The
LEC Spring Split is officially underway, and while
entered the competition as clear frontrunners, their opening series against
suggested the road ahead may not be as smooth as expected.
In an interview with
Sheep Esports, KC’s jungler
shared a more personal look at the team’s current form. He admitted he wasn’t at his best during the match — mentioning he got sick during the break and is still recovering now — but added that spending time together with his teammates outside the game, even in small ways, helps the team reset and build better chemistry going forward.
How does it feel to be back?
Martin "Yike" Sundelin: “I'm very exhausted. It was a long day. I didn't expect it to be like this and I'm very happy we won, because it looked a bit scary in game two and also game one how we lost. So yeah, it's a slow start and I think we're going to do better from now on.
I want to ask you about that game two, Baron Pit, fumble team fight. Can you talk me through it?
Yike: The problem was just that we didn't have a good positioning. Maybe I should have a flank or someone else should have a flank, but we couldn't really threaten their backline, and they kind of just kill our frontline too fast. And yeah, I think it was just hard from there.
The broadcast mentioned how Vitality are a bit volatile. What do you think of them?
Yike: Yeah, I would also say they're a bit inconsistent sometimes. I don't really know the reason why. I think they can look very scary, and they are very hard opponents sometimes. Game one, for example. Game two, we could have lost as well. And sometimes they just are pretty easy to play against. Game three, for example. So I'm not really sure the reason why, I don’t want to really focus on that. I always focus on what we do well; hopefully, maybe they can improve on it, so that way we have a good opponent to keep playing against and scrimming against.
You said they were really good in game one, and you could have played better. What do you think you had the chance to improve from one game to the next?
Yike: Personally, I didn't really improve from game one to game two. I feel like I fell too far behind in jungle, which I shouldn't. I gave too many camps, and I let him invade and cross map too much. Their jungler played very well around the invade timers and went to invade my camps and get ahead. And I think game three, I changed that. That's the game where I changed and started playing more for myself. And then it was much easier.
I have a Tweet in front of me from Alex “Nymaera” Hapgood because you mentioned that you're falling behind with camps, and I remember he posted this. What do you think about this strategy?
Yike: For sure it makes sense. I think it's probably easier for the jungler to play as well. We came back not so long ago and haven't seen so much from the European scrims. And I was the first, and so far, what they were doing, I've been watching and trying to learn from. And yeah, I think the strat is good, and I need to keep looking and seeing, watching and all to see how I can improve myself: the way I gank, the way I recall times, and recall timers, because today I think it was pretty bad for me.
In LEC Versus you did reach the final but you didn't win even after pushing it to five games. What do you think is the current gap between KC and G2 and what are you guys working towards to bridge it?
Yike: I mean, they won, right? So they were a better team that day overall. But I think we had very solid games. After the first two games, we kind of played badly, but I think overall, our mid-game late game is where we shine the most. Even today, we show it as well.
The way we play team fights, the way we play the map, the way we play just the sidelines, and everything. I think that's where our strength is in the later game. I think G2 is very good at controlling early game, like vision. And I think their main strength is that they played for one year together. So they have more synergy as well. I'm slowly building my synergy up more and more every day with
, with
. And I always play with them, so I know how they play. And we're getting better by every day, I would say. And I think the synergy is just getting stronger and stronger.
So I think the more we play, the better we're going to look. And yeah, I mean, as we said, the finals was five games, right? We even had leads in that final game. There were many ways we could have won that game, and everything would be different, but that didn't happen. But anyway, I think it's very close. I think [G2] are very, very strong, and I think we are good. And I'm happy that they showcased very good gameplay in First Stand, and that shows as well that Europe can be much stronger. And it probably gave a lot of people hope, at least for LEC players, maybe getting more motivation that they see that we can beat the Asian teams. G2 did it in a very confident way as well, 3-0 two times. And yeah, I just want to keep working from now on and you see how far we can go. We really want to go international as well and see how well we can do against the Asian teams.
Besides trying new strategies, scrimming… Did you guys do something else to strengthen your bond?
Yike: After the finals, I think most people went home. The sad thing is, I got very sick as well, so I wasn't really doing anything. I just had a sick offseason, like two weeks, very sad. But when we came back, we started talking already, doing content together. And we have, for example, Busio and I have this little quiz game we play during, not during scrims, but before and after scrims, or when we're waiting for scrims to start. And yeah, I think there's just not anything big we do, but we’re used to do small activities together, just walking together to the store, buying anything, going to get coffee, go for just different small stuff. And I think that's good for us. It's a healthy lifestyle for this team at least.
How much do you think it weighs in your lifestyle as a pro player, having those moments where you don't really focus on the game, but are able to enjoy the rest of your life?
Yike: For me personally, it's very helpful, very nice for me to just do something that doesn't have to do with League. Just removing everything from League, just go for a walk, just talking with anyone I work with in the team, we work together and talking with them about just anything, like what we do daily. And then the same with doing these activities, just chilling, going outside of the League bubble, just being together. And yeah, maybe we play a quiz game and we talk about whatever happens there. Maybe there's something in common that we like or dislike, anything like talking games. We have some games as well, other different games that we can play in the office that we are also talking about playing, going out together to eat, these kinds of things.
And for me, it's very nice, very helpful to kind of just go away from all the League stuff for a moment. And yeah, overall, I think a lot of other players and I are just focusing on League 24/7. I think about League all the time, I play League all the time, I play solo queue all the time, scrims, and there's very little time for the other things. And when we do these little things that takes like five, ten minutes, it feels nice, refreshing, and it feels just good to be outside of the League bubble basically. And yeah, I would keep doing this because I think it's helpful for me and probably for the rest of my team.”
