Team Misfits implodes ahead of LEC Week 5

The EU League of Legends scene is stronger than ever in 2019. With G2 winning MSI and a joint domination at Rift Rivals, every LEC fan is itching to get to Worlds 2019 and witness the trophy come home.

One team that was in the Worlds 2019 conversation from the beginning of the LEC was Misfits. We have talked about the “superteam” for months hopeful that the squad will eventually gel. They did not.

Half a year in or a split and a half was all it took for the Misfits organization to give up on their stars and seek alternatives as the fans did not get to witness “the team that was promised”. Everyone hoped for the Misfits of 2017, the team that makes SK Telecom shake in their boots in a bo5 and aggressively pushes teams to their limit.

At this point, it seems the LEC year for most of the MSF main roster is over. Some fans are justifiably outraged at the chain of decisions leading up to the state of the team.

The bad Spring Split caused the MSF organization to expand the LEC Roster to 10 players. At the time it seemed like a decision that would increase the flexibility of the roster as they hotswap players in and out for each game and create a perfect team composition against each opponent. The first on the chopping block with this change was star jungle Nubar “Maxlore” Sarafian with Thomas “Kirei” Yuen taking his place. The roster swap did not bring much improvement to the overall performance of the team. Fans were not yet adapted to the jungle swapping as the organization served them another a week later. Midlaner Adam “LIDER” Ilyasov would hotswap with Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten for some games. At this point the decision making process was being questioned, as any reasonable observer would say that a 7-man roster needs at least a year to fully gel together. The amount of practice required for different playstyles, compositions and players to work together flawlessly is incomprehensible.

But, the Misfits organization did not have this sort of time to invest in its roster with an ongoing split, instead they decided to just bench the entire main team and replace them with the Academy squad.

We will be making some bigger changes to the @MisfitsGG starting roster for this weekend as we continue to strive to make playoffs. At 2-6, we are not satisfied with either our results or our growth. Here is a quick update directly from me. pic.twitter.com/YLr90I2BwF — Ben Spoont (@benspoont) July 18, 2019

Fans of the “benched” players went out to give their support after the announcement, as this decision puts many of them in the difficult position of choosing between player and team.

We do not have clear information on what the role of Gorilla, Maxlore, Febiven, Hans Sama and SoaZ is within the team. There is no “drama” as of yet, but we can expect it quite soon, especially if the Academy team performs horribly on the LEC stage.

The first two tests for the former Academy/Main roster are coming this weekend in the form of Splyce and Rogue.