The battle for the playoffs is getting fiercer by the day in the
2026 LEC Summer Season. With teams fighting to establish themselves as Europe’s third-best team, some are slowly pulling ahead of the pack, while
appear to have stumbled
following their latest loss to
. After a poor showing, the team now returns to the drawing board with plenty to improve on if it wants to remain in contention for the league’s top spots.
In an exclusive interview, head coach
André "Guilhoto" Guilhoto discusses the issues plaguing the roster, the reasons behind the promotion of
and
to the starting lineup, and the team’s goals ahead of Worlds.
How do you feel after the loss to Vitality, especially given the team's poor early games?
André "Guilhoto" Guilhoto: “We played really, really badly. It's similar to our first week. I think we fell back into bad habits and lost some of the things that we worked on, as well as the reasons why we were improving in scrims and could beat Movistar KOI. Honestly, I don't know the reasons why this is happening. Why did we fall back into old patterns and habits? We have to fix it as fast as possible.
It felt like GIANTX was sometimes too quick to give up spaces and felt rather lost around objectives. How do you address issues like that?
Guilhoto: Yeah, I mean, we worked on making sure that the plays we made around the map were not as random. But in game three, even though we were getting leads, I think a lot of them were random, and we didn't have a good plan around neutral objectives. This is the reason why we lost the last game.
I think game one and two—and we should have lost game two—were mostly just us playing really, really badly individually. In game one, there was a bit of a neutral objective discrepancy as well, but I think both games we had matchups where we should have been able to do better in the botlane, and we fell way too far behind. Same thing happened on toplane.
In game one, we had a comp that we're not really that good at. We're not really good at playing the defensive side, I guess. That's something we're working on, but we couldn't do it. But yeah, on game three, I think it was very obvious. We just didn't come in with a good mindset around neutrals today. And yeah, that's the payoff.
We saw clips of you having some rather serious discussions with your players between games. What were you saying to them, and what were you trying to address?
Guilhoto: After game one, I wanted to see if we could wake up because we were not really paying attention to the things that we worked on during the week. Maybe it worked a bit—we had a better read on neutrals and managed to come back into a game that we should have lost—but it still wasn’t great. Maybe I should have had a stern talk with them before game three as well. Getting them to focus more on objectives and all.
Right now we have two faces. The face where we do a lot of random shit and the face where we actually focus on the things that we are doing in practice. When we do the latter, we're a really good team, and we can win games against everyone. When we do the former, we're just a team that does a bunch of random stuff, and we have no discipline in game.
It's just a matter of us getting better at controlling that, being more the second one than the first one. I think it's a process. It's also a part of being a new team, because what we define as random stuff is a lot more when the concepts that we have are not... the same, right, when we have two new members.
So yeah, to me, just keep working on that. I think we had a much better week of practice this week than all the others, and I just need to get them in the right space, I would say.
How much influence did you have in making those roster changes, especially with Lozark saying that almost everyone was calling for changes in the summer, and how did you experience that whole process?
Guilhoto: Overall, I think that we were stagnating. And one of the reasons, obviously not the only one, is that I think the day-to-day was being a bit heavy. It became hard to move forward, I would say. And the way that we were doing reviews was not the best.
From my end, the feedback that I ended up giving was that we should look to change at least one player between
and
. And then obviously they asked me what I think about Flakked and Oscarinin.
Looking at botlane, between Flakked and Noah, I felt that it would be a bit of a flip depending on what state Noah came back in, or how sharp Flakked was. I think overall they just bring different things. I don't think there is a clear, "This is better, that one is better."
Still, we felt that without changing, we wouldn't be able to reach Worlds. And I would rather take a risk and fail miserably than be content with another fourth place that wouldn't mean more than a sixth or seventh place finish.
What does Flakked bring to the team in particular? He’s a player who not many people expected to return to the LEC.
Guilhoto: I think he's a very versatile player, more consistent as well. I mean, we decided to promote him before we knew that there would be a mage meta, right? But in a mage meta, he can bring those champions, and that’s also a huge upside.
But mostly, I think he can also help a lot with an issue that we had before, which was helping
when it comes to communication responsibilities. We do have a pretty quiet team overall, and often, that responsibility falls onto ISMA. It was getting a bit too much for him—it’s normal. So I think Flakked also helps in that. I think he's a pretty smart, versatile, and consistent player. And in terms of the environment, obviously he also brings a lot.
What are you envisioning for the rest of the split, with KC coming up and Worlds still being the goal?
Guilhoto: Firstly, I have to do better. The players are responding really well to the directions of practice and where we want to go. It just wasn't shown against Vitality today. When I look back over the match, I'm sure that there will be signs of things that we did in practice that for sure we did better today.
We have a group that is very responsive to directions and indications in practice. I think if we do well as a staff, then our progress will be good. So it’s on us, especially the failures. We, as a staff, are the reasons behind our losses, and if we can’t win, it means we didn’t do a good job.
With that being said, I have a lot of trust in myself, the rest of the staff, and obviously in all the players. I think that we are going to get the result that we want.
First, we obviously need to make sure that we qualify for playoffs, and
is for sure the hardest match of the split right now. I think their form is incredible at the moment. If we can get the win, I think we are in a really good spot. If we don't win, we'll just need to lock in for
,
, and
.
We just need to keep working. There isn't much time, but I believe that we as a staff and as players are capable of it for sure. We all really want to make it to Worlds. That's our goal.”
