On the 15th of November, Fnatic officially announced the change of their League of Legends' team manager.
Harry « hxd » Wiggett was replaced by Sami « Rico » Harbi. This former member of Millenium took some time to answer our questions, to talk about his players and the upcoming season.
RVinceZ : Hello and thank you for the interview! Could you present yourself for our viewers, and tell us about your career.
Rico : Hello :) My name's Rico, a former eSport interviewer, and correspondent in South Korea for Millenium. I am now the League of Legends' manager for Fnatic.
What is your role in the Fnatic team? What is your day to day schedule?
I've actually got several hats, since I'm in charge of Business Development and Public relations. So I'm either talking with the sponsors, managing our relations with the press, or organizing players' trainings everyday.
I'm also in charge of logistics and keeping in touch with Riot who is supervising LCS teams.
Okay, so you've got quite a busy schedule! Since you manage players' training, what do you think of patch 3.14? According to you, is it going to affect Fnatic overall level?
I think we'll only know that once the team is playing for real. But I think we're adapting pretty well to this patch, especially Cyanide who loves the new jungle and has already fitted his champion pool to it. As for the rest, if we don't take into account when people forget to buy their Trinket :P, things are going well, players put them to a better use each and every day, and the general vision control is quite good.
Alright. Rekkles is also "new" in the team, even though he had already played with it before. How are his teammates adapting, especially YellowStar, his support?
Overall, it's going well since they both have really good mechanics. But we need time to work on the communication and give Rekkles some time to adapt to the team playstyle and to our training methods that slightly differ from what he recently experienced with the Copenhagen Wolves.
Speaking about the Copenhagen Wolves, they will be participating in the Up&Down next week. They will either against NiP, either SK or MYM. What do you think of their level, and do you think they will make it to the European top 8 ?
CW is by far the strongest team amongst the amateurs. I think they will go through if they play against MYM.
Okay. With all these rosters changes and all these rumors about player transfers, from a continent to another, do you think we will have new leaders? (Bjergsen going over to TSM, new CLG lineup, Edward's comeback...).
Concerning Europe, competition will be even tighter. Gambit with Edward's comeback is getting the balance they had lost since the Summer split back. EG has a very strong new roster. NiP will have their say about it if they secure their spot in the LCS, despite their poor performance in IEM Cologne. Same goes for Copenhagen Wolves, if they make it back to the LCS, they'll be more than just underdogs. Whether it's Gambit or us, everyone will need to work their best to stay on top.Concerning NA, it's hard to say, we need to see if C9 losses during Worlds and IEM haven't ternished their image in the United States. TSM made a good call by taking in Bjergsen, he is a valuable asset, but we'll need them in action. XDG is hoping to get rid of their throw problems by making some internal changes ^^ And challenger teams like Quantic, if they go through, will be hard to take down.
Speaking about C9, Fnatic will face them during the Battle of the Atlantic. You already beat them at Worlds 2 to 1 in quarter finals, do you think Fnatic is still the favorite against the best S3 american team?
According to most people, we weren't the favorites against at Worlds :P
Honestly, it's pointless to take bets on any team since the meta is completely changed. We have no idea of how they play on this patch. But if we stick to our game plan and don't throw, we should be alright.We will be playing the last game of the tournament which will probably be decisive, so the pressure will be real.
Indeed, since each game will be worth some points, and yours will logically award the highest number of points. You recently lost your game against Gambit Gaming in IEM Cologne final. According to you, what did your players miss to win the title? We know how strong can be the Russians during this competition, but you beat them several times during the LCS.
Gambit during Summer split, they weren't themselves. They were not as strong as before. But with Edward's return and the general improvement of the atmosphere, they built confidence, and they trained well for these IEM.We, on the other hand, just lacked practice. We used this spare time to grant some holidays to our players, to meet our fans as much as possible, which we couldn't really do during the LCS. We attended the PGW, we went to Lucca in Italy for a massive convention, and finally we met our fans in London. It's important because we cannot forget who is to credit for the success of eSport, and just seeing how pleased the people are makes it worth.
When we got back, we trained seriously, but we saved our strenghts because we knew we would have to adapt to the new patch shortly after.
Gambit performance was still outstanding, and they made us pay for our lack of practice ^^
I see. I assume you stay informed of what happens abroad, and especially in Asia. Do you consider the asian teams as a possible source of inspiration for picks and strategy, or do you stick to your own ideas (from soloQ and comfort picks) regardless of what is permapicked in Asia?
As I am personnally very close to South Korea, I keep myself thoroughly informed (which proved being useful against Ozone during Worlds :P), but EU teams generally create their own metagame without taking into account whatever happens elsewhere.Obviously, if something new or really strong comes out, we'll have a look at it, we'll test it and if it's worth, we'll eventually add it to our gameplay.
For instance, Koreans used to consider Aatrox as rubbish during Worlds, and you witnessed the positive impact it made for us.
On the contrary, their Annie support is really strong and we needed to adapt.
In the end, each region has something to teach the others. Well, thank you for answering my questions :) Good luck for the Battle of the Atlantic. Do you have anything else to say to those who used to follow your interviews on millenium.org?
A big kiss and hug to everyone from Millenium, staff and viewers, trying to share good content was always a big pleasure, and I hope you'll keep supporting me even though I'm now part of another structure.
You can follow Rico on Facebook and Twitter.
