LoL, Transfer Window: Five challenges for five teams

After an impressive season from Splyce who reached the quarter-finals of the Worlds, the team is on the alert. Vizicsacsi announced his retirement, Xerxe and Kobbe reach the end of their contract and given their previous results, it is very likely that both players will be in the spotlight. Add to that Norkseren who signs with Excel and the coaching staff who is also a "free agent" and you have a team that starts this window transfer period with many uncertainties. Humanoid is the last remaining stone in the building and Splyce (who will play under the MAD Lions tag in 2020) will have to make a decision, align the funds to keep their current players or rebuild a new team around their young midlaner.

After a tense end to the season and a quarter-final defeat that raised questions about their team play, the Fnatic are at the heart of rumors. Joey 'Youngbuck' Steltenpool, the six-star general, packed up in the direction of Excel Esports and did not hesitate to express some pretty heavy words that said a lot about the current situation of Fnatic: "Without going too deep into it, it was a year where I didn’t find a lot of fulfillment with my job and the players had some contradicting philosophies [...] There were issues of players not wanting to play with each other. They’re going to make changes that are necessary to build a healthy team atmosphere, at least one that I align with, so that’s why I decided to move on."

If it is hard to imagine Fnatic letting go of his star Rekkles or Nemesis, his young midlaner who has had an excellent first season. On the other hand, it would be less surprising to see Broxah on the start after his disappointing results during the Worlds and the many rumors of misunderstandings between him and the team's star. In any case, we can expect changes in this founding team of European history, which has always been able to bounce back with new recruitments.

Only one year after their arrival, ExceL want to take Europe by surprise and make it theirs. After a first "six-star" recruitment with the arrival of Youngbuck as Head Coach, the English organization started their transfer period by recruiting Norskeren up from Splyce. If the team had one of the league's smallest budgets in 2019, their first two recruitments suggest that the project is expanding and that further changes can be expected in the line up that finished 9th in Spring and 10th in Summer.

The rabbit hole exploded last year in the middle of Summer Split after the failure of the superteam including sOAZ and Gorilla. A new start had been made with the establishment of the Academic Team in LEC. Without success, the academic roster disappointed, notably LIDER on midlane, and Misfits ended this catastrophic season with a record of six wins for twelve losses at the end of the Summer Split. What can we expect from Misfits during this transfer period? Will the team reinvest in a superteam or will it focus on its young academic players? Many questions remain to be seen but the structure is likely to change radically during the month of December. To be continued.

A terrific Spring split and a terrible Summer split. That's how you can sum up the 2019 season of Origen, even though their project seemed promising, on the paper. The team started to collapse at the end of the year and Kold's health issues that prevented him from participating in the Gauntlets didn't help. The Patrik/Mithy botlane comes to the end of the contract, as does Zanzarah, their academic jungler who replaced Kold. The question that arises: what will Origen do? To keep their basic line-up by simply changing Kold if his health issues don't improve or start on new blood for this team that is aiming for a podium?