KC Yike on LEC scrim quality: "We need tougher opponents"

have completed a near-flawless split in the 2026 LEC Summer Season, marking a first for the French organization. However, the pressure is only mounting as the Blue Wall now turns its attention to playoffs, where it will look to continue its dominant run and prove its pedigree. Standing in KC’s way are , who now sit between the team and a potential first-ever appearance at Worlds, the biggest tournament of the year.

Ahead of the crucial matchup, jungler sat down with Sheep Esports for an exclusive interview to reflect on his season, discuss the level of practice in Europe and how KC maintained its form after MSI and EWC, before touching on the team’s mentality heading into the most important stage of the year.

Martin "Yike" Sundelin: The split has definitely felt pretty long, even if it’s roughly the same as usual splits. But overall, I’m very happy. It’s probably one of the best splits any team has had in Europe, right? It’s at least one of mine and KC’s best splits. Going 9-0 in this format is a very good achievement, and we really got a lot of momentum since our 3-0 in Paris.

Our last two weeks against and were a bit more difficult—we didn’t show as good performance as what is expected of us—so I’m disappointed about that, but we’ve played well this split overall.

Now, we’re just looking forward to Madrid, and we have been using the time we’ve been given to practice in order to make sure we can have a good showing in our upcoming playoffs games.

Yike: I don’t believe we went easier on these matches than in past weeks. It’s just a thing that happens. Maybe we were overconfident and played with ego against SK and SHFT. Obviously, both of them were at the bottom of the standings, so it’s easy for us to come in with a disrespectful mindset. I don’t like that at all.

I want to go into every game treating all opponents the same and playing just as hard as we would against any other team to make sure we can win every single game. Even myself, I feel like I’ve had some pretty bad showings, notably in game 2 on Vi against SK. I made so many mistakes, and I’m really not happy with that. I don’t think we can have those performances if we want to be the best in Europe.

Yike: Exactly. Ever since we’ve qualified for playoffs, we’ve started doing more best-of-five scrims. It’s been some weeks now already.

It’s nice to go back to best-of-fives—it’s been a while. Even during the Esports World Cup, we had a lot of best-of-threes, so we’ve not gotten to train them in quite some time.

It’s very important for us to be as well prepared as we can be for playoffs. Especially for games four and five, draft is going to be really important, and that was one of our weaknesses in the last splits—we had some rather bad moments in these kinds of scenarios. That’s what we’ve been practicing a lot on.

Yike: Yeah, there’s a huge difference between MSI/EWC scrims and then going back to the LEC. After playing against the best teams in the world, we realized that when we started scrimming against LEC teams that weren’t , the standard level in the LEC was clearly much lower.

The level in Europe has to improve—I feel like LEC teams should be playing better in scrims. We need tougher opponents. We need to be able to scrim each other and actually learn from it. When we were scrimming international teams, it felt like we were constantly learning.

We understood a lot of things, and the teams we were playing against probably did the same. That’s what happens when you play against the best teams in the world. Going back to the LEC though… it was a bit rough with scrims, trying to figure out how we wanted to play and learn from them.

We don’t want to lean into the “fiesta scrims” that some teams here are doing right now. It’s been a bit rough. We’ve just been making sure that what we do in scrims is as valuable as possible. We don’t want to join in on the fiesta-style games with weird plays that don’t make sense, which I feel happens a lot in our scrims.

Yike: Yeah, I feel that’s pretty true. Some teams just go into scrims without a real plan, you know? Either in draft or also in game. You can see that some teams are just playing on autopilot. They barely, or don’t, punish you at all. There are scrims where I can just do whatever and not get punished for any bad decision I make.

That’s how you develop bad habits. You’ll start to think that you can keep doing certain things because you’re not getting punished for them, but then you go international and actually get punished.

In Europe, you have to understand that some scrims can be very fake. You have to make sure that you focus on what you can do well and try not to focus too much on whether your enemies are doing things right or wrong.

Yike: [Laughs] I think I can talk about it. We’ve scrimmed G2 a few times—it’s a bit random. I think we did after EWC and towards the beginning of the split after the Roadtrip—we’ve played them a bit. It’s always nice to play against them. They are a very good scrim partner.

Maybe something changed from their point of view compared to the previous splits, but yeah, it’s great to have a team like them to play against, always.

Yike: Regarding pressure, I would say that I always go into any match with it. Even against SK, I felt some pressure, even though it was a useless match for us and we were already locked in first place. Going into matches with some pressure is important for me; it helps.

Overall though, I’m going to be very confident heading into playoffs. The whole team is going to be confident.

It’s also going to be a lot of fun. You know, going to another roadshow, being in Madrid again… It’ll just be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to it, especially since G2 will probably be better than in the regular season as well. They’ve been pretty sloppy, but that’s how they usually do things before playoffs. They always ramp up and get better at the end of the split. I would say it’ll probably be a battle between G2 and us this time around. We’ll see.

You know, maybe the other teams will also step up. Recently, I’ve been seeing better plays from the likes of , , and . I could see these teams grab the third Worlds spot and step it up.

Yike: Yeah, exactly! I saw Rocket League did it as well. We all have to do it now [laughs].

Yike: I personally try to avoid that topic. I always want to think of the first match ahead of me, which will be our first best-of-five in playoffs [against GIANTX]. That’s our main focus.

After that, when we’ve qualified for Worlds, or not, we’ll focus on our next match, and hopefully repeat that until the finals. When the LEC Summer Playoffs are over, then we’ll be able to focus on Worlds. I don’t want to focus on that tournament until I’m there.

Yike: [Smiles] Yeah. I mean… Ever since SkewMond joined the league, he’s been part of many discussions. Obviously, he’s very good and I have a lot of respect for him. I will always try to do better, and having him around helps me challenge myself. I have to work more, and harder, due to him. That’s a great feeling for me.

It’s usually between us both, and this split, I feel like I’ve played very well. I’m quite happy with my performance, but it won’t matter at all unless we win the finals. That’s what matters in the end. Whatever happens in the regular season doesn’t.

Nevertheless, I’m happy with what I’ve shown, and I want to keep it up. I want to keep playing as well as I can and show that I have the drive to be the best jungler in Europe, and internationally as well.”