For many Fnatic fans, it was a tough road to bear during the 2023 LEC Winter Split.
After three weeks, the perennial champions finished in ninth place after only winning a measly two games through the regular season. This was also the first time that Fnatic would drop out of post-season contention in the organization’s history, making it a historic low for one of the most iconic teams in the league.
Fnatic’s team director Javier “Dardo” Zafra spoke about Fnatic’s issues in the team’s fourth seasonal vlog, and said that in the final week, he wanted to focus on building any sort of synergy between his players before the end of the season.
“I think the biggest sadness came after losing to Astralis,” Dardo said. “It’s not that I completely gave up and said it’s completely over because I know, with the quality of the players that we have, they can always win against any team at any moment.”
Dardo said that his biggest question for the roster was whether they could at least improve and whether they could “get to a point where it’s more functional, because the problem is that we are completely dysfunctional.”
This season, for example, the team struggled to make any ends meet in their early games, failing with their various ganks and roams. They actually had the lowest average gold difference at 15 minutes, along with the lowest first blood rate, and first tower rate in the league, according to Oracle’s Elixir.
Even the return of the organization’s prodigal son, Rekkles, couldn’t bring better tidings for Fnatic. Although the 26-year-old legend had a KDA, he also had the second-lowest amount of kills and the third-lowest kill participation percentage of any LEC marksman this season. For almost half of his regular season games, Rekkles was placed on Varus, which is a champion that doesn’t give him much room in terms of mechanical expression.
“I think I’ve been kind of mediocre, and with all of my experience, mediocre is not where I should be,” Rekkles said in the vlog. “It’s so hard to not freak out, especially when you’re on stage. You know how disappointed the fans are, you know how disappointed you are. I mean, I’m fucking disappointed with my own play and how we play, but [there’s] nothing we can do but play the game anyways.”
