G2 Esports builds a roster aimed at winning Worlds in 2025

G2 Esports have announced their 2025 LEC roster aimed at finally breaking the ceiling and winning Worlds 2025. The Samurai will keep Steven “Hans Sama” Liv, Sergen “BrokenBlade” Celik, and Caps to try to accomplish this impossible mission of winning Worlds. But they will also seek to strengthen by rallying Labros “Labrov” Papoutsakis and Rudy “Skewmond” Semaan to their cause.

In their announcement video released this Wednesday, G2 Esports set the tone with the last sentence pronounced by Rasmus “Caps” Winther. When asked:

“How do you think this team will be remembered?” – he answered: “As a team who finally did it”.

Is the new G2 roster an upgrade?

For me, the mission is still impossible at the moment. I would love to think otherwise, but I don’t believe that Labrov is an obvious upgrade to Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle. In my opinion, the former BDS support has been consistently top 3 in his role over the past few years, he’s been one of the main reasons why the Swiss organization could stay on the podium of the league all year long. He has that clutch factor in him that Mikyx seems to have exchanged for an inting factor recently, but it’s still very hard to judge wether it is an upgrade or a downgrade since Labrov has never been into such a dominant team. It will be up to him to fill the gigantic shoes of G2’s former support.

Yike’s departure means Skewmond gets free reign in the jungle. I still strongly believe that he has a higher ceiling than after  – even though both should be in the top-tier junglers of the LEC anyway. I also think he is overall more complete than him, particularly, he is way more comfortable controlling early games and putting pressure on the map.

When it comes to set-up champions, Skewmond will definitely be more reliable, as he proved it times and times again during his period in the LFL – if you exclude Ivern and Maokai though. 

There are only two points where Yike clearly has the edge at the moment, beginning with carry champions. And above all: experience. The Frenchman is still a rookie, meaning he will make his debut in the big league.

Keeping the crème de la crème

It’s impossible to predict how he will perform at the highest level since he has never been there, even though he has hit rank 1 multiple times and is probably the best EUW player in soloqueue this year. One thing is for sure, if he reaches the expectations from the get-go in the LEC, then G2 might have a chance to later achieve great things on the international stage.

However, winning Worlds in his rookie year is not realistic. It has to be said that G2 kept the two best sololaners in the West: BB and Caps. This pair was tremendous in 2024 and both had their arguments to be voted MVP of the league – the midlaner eventually got it. Do not forget about the hungry Hans Sama who has been underrated all year in my opinion.

I still believe he is currently the best ADC in the region, if not in the West. Hans might finally be completely enabled to play some high-tempo early games – the laning phase has always been his biggest strength and I am convinced that he can match, and even outperform any botlaner of the world in that area –  by being combined with his new jungler. He also went on a bootcamp in Korea where he reached rank 6 in less than two weeks during the offseason. The synergy with Labrov will have to be looked after early in the LEC since I know Labrov is very reliable in teamfights but I am not sure what to expect from his laning phase. Yoon “Ice” Sang-hoon was mostly playing hyper carries and wasn’t particularly famous for his dominance in lane these past two years with Labrov.

G2 will come back to take everything domestically, as they will have to do just that if they want to match 2024 in terms of results. But the expectations are always the same for the Samurai… If they don’t perform beyond the seas, no doubt the year will look like a failure again.