G2 Esports founder, co-owner and CEO Carlos “ocelote” Rodríguez took to Twitter today to announce a large overhaul of their League of Legends European Championship team moving into 2022. In the announcement, he mentioned that three of the team’s starting players, as well as most of their staff, will be traded.
“As a result of [our] discussions, we have decided to bench and look to trade Martin “Wunder” Hansen, Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle, Martin “Rekkles” Larsson, Fabian “GrabbZ” Lohmann, and Sng “Nelson” Yi-Wei and look to also replace the rest of the support staff,” Carlos said.
The roster change takes place after a historic low for the team. This is the first year that the org missed the League of Legends World Championship since its inception in 2016. Likewise, they missed the LEC Finals in both spring and summer. This was after having attended nine of the last 10 finals and winning eight of them. In 2019, G2 Esports won the Mid-Season Invitational in Taiwan and advanced to the worlds finals as well. In 2018 and 2020, the team made it all the way to the worlds semifinals.
This news arrives after various rumors and reports of upcoming roster changes this offseason. In the announcement video, Carlos also directly responded to the notion that he and G2 were blocking trades to certain teams in order to reduce competition.
“Only great words to say to everybody who is no longer going to be with us,” he said. “It is in our best interest that they land somewhere nice where they can continue to succeed, and we will not be blocking any trades, as simple as that.”
As of the time of posting, Carlos has not commented on the status of Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski and Rasmus “Caps” Winther for the 2022 roster.
All five members of G2 Esports won the first team all-pro community vote this spring. And, Caps, Rekkles, and Mikyx did again in the summer. Jankos also came in second this summer and Wunder came in third. Despite their misses on the LEC finals and worlds, the community still thought very highly of the team. Carlos, however, reassured fans, urging them to be excited for the changes that they are making to the team.
“Winning worlds is still in the cards, winning worlds is still our main goal and winning worlds is what we’ll do,” he said.
https://twitter.com/CarlosR/status/1447619761114845194?s=20
