G2’s trophyless 2025 marks a lacklustre season so far, at least by their standards, though making three back-to-back domestic finals and booking their spot at Worlds 2025 would be seen as an incredible achievement for almost any other organisation in the league. Now with one final chance at an LEC title, G2 heads to Madrid for the LEC Summer Finals. Ahead of their grand final series on Sunday, Hotspawn spoke to G2’s head coach Dylan Falco for an interview.

Lee: G2 are so used to winning LEC titles, but are yet to do so in 2025.

How do you reflect on the year so far?

Dylan Falco: I think also the fact that we won through the winners’ bracket to the finals all three times really proves that we can beat every single team in EU. We have the skill to be able to win those best-of-five and win a championship. So it feels a bit bad for sure.

I think that I’m happy with our year so far. I think we kind of rebuilt our roster and I think we’ve shown some very good play in Europe.

I think our MSI was a huge disappointment. But when I look at how much we have changed since MSI in how we play, how we approach the game, how we approach draft, I feel like if it makes our Summer split and Worlds a success, it’s very worth it.

So I feel like we’ve been able to showcase our skills to an extent. But, you know, at the end of the day in League of Legends, the World Championship, Summer split, that’s what the people really, really care about. So we’ll see how it ends.

Lee: So you feel like you guys are on the right track now then?

Dylan Falco: Yeah, I absolutely do, for sure.

Lee: In a recent interview with Sheep Esports, BrokenBlade talked about how he felt many of the other teams were crumbling during Summer.

Do you agree with that sentiment, and, if so, is that fortunate timing for G2?

Dylan Falco: So I think at the end of Summer split — when the stakes are very high, when there’s World Championship spots on the line, you’re scrimming these teams every day — it’s very common that one or two top teams just have some really bad days and the mental gets shot a bit, and they start losing a lot. That doesn’t mean that they don’t pick it back up when it comes to it, when it really matters. And it also doesn’t mean that they will play that poorly on the stage as well.

But it’s just stressful when we’re playing a game of the mind. So yeah, the Summer split playoff mental boom is pretty well documented. But we’ve been playing all of the teams coming to the finals weekend, and teams are looking pretty good. It doesn’t seem as dramatic as it may have been a few weeks ago.

Lee: By the time you play the grand finals on Sunday, you will have had a two-week break.

How have you approached practice during that time? Have you scrimmed the other three finals teams?

Dylan Falco: Yeah. So we not only need to prioritise this practice for the Summer Finals, but to be honest, because Worlds is so close, this is also our practice for the World Championship. So we couldn’t just not scrim any of the teams and try and YOLO the finals. I don’t even think that would be great for the finals, but it for sure would be even worse for our preparation for Worlds.

We do have the benefit that there are three teams still in, you’ll only play one of those three teams, so at least two teams of the practice will not be seen by the other teams. That’s a lot nicer than some of the formats where there are two teams. So we’ve just been scrimming a mix of all three teams. [We] haven’t really been drafting super seriously against them in the scrims and just trying to be mechanically strong for this weekend.

Dylan Falco
Image credit: Riot Games

What’s your feeling about which team you’ll face in the LEC Summer Finals on Sunday?

Dylan Falco: Oh, I have absolutely no idea. I feel like these teams are very closely matched. Some days we play one of them in scrims and we just stomp them, and we’re like, ‘Oh, there’s no way.’ And then we’ll play them again a few days later, and they’re, ‘Oh, actually they look pretty good today’.

So it’s really changing, and I think all of these teams have basically beaten each other throughout the year. I would say KOI has been steadily the best in the last couple of splits, and maybe they played good Madrid last time, but honestly, I have no idea who we’ll play.

Lee: KOI will almost certainly be the home favourites in Madrid.

What do you make of the prospect of facing them under those circumstances?

Dylan Falco: You’re just focused on good drafts and good gameplay mostly. It’s just when they get a kill, it will be very, very loud if it’s KOI, for sure. I think it’s great for them. It must be amazing to play in front of a home crowd full of people cheering for you. It’s gonna be exciting for sure, but I hope we can make it a quiet arena if we end up playing them.

Lee: There’s been plenty of criticism for the Summer format, particularly the scheduling, with long breaks for many teams.

How have you found it?

Dylan Falco: I’m sure even Riot themselves would not be super happy with how the Summer split schedule ended up working out. I know there are logistical reasons why it is that way.

I think the weirdest [thing] for me is just Spring was so long for so many games that didn’t really end up meaning that much, as we just went straight into playoffs. We just played so many best-of-threes, just to only go into playoffs for one or two series for MSI. And then Summer is kind of the opposite, where the regular season is just so short, and then we go into that.

I just think the splits were way out of balance of how many games we played in each, and a lot of that had to do with the scheduling logistics of it. I hope they will cook something up that’s a little bit better next year, but it’s definitely difficult.

I have some differing thoughts on it. I think they should just do whatever is going to be best for the viewership and the health of the league. I don’t actually care if we’re playing best-of-ones or best-of-threes or best-of-fives, and how many teams are playing. I think just the steady game days with a lot of teams playing is probably the best for viewership. But that’s not my thing. I’m just a coach, but yeah.

LEC summer split 2025
Photo Credit: Wojciech Wandzel/Riot Games)

What do you think would be best for G2 competitively?

Dylan Falco: More stage games are better, but I think if it’s a difference between 20 stage games and 10 stage games in the split, that is not going to make the difference of whether we win against China at the World Championships or not. I just think that’s an overblown thing, and I think they should do what’s best for the health of the league.

Lee: G2 as an org has been clear for many years that the ultimate goal is to win a World Championship. While Korean sides usually look strongest as it is, Gen.G have been a different beast this year and are nailed-on favourites.

How do you approach that huge goal given that scenario?

Dylan Falco: I think winning the World Championships is surely very difficult. Obviously, it’s Korea just winning a lot. The Chinese teams won a bit with some Korean players, but it’s been Korean dominance for a while.

I think the difference between barely making it out of Swiss and a deep Worlds run can be a very fragile, fragile difference. Although I think we’ve cut it a bit short the last couple years, I think that the skill level of the third-best Chinese team or fourth-best Korean team and the top EU team has been — it’s in the same ballpark.

And I think things really have not gone that well for us at the last few World Championships. But I really feel that with some good days, some good performance and maybe a bit of luck, it’s absolutely possible to make a deep run at this tournament. And we don’t treat that as a stretch goal. We treat that as something that’s very realistic and within our grasp.