Should the LEC expand to 12 slots?
By now, the community has been shaken to its core by the news that Rekkles will not be playing in the LEC this year. The morning of November 11th, LEC Wooloo broke the news that Rogue had locked in their 2022 ADC as Comp- the player benched for VIT Crownshot mid 2021- and that as a consequence of this fact, the ADC GOAT of Europe would not be starting in the LEC in 2022. If conversations haven’t already begun, they will soon- does the LEC need a new slot for all this talent?
There are no shortage of organizations who could take up slots in a 12 team league- KC, MOUZ, NAVI, Giants, GAM, and others come immediately to mind. The real question is if the LEC has the talent to support this model. In China’s LPL, the 17 team league functions well because of how stacked the region is with talent. Their “academy league”, the LDL, makes a strong argument to be the 4th major region- there’s certainly no shortage of talent. Korea’s LCK, on the other hand, operates with a relegation system. One simply needs to take a look at Damwon’s origins in 2018 with a challenger team with players like Nuguri, Canyon, Showmaker, Beryl to realize that there certainly isn’t a shortage of talent in Korea.
Does Europe overflow with talent, though? It certainly has peaks of talent that can dominate the world, with players like Caps, Perkz, and Rekkles clearly international level players that are completely homegrown. This last year of LEC was the most stacked the league has ever been- 10th place Schalke, despite their placement, was unanimously considered highly impressive with players like Broken Blade, NEON, and Gilius.
In my opinion, the best way to measure if the LEC could field 2 more teams that could legitimately elevate the level of play in the league is to see if a couple more high level rosters can be created with EU residents that deserve positions in the LEC but don’t currently have them (or are rumored to not have them). I’ve marked more questionable players with “(?)”
Top: WUNDER (!), BWIPO (!), Cabochard, Orome, Irrelevant (?)
Jungle: INSPIRED (!), Skeanz, Cinkrof
Mid: NISQY (!), Toucoille, Lider (?), Jiizuke (?), Blue (?)
Bot: HANS (!), REKKLES (!), Jackspektra, Bean, Zven (?)
Sup: MIKYX (!), Rhuckz (?)
Two important things to note here. First, if you were to make a team with only “(!)” players, you have a team that I could see winning Worlds. It’s crazy that a few of these players might not even have a team in the LCS. Secondly, I’m sorely lacking supports- it’s the only role that hasn’t generated much buzz with its players, likely because of its invisible nature. I don’t watch ERLs as closely as I should, but from what I’ve seen discussed, and from the games I’ve watched, Targamas and Advienne were far and away the most promising supports in the ERLs, and the two are already rumored to hold their spots.
I don’t, however, think that my own lack of knowledge about the ERL support scene indicates that there isn’t enough talent to go around- it just means there aren’t a lot of supports with buzz around them right now. Trymbi came into his own with RGE this year, but his promotion to the main roster was incredibly controversial at the start of the year. Supports can often flourish under the tutelage of a more experienced ADC, and the LEC has those in spades.
It seems clear that a team like Gambit, MOUZ, or KCorp could easily grab a couple more spots in the LEC and not just be a playoffs contender, but a title contender. Even the question mark players on my list are players on the radar for entering the LEC- very often we see players pulled up from ERLs or TCL to perform far above their level despite being completely off the radar of the average fan. Most LEC pros seem to be putting more of an emphasis on having starting positions in top LEC teams over top LCS teams, not just because of proximity and convenience, but also the level of competition. I would wager that many of the egregiously missing players would rather play for a newly formed KC team with fellow superstars than go to NA for the paycheck. I really hope we see a 12 team roster for the LEC next year.
