Fnatic aims to bring home a title after six years – LEC Winter 2025

Fnatic has been sailing in deep waters for some years now. It’s been six years since the organization won a single title. The last time – in the Summer of 2018 – Caps had not yet become their nemesis; on the contrary, he was playing under their colours. The team even reached the Worlds Final after lifting both of the year’s European titles. But the famous transfer of the young prodigy to their rivals G2 Esports the following year started a perpetual cycle of disappointment for FNC and their numerous long-time fans. Eight runner-up finishes since then, seven of which resulted from a defeat in the final to G2 Esports. The three consecutive losses from Spring to Season Finals in 2024 may have been too many. This year, the Black and Orange have gone for the big guns, and look sharp enough to finally win a title. They are even at the top of my LEC Tierlist.

Trust each other

For me, Iván “Razork” Martín has been the key to Fnatic staying at the top in the past few years. Not only is he the main shot caller and leader of the team, but he has also become the best jungler in the league individually in 2024. Despite being surrounded by junglers such as Martin “Yike” Sundelin or Javier “Elyoya” Prades. His aggressiveness is consistently relentless, and he’s always looking to set the pace early – a rare commodity in the LEC, where junglers generally prefer to hide away and farm before the objectives. You can see that he draws a lot of his inspiration from LPL junglers, and the way he always finds interesting skirmish timings, or coordinates to find dives, especially with his botlane, is very impressive.

As a testament to his dedication to his lancers, he is the jungler with the most assists in average at Summer (9.68, even outperforming many supports) and Season Finals (8.83 placing him fourth, all roles combined). He has blind faith in his team-mates and will always prefer to give them the upper hand. The confidence he instills in a group as well as in game, I think it’s mainly Elias “Upset” Lipp who will benefit from it.

lil "scrim update" for you all pic.twitter.com/eqvMB6Vd6M

— FNATIC (@FNATIC) January 15, 2025

I’m not going to lie, I lost confidence in Upset after his first two splits with KC. He was also coming off a 10th place finish with Vitality in the summer of 2023. I know he wasn’t well surrounded, but seeing him literally give up on every action and not even try when he could weighed on me. Fun fact: for every split in 2024, Upset was the ADC with the fewest deaths on average per game… Even when KC finished in last place twice in a row. I’m very happy that Summer has happened, because I finally got to see the Upset I’d learned to know. The ADC who punished his opponent’s every mistake, while trying to make the most of every team fight – without ever putting himself in danger.

I get the impression that Upset needs to feel he can trust his teammates and follow them to the ends of the earth in their ideas, even if it means putting himself at risk. And to do so, I can’t think of a better choice than Fnatic this year. Especially as he will team up with Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle in the botlane. Who better than Europe’s best ever support to help Upset get back to the top of the league’s ADC rankings, where he was often compared to Hans Sama. Well, the very man who has spent the last two years working alongside him.

To be the best

It’s also worth remembering that Mikyx, despite his rollercoaster finish last year, was voted MVP of The Year in 2023. In my opinion, this was the best year ever achieved by a support since Zdravets “Hylissang” Galabov in 2018. And that also means dying a bit too much, yes… In fact, his death count was the only statistic for which he wasn’t first among supports at last year’s Season Finals, along with Kill Participation – he was also second in KDA, which makes sense given his death count. Mikyx will also bring the champion experience that this team sorely lacks. Not only was he part of the iteration of G2 that won an international event – MSI in 2019 – but apart from him, only Marek “Humanoid” Brazda has ever touched an LEC title in this team.

In fact, he’ll probably be the one to watch in 2025. Competition for his position has never been tougher, with many talented midlaners trying to take his place as runner-up to Rasmus “Caps” Winther. I wonder whether he’ll have the stamina to hold his own, or even reach new heights, since in my opinion he’s been stagnating for several years now. Always disappointing internationally, and in the shadow of Caps regionally.

This team is my personal favorite for the Winter. There’s no doubt that it’s the most experienced, the one that will require the least adaptation from the players, but also the one that should have the most desire to succeed given everyone’s profile – the eternal runners-up, or Mikyx/Upset who have to prove that they’re still belong to the best. But I’m afraid their efforts won’t necessarily match those of the other teams over the next few splits, especially given the numerous talented but inexperienced rosters coming this year. So I’d say that if Fnatic want to capitalize on a moment to finally restore their reputation with a title, it’s now or never.