G2 Esports has announced a rebuild focused around Caps and Jankos for the 2022 League of Legends season.
G2 Esports has announced that they are benching League of Legends superstars Martin "Wunder" Hansen, Martin "Rekkles" Larsson, and Mihael "Mikyx" Mehle from their active roster. This move had been heavily rumored and reported on, but now the team has made the move official.
As part of the same announcement, G2 has also made their intentions known to ditch their coaching and support staff, including Fabian "GrabbZ" Lohmann and Sng "Nelson" Yi-Wei.
G2 Esports did not make Worlds this year and this move comes as a direct result of their disappointing finish in the LEC, where they finished 3rd in LEC spring and 4th in LEC Summer. Prior to this, G2 had finished in the top 4 at Worlds every year since 2018, and 2nd in 2019, where they lost in the Grand Finals to FPX 3-0.
They have retained the services of Caps and Jankos, two long-time players on G2, that they will be looking to rebuild around for the 2022 season.
Why are G2 Esports benching Wunder, Rekkles, and Mikyx?
Carlos "Ocelote" Rodriguez tweeted the following video statement to officially announce the move on Monday afternoon.
As you guys know, 2021's League of Legends season for G2 wasn't good. Specifically, considering the fact that we want to win Worlds. And that's our goal. Everything we've done since the inception of G2 and everything we're doing is to win Worlds. These changes are very very tough to make. Trust me when I say we've spent hours upon hours internally with the players that stay, between the orgainzation, everything. With everyone across our content teams and other teams as well, were part of these discussions at times."
As a result of these discussions, we have decided to bench and look to trade Wunder, Mikyx, Rekkles, GrabbZ, and Nelson, and also look to replace the rest of the support staff. These were tough decisions and it was hard to come to this decision. We love every single one of these people that are no longer going to be with us moving forward, and their work with us has been incredible.
Not only their work in game but also the content they've done with us, with the partners, they've been great to us. We're very proud to have had them in the team, winning MSI together, having got 2nd in Worlds, destroyed EU over and over. For Rekkles, he came in this last year, did his best, played solo queue, did a lot of content for our partners, he was great to us. Only great words for them, and I hope you G2 fans will thank them for their work over the years.
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"It's in our best interest that they land somewhere nice and where they can continue to succeed," Rodriguez concluded. "We will not be blocking any trades. It's as simple as that. With that said it's time to rebuild. 2022 I'm hopeful for it, I know what we're working on, and it is very exciting. I think you should be excited too. My hope is that you look back 12 months from now and you're proud of our work. Winning Worlds is still in the cards, it's still our main goal, and that's what we'll do."
G2 Esports has not yet announced who is on their new roster for next season but is expected to be making plenty of moves this offseason with the players they have on contract. It's likely that they will execute some of the highest-profile trades as they look to rebuild and attempt to make Worlds again in 2022.
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