03.02.26 - 18:0003.02.2026 - 18:00·6m6 minutes de lecture·
Par Armand Luque
LR Nemesis on franchising: "Riot is on a massive clock. They’ll need to do changes sooner or later"
Despite a misstep against NAVI, Los Ratones are back in business and fighting for playoffs. An exclusive interview with the team's midlaner.
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Tim "Nemesis" Lipovšek, midlaner of Los Ratones in the 2026 LEC Versus. Photo Credit: Wojciech Wandzel/Riot Games
"They’ve been too slow at making changes, considering how fast the world moves."
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After the storm comes the sun, and Los Ratones are now staring into a ray of hope in the 2026 League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) Versus following two much-needed wins in Week 3. Still, the climb continues, and the team will need to put in twice the effort to stay afloat in the final week of the group stage. In an exclusive interview, midlaner Tim "Nemesis" Lipovšek sat down with Sheep Esports to discuss the team's progression, his drive to pursue professional play, and the challenges of franchising in Europe.
Los Ratones ends Week 3 with a 2–1 record, picking up wins against MKOI and G2 before closing the week with a loss to NAVI. How do you feel about the team’s recent growth and overall progress?
Tim "Nemesis" Lipovšek: "I think we’re getting better over time. Obviously, in the first week, we probably could have won two games easily if we had just played a bit better. Now we’re starting to play a little bit better. It’s still best-of-ones, so it can be a little bit random. You can get stomped really hard, or you can win really fast as well, and that applies to every team. We still have a lot of work to do.
Andrei "Odoamne" Pascu mentioned that the team seemingly has grown a lot compared to last year, especially in avoiding negative emotional snowballing. Would you agree?
Nemesis: Naturally over time, especially now, maybe because we’re trying a bit more, we’re just a little bit sharper overall as a team. We have improved a lot on things. For example, we don’t have to communicate every single thing we want to do anymore, because players naturally know what needs to be done on the map and stuff. With that said, there’s still a lot of progress to be made.
When you mention that there is still progress to be made, which areas do you personally think the team should focus on improving?
Nemesis: I would say everything, but we also play maybe a little bit different on stage, which is a big problem that every team has to face at some point. I would say being more decisive on stage, and in general, maybe the early game is our weakest area right now.
Los Ratones is a very player-led team. With the team’s vision often aligning with how you see the game, how does that level of responsibility and influence affect your perspective on the team’s development?
Nemesis: I’ve always kind of thought that if you’re a good player, you’ll naturally have strong opinions about how the game should be played and all that stuff. In any good team, the good players will lead the team. And the best-case scenario is that you have, let’s say, every role being a good player, then I don’t think coaches really have to do much. In League, when you have good players, the players will kind of lead the team.
How would you describe your relationship with your coaches Jakob "YamatoCannon" Mebdi and Kevin Edward "Shaves" Tolman, and how do they influence the team?
Nemesis: Yamato is more of a leader, and he takes more of the leadership role and more initiative. Shaves is more the guy in the background, just talking to him. He doesn’t necessarily have to talk to us all the time, he gives his point of view, and then they take decisions together. Yamato is usually the one representing them.
With two important matches coming up next week, including the SK game that could decide playoff positions and the Vitality match, do you feel the team needs to make changes, or was today just a matter of execution while still being on the right trajectory?
Nemesis: If I’m not mistaken, we play next week on a completely different patch, and it seems to be the biggest patch of the season so far, especially compared to 26.1 and 26.2; those patches were a joke. With that said, I think the game will change a lot. I don’t think any team is going to stay the same week to week, and if they do, they’ll probably fall behind. We need to work on a lot of things. We need to adapt to the patch well, and we need to fix the mistakes, like today against NAVI, for example. It sucks that we lost, but it’s kind of obvious what we did wrong, which was mostly draft-related, and that’s not going to be a problem to fix.
How do you envision your future after Los Ratones?
Nemesis: It’s kind of hard to know because the world moves at a faster pace every single year. Especially if you look at it 10 years ago compared to now, the difference is enormous, and I’m very afraid to even make predictions on what I’ll be doing a year from now, while in the past people were making predictions about what they’d be doing 20 years from now. So I honestly have no idea what I’ll be doing.
How have you felt about your return to the LEC? Do you feel you’ve adapted well over the nine matches you’ve played so far?
Nemesis: To the LEC, maybe, but the LEC is very small. If you go into a national tournament, that’s a completely different world. There, you probably have to play five times better than here. Overall, it’s hard to say.
Has your vision of what makes a viable LEC project changed over time? If you were to continue in the LEC, how would you prioritize which team to join?
Nemesis: I doubt there will ever be a project like Los Ratones. The world we live in is that, as a player, I have to care about the roster—the players I’m playing with—as the number one priority, and everything else is useless. I don’t even look at it, nor do I care about it. It all just comes down to which players you have on your team, because that’s where teams are won or lost.
You’ve mentioned in the past being conflicted between being a pro and a streamer. Now that you’ve done both and returned to pro play, do you have a preference, or do you enjoy them equally?
Nemesis: Professional play has higher highs, but streaming has more consistency. That’s the main difference between them.
Do you think Los Ratones’ recent success highlights some of the failures of franchising in the LEC and esports in general?
Nemesis: I would say definitely yes. People have talked a lot about the good old days, when players could come together, create a random roster, and start winning things, then move on to bigger things. Los Ratones captured some of that, and that’s why it’s so fun for people to watch.
And yeah, franchising—not really a big fan—because of a lot of examples over the last few years when there’s been organizations that are constantly at the bottom, constantly doing random decisions that you don’t really understand. I don’t think that really creates a hype product to watch.
Given Los Ratones’ success, should Riot consider potential changes for the LEC in the future?
Nemesis: I think Riot is on a massive clock. They’ll need to do something sooner or later. They’ve been too slow at making changes, considering how fast the world moves. So personally, I do believe they’re on a timer to make changes."
Armand Luque is an interviewer and journalist with deep roots in the EMEA League of Legends scene. A veteran of the esports world, they hail from France and are best known for their work on Leaguepedi...