Caps’ transfer from Fnatic to G2 Esports at the end of 2018 was truly a seismic event for the League of Legends community. Not only was Fnatic much stronger than G2 at that time, but there was also the fierce rivalry between these two names. For all these reasons, Caps leaving the LEC champions to join G2 was indeed a decision that bewildered everyone.
Recently, the 20-year-old star officially explained the reason behind his decision through a personal vlog.
“Fnatic was really facing a lot of problems, compared to the status of a team competing for the World Championship title. In my mind, G2 was the name that had the best roster and the most organized structure to compete for that title.
At that time, Fnatic had very good situational response capabilities, but the root problems were not addressed at all. We pushed aside our shortcomings instead of trying to fix them. To be fair, I couldn’t have imagined that Fnatic could go so far in the 2018 World Championship. We had too many issues.
That’s also the reason I chose to leave Fnatic. Our team didn’t play as well as everyone thought, I didn’t either, but the problem was that I didn’t even know how to make things better. I didn’t see any prospects for victory in that context.
I’m sure my departure forced Fnatic to reconsider their preparation for games more seriously, especially since they had lost 8 out of their first 10 matches in the Spring 2020 LEC.”
According to Caps, it seems that Fnatic’s success was entirely due to their trump cards during the Ban/Pick phase before each match. At that time in Europe, Fnatic had a completely superior lineup compared to their competitors, including G2, and it seemed that this had caused the team to lose the ability to evaluate and analyze their gameplay more deeply.
Looking back at the 2018 World Championship journey, it can be said that Fnatic achieved great success thanks to Caps’ brilliance, and partly because they fell into a relatively easy bracket. EDward Gaming and Cloud9 were certainly not weak, but compared to Invictus Gaming or KT Rolster, these teams were clearly more “on par” with Fnatic.
And as Caps shared, in reality, most members of Fnatic who participated in that year’s World Championship did not have many breakthroughs afterward. Bwipo may be the “Solo King” at All-Star, but his lane control ability has been increasingly inconsistent, Broxah remains a passive and inflexible jungler, while Hylissang – once the best “Pyke” is now just a shadow of himself, as his high-impact support champions are being suppressed.
Only Rekkles is the player who has maintained top form, but just one FNC captain is not enough to carry the entire team, and therefore, Caps chose to leave in search of new challenges, hoping to break his own limits, with G2 being the ideal choice.