The League of Legends season is almost over, with the LCS and LEC on the verge of returning for the 2021 season. Now that all the grids are locked up, Dexerto is looking at the biggest winners and losers of the LoL-free agency.
The 2020/21 season was perhaps one of the biggest in league history. A number of sensational veterans, including Bjergsen, Doublelift, have left their careers and dominoes have fallen into a major transformation in North America and Europe.
In the LCS, almost every grid looks different; only the Golden Guardians core series actually held on to each other, and even they would hold a different banner.
Two of the biggest power shifts have been caused by G2 Esports.
The first was to have eight-time LEC champion Luka ‘Perkz’ Perković leave for North America. The second was their move to replace him; the perennial winners attract Fnatic’s Martin ‘Rekkles’ Larsen to the black and silver in 2021.
Here is our pick for the biggest winners and losers of the 2020/21 season.
Off-season winners
Cloud9
Cloud9’s huge $ 11.75 million deal to sign Perkz is one of the largest in League of Legends history.
For a team that’s so often ‘lose the off-season” – at least according to LoL fans — Cloud9 champions in the spring of 2020 did well in the 2021 season.
The perennial LCS heavy hitters actually only made two changes to their starting lineup, but they were big. Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer and the poster boy Eric “Licorice” Ritchie out, bum Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami and Perkz, the self-appointed king of Europe, in.
And that’s all Cloud9 needs to “win” the off-season this season.
We can be fast on Fudge. He is a rising star and moved from Australia last year. He’s tearing up Academy, and he’s expected to do the same in the LCS.
Then there’s Perkz. His record speaks for itself; eight LEC titles, one World Cup final and semi-finals on both sides. The only question about the Croatian is the fact that he has been playing ADC for the past two years. For sure a clear ‘winner’.
G2 Esports
G2 Esports is in a position to claim another LEC title in the spring of 2021.
Funny enough, G2 Esports is still a big winner from the 2020/21 season, despite the fact that Perkz lost to Cloud9. Simply put, the loss of a role-playing midfielder who plays ADC and takes the best botlaner from Europe in his place can only be a positive point for the team.
The defending LEC champions lost their spiritual leader and captain, but Rekkles has never been one to drop his teams.
If he can deliver the same rock-solid performances he has dished out for Fnatic over the past seven years, while the rest of the G2 Esports series do what they do best – wreak havoc – G2 should win another title in 2021.
100 thieves
100 thieves picked up fourth-fifths of the 2020 Golden Guardians series.
Nadeshot’s red and white 100 thieves are my choice for the off-season winners. The Golden Guardians roster from 2020 was well equipped to go to Worlds, but for one small result against Team SoloMid they would have made it too.
Now, on the way to 2021, they have kept the core together and got a sample upgrade in the top lane to get started. Can ‘Closer’ Çelik, Victor ‘FBI’ Huang, Tanner ‘Damonte’ Damonte and Choi ‘huhi’ Jae-hyun all made the move to 100 thieves on long-term deals.
Add Kim ‘Ssumday’ Chang-ho, and it’s a killer LCS series.
Expect 100 thieves to be challenging for their first North American title by the end of this season. With so much revolution in the LCS, it will be key to have four of the same line, and Ssumday is just the cherry on top.
SK Gaming
Can SK Gaming repeat the MAD Lions blueprint this time?
The final winner may be an outside choice for some: SK Gaming. The German organization has revamped its 2020 list and included a number of exciting young European Masters stars.
It gets a big green tick from our approval. These are not names that many people in the wider League of Legends community have heard of, but the rookies like Ersin ‘Blue’ Gören, Jean ‘Jezu’ Massol and Kristian ‘Tynx’ Hansen want to impress.
Treatz and Jenax are more well-known quantities, but to mix together this huge mix of young European talent, SK Gaming fans should be an exciting rollercoaster. Dexerto has a good feeling that SK will have to play a play-off match, like MAD last season.
The only concern is perhaps a similar flare-up, as the MAD lions suffered at Worlds at the end of 2020, but with Jenax and Treatz experience, it should all work out.
Off-season losers
Golden Guardians
Golden Guardians place their stock in youngsters for LCS 2021.
If 100 thieves were one of the biggest winners of the off-season, Golden Guardians should be one of the losers. It makes sense, with the owners of the Golden State Warriors withdrawing money in 2021 to handle the crowded situation in the NBA, but it’s still a loss.
As mentioned before, GGS came very close to Worlds last year. Without double elimination, they would have basically been a shoo-in. Instead, they had to watch from home as TSM flew in their place to Shanghai, and then they lost the star-studded list to get started.
There is also little to like about the new series. Academy pickups like Ablazeolive are interesting, but alas, fresh faces will not win titles this year.
Astralis
Astralis looks for another tenth place in the LEC this year.
It’s hard to lower expectations after being stranded in the tenth, but Astralis has managed it. Picking up youngsters is a good idea, but if your veteran core is Nukeduck, it’s hard to get excited.
Astralis was picked clean in the off-season by Team Liquid, Fnatic and Immortals. It looks like they’re just trying to make up numbers in the LEC again this year.
Jeskla may be a bright spot, but there are question marks about the Swede until he plays, and having promisq as support will not help anything. Astralis certainly excels at CSGO, but it looks like she missed the point again in League of Legends.
Fnatic
Rekkles left Fnatic after seven years with the organization.
Now, on paper, Fnatic has not fared too badly. Elias ‘Upset’ Lipp is considered a solid European ADC. Nisqy could be an upgrade from Tim ‘Nemesis’ Lipovšek. However, any off-season with which you can hand over your best player to your opponents is a loss, and one that Fnatic knows all too well.
As the veterans of the MEC G2 Esports gave their middle-aged Caps, they lost to their arch-enemies four seasons in a row. Now they have let Rekkles go too, and none of their new signatures should bridge the gap that has only gotten bigger.
Fnatic may have upgraded overall and could be a clear second-place team if all goes according to script. The odds are against breaking the mold.
Span SoloMid
Doublelift retired and ended its second series on TSM before the 2021 season.
And so we come to TSM, and their list of 2021. It could very well be a coin and the defending North American champion could become a “winner” if the team’s competitors did not recruit so well. There are some problems though.
The first is Heo ‘Huni’ Seung-hoon. The South Korean top planner has a list of achievements that any league star would be proud of, including a World Cup final and several domestic titles, but it is far from his glory days in 2021. For the most part, he’s a bad pick for TSM.
This is especially noticeable when Drop and Impact were available.
TSM also lost two of their biggest stars ever, Bjergsen and Doublelift, before 2021. This in itself makes the new season a difficult question as they want to find their feet in a new era. Only the jungle star Mingyi ‘Spica’ Lu remains from the 2020 series in a massive overhaul.
Tristan ‘PowerofEvil’ Schrage, Hu ‘SwordArt’ Shuo-Chieh and Lawrence ‘Lost’ Hui are all solid. Whether they work together, we’ll see.
So there you have it; all the winners and losers of the LCS and LEC enter the new year. Europe’s premier competition kicks off on January 22, while the LCS kicks off their pre-season “Lock In” tournament on January 15 a week earlier.