Vitality has now let go of 4 of the 5 regular players: Only Perkz remains from the old squad. Additionally, they are keeping backup jungler Bo, who seems to have enormous potential.
According to reports, they are now adding 3 players to Perkz and Bo:
- Photon, a top-laner who plays for the youth team of T1
- Neon, a carry who previously played for Misfits
- the German supporter Kaiser, who is coming from Mad Lions
How are the players reacting? Especially the sorted-out top-laner Alphari, who was supposed to be a “co-star”, sounds disappointed. He tweeted initially: “Who is Photon and why do people say I’m taking a break in spring?”
In the meantime, he stated: He is taking a break at the start of 2023, not looking for a new team, but just taking time off. He has now played for 6 years, and his life has revolved solely around winning a split, in which he has always failed. It is becoming increasingly difficult for him to motivate himself (via twitter).
On the other hand, Perkz seems to be looking forward to 2023: A “banger team” has been put together (via twitter).
For Perkz, this must also be an adjustment, as he played for years with the same 4 people at G2, the core group around him, Caps, Wunder, Jankos, and Mikyx felt like a sworn team, now he has new teammates again after 3 years.
Perkz also has his critics in international LoL:
