What is left to achieve in Europe for G2 ? 2023 was a year of absolute domination for Rasmus “Caps” Borregaard’s men, as they won 2 out of 3 splits and the LEC Season finals. G2’s eyes aren’t set on Europe - even though a triple would certainly be historic - they have designs on the Worlds trophy.
Another Year as the Undisputed Favourites
2023 saw G2 being the heavy favourites for Europe, a status they held with little opposition, other than one defeat in Spring against the peaking MAD Lions, and 2024 seems to not be bucking the trend.
However, the margin is smaller for G2 as the likes of FNC or Rogue could very well be strong enough to give G2 an actual fight.
No matter how big the margin is between G2 and other teams on paper, G2 has a head start: 1 year of team synergy, unmatched experience, and a very strong work ethic.
G2 Leading the Pack on Individual Tier Lists
BrokenBlade: The Strategic Mastermind of Top Lane
Individually speaking, G2 holds a top 2-3 player in every role. Sergen "BrokenBlade" Çelik has seen little competition in 2023 in terms of consistency and versatility.
During the LEC Season finals, no Top laner got remotely close to bringing as much impact as BrokenBlade. He was slightly contested during the laning phase from time to time (mainly by Adam “Adam” Maanane, Óscar "Oscarinin'' Muñoz Jiménez, and Kim "Chasy" Dong-hyeon in Spring), but he would always come out on top in midgame.
Ahead of 2024, his main challengers should be the same ones as in 2023: Adam and Oscarinin. Both players have stepped up a lot during last year and if they keep up the momentum, they may catch up to BrokenBlade.
There is a natural issue with being 1st which is that usually, the ones below step up faster than you because they have more to learn, and this issue could cause BrokenBlade to stagnate in 2024.
2023 was the year where BrokenBlade stood out of the LEC top lane. Will 2024 be the year others catch up to him?
Yike: Jungling Genius, Orchestrating G2's Dynamic Plays
Martin "Yike" Sundelin is, on paper, the most contested player for G2 in his role. The Jungle role in Europe currently is the most stacked of any role and there are many that go toe-to-toe with others at the top.
Yike’s strongest rival appears to be FNC Iván "Razork" Martín Díaz, who ended 2023 on a very strong note, being close to outclassing Yike in the LEC Finals. However, contrary to BrokenBlade, Yike is still very much ascending.
If 2024 sees a jungler establishing himself over the rest, Yike is among the strongest candidates. Théo “Sheo” Borile also has to be considered as the French jungler saw a huge progression in his game in 2023. Sheo was starting his LEC journey on a much weaker team on paper than Yike, but in the end, the two rookies were close.
Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski is also not to be forgotten. The veteran has been buried countless times, but he never quite left the top tier of European jungling. We could also cite Javier “Elyoya” Prades Batalla or even Mark “Markoon” van Woesel and Zhou “Bo” Yang-Bo, who are all in the race to the top.
Yike’s dominance will be heavily contested, but he still has a slight head start.
Caps: Mid Lane Virtuoso, Steering G2 to Victory
Who can contest Caps? In 2023, no one, and in 2024, it seems like he will be spending another year at the top.
One could think of Emil “Larssen” Larsson as an ambusher since the Swedish mid laner used to dominate Caps back in 2022 when Rogue was the best. On paper, he is the closest to Caps, but his efficiency will highly depend on Rogue’s success. If there is one player who could overcome Caps, it is him.
Marek “Humanoid” Brázda is also a notable contender, with Razork, he ended 2023 with a very good mark, but Humanoid’s last two years have been very unpredictable, and 2024 is no different.
Adding other mid laners to the list of Caps' contenders is challenging due to many undergoing a rebuilding year. This is true both in terms of team structure and personal development. For instance, Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer has potential to rival Caps. However, with his role as the leader in a relatively inexperienced SK roster with a brand new rookie Jungler in Ismaïl "Isma" Boualem, his individual growth opportunities might be limited.
French mid laners Ilias “Nuc” Bizriken and Vincent “Vetheo” Berrié both look a bit too far from Caps to challenge him. however, them finding new highs is absolutely possible. Caps could also enter a “cRaps” year, but within a roster he’s familiar with, it is almost impossible.
Hans Sama: Bot Lane Behemoth, Powering G2's Offensive
Steven “Hans Sama” Liv is a tougher case. Similarly to Yike, the French ADC is already facing harsh competition, but the number of contestants is far lower. Only two players really seem to be able to challenge Hans Sama; Matyáš "Carzzy" Orság and Elias “Upset” Lipp. Carzzy, VIT’s returning ADC has come very close to beating Hans Sama at the end of 2023 in a Bo5.
Individually, he was slightly better, but one Bo5 isn’t enough to set two players apart. Upset’s case is trickier as he hasn’t faced Hans Sama in a Bo5 since 2021 (at this time, he was a clear winner, but it’s far too into the past to be taken into account). In the end, the three players are very similar in skill.
There is also the interesting case of Markos "Comp" Stamkopoulos, formerly the best laner in EU in 2022. However, he totally vanished in 2023, becoming a shadow of his former self. Perhaps 2023 was a blip on the radar, but it seems highly unlikely he will reach the likes of Hans Sama in 2024, although it's not out of the realm of possibility.
Mikyx: Support Maestro, The Unseen Force Behind G2's Success
Finally, Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle is undoubtedly the least contested player of G2 - and the least contested player at all in LEC - no one has been even close to contesting him at any point in 2023. With Zdravets “Hylissang” Iliev Galabov’s bad form and lack of support innovation, Mikyx should not be contested by his European colleagues in 2024.
There is the case of Yoon "Jun" Se-jun, formerly one of the top prospects of LCK.C in 2022. He’s had a bad year in LCK, playing on a very weak Kwangdong Freecs roster. His level on paper is tough to estimate precisely, and so is his potential, but the glimpses he showcased in 2022 tell that Jun is a player who brings huge potential to the LEC.
We can also talk about Lee “IgNar” Dong-geun, who’s had a surprising Renaissance in NRG - technically beating Mikyx during Worlds - and is, on paper, the second-best support in LEC.
Simply the best player in Europe in 2023, Mikyx has nothing stopping him in 2024.
A Year of Preparation: A Blessing or a Curse?
G2 is the only team not making a roster change from this offseason. It makes sense not to change a team that wins - sometimes very easily - plus, with what we said about the individuals, any upgrade would only be very minimal, Unless they looked towards the east.
However, late 2023 showed that G2 depended on their higher individual skill to keep winning, as their game structure wasn’t as powerful as in Winter Split. The payback of such a dependency revealed itself at Worlds, where G2 struggled heavily with their macro and couldn’t rely as much as it could in LEC on individual differences.
The
WBG-G2 BO1 was very enlightening on that matter. G2 threw the game 3 times and clutched it 4 times,
showing the incapacity to impose a game structure that would compensate for individual mistakes. Hans Sama and Yike would often overstep or make a positioning error at random moments, mistakes that were rarely punished in the LEC but very costly at Worlds. Don’t hesitate to watch WBG-G2 BO1 and count the number of avoidable deaths and odd choices of G2. It shows how far an otherwise top team can fall if they don’t have the competition domestically to keep them on their toes.
G2 faced an early exit at Worlds, showcasing individual and collective weaknesses on the big stage.
In the end, even if G2 has a pre-established game structure and built synergies, their game plan is far from complete, and many LEC teams could catch up.
Fnatic is a strong candidate, as only Jun was brought in as a replacement for Adrian “Trymbi” Trybus, a change described as better in every aspect by FNC players; better communication, stronger individual skills in the support role and cleaner synergy in the bot lane. If G2 doesn’t step up, FNC may catch up and eventually surpass them faster than they’d expect.
There are also more silent future contenders that could very well reach the current G2 level in late 2024, like Rogue, VIT, or even Heretics. In 2023 the LEC was quite weak, perhaps the weakest it’s ever been relative to other regions. 2024 seems stronger on paper, and it is much easier to be the king of the weak than the strong.
Also, G2 played 2023 LEC with a different mindset in terms of scrims and overall training. At the end of every split, Romain Bigeard (G2’s team manager) would post a full scrim result detail of G2. As of Worlds 2023, the team had an impressive 70% win rate in scrimmages, including games against top LCK and LPL teams.
On paper, it is impressive, but are scrims made to be won at all costs?
G2 seemed to prioritise scrim win rate above everything else, which on paper isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it could have harmed G2 in the long run when they needed to reach a world-class level. Some may say that scrim win rate is a stat so hard to assess that it should not even be considered for the team; others can argue that scrims are close enough to real games to be taken as such.
All in all, G2’s mentality hasn’t proven to be perfect - nor bad - and 2024 could be a year of heavy questioning around it.
Are G2 in Shape for Worlds' Contention?
We previously said that it made sense not to change a team that won, but in fact, G2 lost very hard with this team, failing to reach Worlds’ top 8 despite an opportunity to do so against NRG, who, by no means, were scary contenders. G2’s ambitions have never been limited to European dominance; hence, keeping the same roster in 2024 shows that the organisational structure has full confidence in their players to put up a fight against the best international teams in 2024, a feat they couldn’t pull off in 2023.
There is a lot of work to be done for G2. As we saw during Worlds 2023, Even if G2 didn’t choke against NRG, the chances of them being relevant in the top 8 were too low; let’s see the main points where G2 will need to improve the most in 2024.
G2 has a lot of mistakes in their game, avoidable deaths, failed executions, and longer games than they should be. Overall, G2 plays a messy game, even in the cleanest wins.
Every player is concerned by this, but this has mostly been problematic for Hans Sama and Caps. The Danish mid laner has the worst KDA of G2 (3.5, same as Mikyx). This number is in the average of LEC midlaners. However, other LEC midlaners usually are the 3rd best KDA of their team, and Caps is the only one to be the worst KDA in his team.
Is Caps dying too much, or are his teammates not dying enough? It's hard to tell, but Caps is also the second worst KP of G2 (60.9%, only better than Top Laner BrokenBlade). Despite having a good year individually, he seems like he’s not perfectly inserted into G2’s structure.
Caps’ role in G2 is still fragile, as if he was the one who joined G2 the most recently.
“Cleaning up the mess” is also a phrase very much applicable to snowballing and finishing games. During Worlds, G2 started to be infamous for throwing at Baron after their two BO1s against DK and WBG. Overall, the team had trouble finishing games. In LEC, the team never averaged below 30 minutes of game length despite winning almost all of their games and facing weak opposition.
The interesting stat to add is that in Winter, G2 had a 28-minute average game length for the regular season, but in Summer, it was 31. The team bounced back in the LEC Season finals (28 minutes on average), but then at worlds, they were back to 34 minutes despite fast defeats against NRG.
G2 will need to significantly reduce the number of small mistakes that increase their game lengths and reduce the efficiency of their snowball. This will not come through individuals stepping up but rather through better macro gameplay and win-condition establishments.
G2's Expectations: Securing the Top Spot in Europe, Making Their Mark Globally
In LEC, G2 are set to remain on top and, at the very least, on the podium. In the end, losing LEC wouldn’t be the biggest problem if G2 could bounce back during international events. G2’s season will be judged by their showings at MSI and Worlds since LEC is a formality next to international tournaments.
A treble could still be a good achievement to go for, and it is the only room for improvement for G2 in LEC. But G2 is already the strongest structure in Europe and the most successful, so another record wouldn’t add much to that. However, with LEC’s strengthening in 2024, G2 will have more contenders. The matter would be not only to win but also to win with a big margin, as they did in 2023.
Every team will be aiming at taking down G2, it is the first time since 2021 that G2 is the reigning champions, for players like Hans Sama and Yike, this is a new status to hold. It is unlikely that the pressure will affect G2 too much; nonetheless, a failed split could lead to times of trouble for G2. This is why it is vital for the team to qualify for international events; in Europe, their only way is down, and internationally, their only way is up.
