The team “Fnatic” is the most popular and largest team in League of Legends in Europe, but it has been struggling for months. One of the hope bearers for the turnaround was the Dane Martin “Wunder” Hansen: the 24-year-old was 4-time champion with G2 and was regarded as the best top laner in Europe for 5 seasons. But it seems that Fnatic is now parting ways with him in a dispute.
Who is Wunder?
- Wunder is one of the best European top laners ever. He was part of the strong G2 team that almost became world champion in 2019 and only lost in the finals. The 24-year-old was 4-time champion in the LEC and was voted into the “1st All-Pro Team” 5 times, being the “best top laner in Europe” in half of the seasons between 2016 and 2021.
- Wunder is quite a cynic, often coming across as curt and snappy. In LoL, practically everyone knows how much he loves World of Warcraft, and it’s a running gag that he allegedly neglects LoL for WoW or “ends games early to still raid.” Once, G2 even had to pay a $1,000 fine for Wunder’s love for WoW.
- Nevertheless, people who know him say that he is an absolute professional and simply has a quirky sense of humor.
Wunder is sorted out at G2, lands at Fnatic
How did his career go recently? Wunder was at G2 for 4 years and was virtually indispensable to the team. He was one of the best players in Europe, even if fans teased that he did not look quite as good against Korean and Chinese superstars as he did against the local competition.
After a weak year in 2021, G2 wanted to start anew and parted ways with Wunder – he was replaced by the German top laner BrokenBlade, the “Topfather.”
Wunder landed at Fnatic and was able to qualify for the Worlds with the team in a decent first year.
However, after unsuccessful world championships, Fnatic decided on another overhaul, swapping out the strong bot lane and bringing back the Swede Rekkles. Since then, things have been going disastrously.
Fnatic replaces star with 19-year-old – he has the worst KDA in the league
This is now the situation: Before the start of the new 2023 season, Fnatic actually swapped Wunder out and put him on the bench: The 5-time champion was replaced by a 19-year-old Spaniard, “Oscarinin.”
The Spaniard managed to die so often in his first 6 games that he reached the lowest KDA in the LEC:
- With 31 deaths, 10 kills, and 27 assists, he has a KDA of 1.2. That is abysmal.
- Fnatic currently stands at 2-4 together with 3 other teams in 7th and last place in the LEC.
The glimmer of hope is that the Spaniard may find his way into the league. Because after the first games, his KDA was even worse at 0.9. So 1.2 looks much friendlier now.
A KDA of 5-4-9 is not exactly “gold,” but at least not terrible anymore:.
Wunder refused to participate in tryouts against the 19-year-old
Why was Wunder replaced? In a Twitch stream, Wunder explains the situation:
- The team wanted him and the young Spaniard to both participate in practice games before the season – apparently, Fnatic wanted to see who would get the starting spot.
- However, Wunder refused to participate in these tryouts.
- Therefore, Fnatic chose the young Spaniard.
After the disastrous winter, they wanted to hold tryouts. However, the team they put together, according to rumors, was not one I had much hope for, so I said: It doesn’t make sense for me to participate in tryouts for a team I don’t really want to play for.
Wunder laughs at fans’ demands for his strike to have consequences
Wunder laughs a little at Fnatic fans on Reddit during the Twitch stream. They would demand “consequences” if a player, who is still under contract, refuses to play for his team. The Fnatic fans seem to be “after him” – but he seems to find it all rather amusing.
“They also think they know everything – Haha, that’s really funny.”
What’s behind this: Fnatic is in a difficult situation. These seem to be all consequences of the decision to replace Upset with Rekkles:
- In 2021, they had a not outstanding but functional team assembled, with big names like Wunder, Hylissang, Humanoid, and Upset – all of whom had performed over the years.
- Then they cut out the centerpiece of that part, the experienced bot lane, which many considered one of the best in Europe.
- The new bot lane made up of a talent and the old star Rekkles, however, did not work at all.
Now many problems are coming together: The chemistry in the team seems to be lacking, they are not up to date with the drafts – it is unclear who makes the calls in the team. As a “caller”, Upset is said to be very good, but he is now playing for the competition (via blix.gg).
In winter 2022, the performance of the entire team collapsed.
To repair Fnatic, they are now bringing in 2 rookies and replacing the top lane and support. An experienced player like Perkz, however, criticizes this maneuver from the outside. He says that rookies cannot be thrown into difficult situations; they would be burned out (via dotesports). If someone is already brought in, they need to be experienced professionals.
That someone like Wunder, a seasoned, success-prone professional, sees no hope in playing in such a team and apparently considers it an affront to have to compete against a 19-year-old rookie is somewhat understandable. However, the fact that he refuses to participate in tryouts is quite … difficult.
LoL professional is so bothered by defeat that he takes his job seriously and finally deletes WoW.
