It’s surreal to wake up to Mondays like these. It happened to me only twice, to swipe up my phone screen and rush to Leaguepedia’s World Championship page and check if Sunday’s events were real, or if it was just the night’s charm.

But before I could do that, the browser loaded the Facebook page I didn’t close before falling asleep. It showed a funny post of a Polish League of Legends fan event: “Let’s wait for Jankos at the Warsaw Airport”.

Description of the event

“I need to go there” was the first thing that flitted across my mind, even before I checked the translation of the post or where is the airport and if it makes sense to go there. Then I asked myself, “Do I really want to go there? I’m probably just going to look stupid among hundreds of compatriots, wholeheartedly cheering for him. There’s his hardcore fanbase, and then there’s me. I’m not even Polish, just going because it’s close to where I live now.”

So why do I feel like I need to go there?

It started in 2013, when a little amateur Polish team entered the Promotion Tournament after changing their jungler. Kiedyś Miałem Team, “I Had a Team Once”, was nothing more than five friends having fun together, who casually got to play against the rising Copenhagen Wolves of Forgiven, Amazing and Youngbuck. It was barely believable for Ninjas in Pyjamas as well, whose titans Nukeduck, Zorozero, Freeze and Mithy got eliminated from EU LCS in a stunning 3–0. Roccat acquired the roster less than a week later, and that was when the young hatchling, Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski’s flight took off.

Nobody expects a rookie team to do much in its first split but try to cheese some wins here and there with surprise picks. And cheese Roccat did: on early game playmakers such as Lee Sin , the young jungler did all he knew and spread his wings fearlessly, his relentless ganks slowly forging his now famous title as the “First Blood King”. It didn’t look right until Roccat eliminated the now legendary lienup of Europe’s finest, the Russian stronghold of Diamondprox’s Gambit Esports, and sealing a 3rd place finish in their first split.

The magic this young squad weaved looked over when Summer split came around: a mere 6th place got them to playoffs with little hope. But the dream literally reset when, in game 4 of the semifinal against Fnatic, Jankos’s Kha’Zix and ADC Celaver’s Tristana, jump after jump, overcame a 7k gold deficit with a standout teamfight in the botlane.