Odoamne’s team has a poor start in LEC

The 2023 season has begun in League of Legends and LEC is really difficult to recognize, at least from a veteran’s perspective. Usually, the likes of Fnatic were dominating the competition and the best players were on the most successful teams.

But now we look at teams like Excel Esports, who invested a lot of money into signing a world-class roster, and we clearly see them failing to perform at the expected level.

Excel Esports’ story

Excel Esports have never been a strong team in League of Legends. They joined LEC in 2019 and started with a ninth place result and then a tenth place result. The next three seasons were slightly better. But the team never obtained anything more than a sixth place result.

This basically means that Excel Esports never took part in Mid-Season Invitational or Worlds. And there is absolutely nothing glorious about their LoL history.

But at the end of the 2022 season, the management of Excel made a radical decision. They took a big risk and signed two of the best players in Europe: Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu and Raphael “Targamas” Crabbe. Both of them were members of the two best teams in the region: Rogue and G2 Esports.

With the help of these two players, Excel hoped to build a powerful new roster that would prove capable of getting a top three result in LEC and qualify for Worlds 2023. But so far, the results have been poor.

Excel Esports’ results so far in LEC Winter 2023

Excel Esports played one match on January 21 and another match on January 22. The first match was rough because the opponent was G2 Esports.

Whenever you play against a team that is expected to win the tournament, the pressure is high and the chances of winning are slim. Even though G2 are in the same situation as Excel and need to learn how to compete with a new roster, it’s clear that they’re doing a much better job.

For G2 Esports, the fact that the Top and Mid players have been playing together for more than a year is a big advantage. Meanwhile, Excel had to build everything from scratch and so far they haven’t managed to make it work.

It’s not clear at this point whether the entire system is flawed or just one piece. It’s very likely that one or two players aren’t good enough or well enough integrated while the rest of the squad is perfectly fine. The next few weeks will clarify the situation for us.

Header: Riot Games