The road to the 2016 League of Legends World Championships wasn’t easy for Jakob “YamatoCannon” Mebdi and his team, Splyce.

At the beginning of 2016, they had just qualified for the EU LCS and were considered by many to be one of weaker teams in the region. Through much of Spring Split 2016, Splyce didn’t do much to change that perception. They finished eighth in the region, were sent to the promotion series, and had to fight their way past GIANTS! Gaming to get back into the LCS. And yet, YamatoCannon remained committed to his team, only changing a single player on the starting roster by swapping support Nicolai “Nisbeth” Nisbeth for Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle.

It worked.

Splyce came out swinging in Summer. They grew throughout the split, finishing second in the regular season and qualifying as a third seed for Worlds via the gauntlet. It’s one of the most impressive Cinderella runs League of Legends esports has seen since the early days of the ROX Tigers.

And YamatoCannon was instrumental to all of that.

View photos YamatoCannon studies before drafting Splyce’s next team comp (Riot Games/Lolesports) More

A shaky start

When he joined Splyce, YamatoCannon knew what he was getting into, and wanted the team to know it, too.

“From the start, I was honest with the guys,” he told Yahoo Esports. “From the first scrim session I knew that, wow, we had a lot of work to do… It wasn’t impossible, but we had a long way to go.”

Splyce struggled heavily through their first split in the EU LCS. They went 5-13 and had to play through the promotion tournament to retain their spot.

But they were undeterred. They made a lone roster swap in the support role and continued on.

The decision, however, wasn’t a popular one.

“I remember reading a lot of the comments on social media from these keyboard warriors and Twitter analysts,” says Yamato. “They were saying that we had only replaced one player, and we were going to relegations once again.”

Yamato knew better.

“If only saw 18 games out of potentially 300 or whatever that I saw, it’s hard to see [why we didn’t change more],” he said. “In the end, it’s really important how we dealt with losses. The guys were very disciplined. They were very motivated, and they always, always worked hard. I like to think that hard work always pays off.”

View photos YamatoCannon gives AD carry Kobbe one final word of encouragement (Riot Games/Lolesports) More

That hard work came in the form of making sure that their (admittedly many) losses weren’t a waste of time. The team needed to come together and figure out how to improve.

“When you have a lot of losses, you need to make sure that something good comes out of it. It wasn’t easy. But [Splyce] were a group of friends. They could lift each other up whenever they had a loss… The guys were very ready to listen, ready to put in hard work. They were very willing to lose and learn. In the end, that’s what’s important. As long as your practice is efficient, you can reach a point where you catch up to the others.”

“The way I see it, the LCS or any competitive environment, it’s a race,” he says. “We started off a couple miles behind every other team, but as long as we kept running every single day, we knew we’d catch up eventually.”

View photos Splyce discusses strategy before their EU LCS finals match (Riot Games/Lolesports) More

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