SHFT nuc: "Some manage to agree, put their egos aside, and work together. We struggle more with that, and it slows us down a lot"

Shifters secured a much-needed victory by taking down Fnatic at the start of Week 3 of the 2026 League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) Versus. With the standings remaining highly contested, the Geneva-based organization still trails the rest of the pack but hopes to build on this momentum and secure a spot in the playoffs. In an exclusive interview, midlaner Ilias “nuc” Bizriken sat down with Sheep Esports to discuss the team’s struggles with synergy, his mental health, and the challenges that lie ahead.

Ilias "nuc" Bizriken: "We had a strong start. The laning phase went well, we gained advantages early, forced some flashes, and overall, things went as planned. The first three dragons were well managed, and we were able to develop our snowball while controlling vision properly.

But starting with the third dragon, I felt something started to go wrong. Honestly, even looking back, it’s not easy to explain. There was a really simple situation: I survive top while Taliyah and Pantheon use their ultimates on me, K’Sante uses his teleport, Rek’Sai pushes bot, and then K’Sante gets spotted without his TP. Logically, their top side should collapse at that point.

But it didn’t go as expected. We were the ones who died, and in game, I didn’t understand what happened. We were in a winning position, yet suddenly, in a sequence, everything flipped: we fell behind, and the game slipped away. I think our ideas were right. The problem was mainly execution.

nuc: It’s funny, because I think for international fans, when they translate my tweets, they seem very harsh, while in France, they aren’t seen that way at all. I was mainly replying to specific people, those who were talking badly and upset after Los Ratones’ victory. But since I used formal language (‘vous’), some thought I was addressing everyone, which wasn’t the case at all. Those tweets were really like talking on stream, with Hiro (Alexandre El Hodebey) or others. They just don’t translate. Once read in another language, it doesn’t make much sense. It was stupid. People reacted for no reason.

Regarding the transition from last week to now, honestly, it wasn’t an easy week. We faced a lot of difficulties. I think it clearly comes from a negative snowball. For several reasons—I won’t go into detail—things started going wrong, frustration began to build.

Then the official matches came, and things happened as they did, which caused a small explosion we had to try to control as best we could, just to… survive. We were good, then suddenly, we went from good to bad. What I told myself is that we could just as quickly go from bad to good at the same speed.

nuc: Yeah. We have a lot of ideas, but we put very few into practice. That sums up the situation: everyone has their own vision of the game, and we don’t always align, so things often fall apart. I think that contributed to our recent problems and generated frustration. People are less willing to accept situations like that. It’s a dark period for our team. If we get through it, it’s like couples on the verge of breaking up: if they don’t split and find solutions together, everything’s fine. To be clear though, they’re not breaking up here—it’s just a metaphor.

nuc: This kind of problem exists in all teams. Some manage to agree, put their egos aside, and work together. We struggle more with that, and it slows us down a lot. But I’m not worried: when the moment comes, we’ll be very strong. It really needs to happen soon though. We need to enjoy playing together, have fun in-game. Today was much better than last week. So we just need to keep doing our best.

nuc: The problems I had weren’t about anger or frustration. I’ve spoken about this before, but it was mainly anxiety related to health. It started with arm pain: it really affected my ability to play, I couldn’t perform properly. Then there were a lot of internal issues at BDS because we still had to change the team just before the Summer Split. We stayed in Berlin for a long time, testing new players, scrimming, and mentally, I was already exhausted. I just wanted to go home and rest. On top of that came a lot of frustration. It was really an accumulation of everything.

Then, during the break, I had a health issue—not serious objectively—but it triggered something in me. From that moment, for almost five months, I thought every day that I had every possible disease. It was unbearable. When you’re in it, you can’t really live normally. I received many messages from people experiencing the same thing, telling me it ruined their lives and that they were looking for solutions. I tried to help as much as I could. But to be clear, this wasn’t a problem with anger management or anything else. It was purely health-related anxiety.

nuc: No, honestly, I don’t care. I know social media. I’ve already gone 0–55 in LEC, been insulted countless times along with my family tree, so that’s not going to affect me. These are people I don’t know and will never meet, so I couldn’t care less. It doesn’t impact me.

nuc: In the team, he plays the role of coach for our toplaner. Overall, he also helps with game discussions, but his main role is coaching Rooster (Shin Yun-hwan). He helps him think during games, question his choices, etc. He’s an excellent positional coach for Rooster, but also a friend. Even with the little time I’ve spent with him, I really like him. He has a great personality, is chill, makes you laugh. I’m very happy to have him on Shifters.

nuc: This week of scrims, as I said, didn’t go very well, and I don’t think we learned as much as we wanted. We did learn some things, but it’s difficult in these moments. Today’s game shows all our problems. We played the early and mid-game very well and got a good position, but we really missed all the timers and didn't play well in general. Despite that, we still got "the carrot" at the end, with the win.

It’s always easier to learn on stage because it’s more emotionally intense. If we analyze today’s game carefully and avoid repeating our mistakes, I think the next few days will go very well. Especially tomorrow against NAVI. As for Monday, KC is still a very strong team, so we’ll look into tomorrow first. Every day, after each match, we’ll do everything we can to learn and improve."