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Excel are tied for first place in the LEC after five games. That may not seem like much at such an early stage, but we’re over 25% of the way through the season now.
More impressive, though, is the list of teams they’ve already beaten. Fnatic, Vitality and MAD Lions have all fallen prey to the spreadsheet boys and, based on form, they arguably go into their game against Rogue this weekend as favourites.
What Happened?
Normally when we ask what happened to a team, it’s when a top team falls from grace. When it comes to Excel, though, you have to wonder how they went from never making play-offs to being one of the best teams in the league.
It’s a banner year for the British organisation. After years of lower mid-table mediocrity, they broke into spring play-offs and were one game away from making round two. Now, off the rift, the company behind the team is making moves too. Excel opened its new headquarters this month, reshuffled its management and added a new head of partnerships.
While many of the names in that story will mean little to esports fans, the one that stands out is Tim Reichert. The former professional footballer has real esports pedigree, being a founding member of SK Gaming and brother of ESL bigwig Ralf Reichert. He also has Head of Esports on his resume from his time at Schalke 04, which was… well it had its ups and downs.
Admittedly, none of that will have the tangible effect that signing Mikyx had on the League team’s performances, but it is an impressive show of intent: XL is going places.
For esports fans, what is tangible is the result of XL’s Korean boot camp. Talking to Inven Global, Nukeduck said that they had gotten to play against world class teams like T1 and RNG. “[Korean teams] give you a ‘test block’ of three games,” he said. “We did it against T1 and we played fine, they thought, so we kept playing them quite a lot.”
A 4-1 record speaks volumes about the efficacy of the improved practice. Indeed, XL’s only defeat so far in summer was against Europe’s own MSI representative G2.
On top of that, the addition of Mikyx, while controversial at the time, continues to look like a huge coup. He has picked up right where he left off in 2021: making plays and dominating opponents. Many analysts and commentators consider him and Patrik to be the best bottom lane duo in LEC and I’m inclined to agree.
The statistics paint a similarly pretty picture for XL fans, too. Patrik leads the league for gold per minute (albeit only by one), the team ranks second for fastest average game time (helped by a 21-minute demolition of MAD) and is just behind G2 in pretty much every stat available to the public. A lot of those numbers are just different ways of showing that XL are the second best team in the LEC right now. Still, it’s important to note that they aren’t just outlasting and out-scaling worse teams, they are playing the kind of proactive League that we all associate with the best teams in the world.
In The Driving Seat
And that right there is the biggest catalyst for XL’s in-game improvements. Thinking back to 2021, XL started off fairly well, out-scaling many teams and famously coming back from deficits over and over again early in the season. It all went south once the rest of the league figured out the meta game and stopped playing into XL’s hands. With Mikyx on the team, though, XL is taking the game to their opponents in a way they never really did before.
Take that MAD game for example. XL put Markoon on Volibear – a champion notorious for needing to be active early and for falling off being borderline useless after a certain point. Despite the received wisdom that tower dives are off the table if you’re not Chinese, Markoon went blue to red to diving bottom lane for first blood less than four minutes in. With Armut teleporting to bottom lane to stop a second kill, XL had a significant lead extremely early on and, like all good teams, they built on that lead. That bottom lane advantage allowed XL’s duo to roam to middle lane and pick up another kill, snowballing the game rapidly.
With XL looking like a proper proactive team, it would feel wrong of me to end this article without mentioning the resurgence of Finn. After a season with the basket case that was 2021 CLG, it is heart warming to see him back and better than ever. Just looking at that MAD game again, he fended off so many ganks without giving up a single kill that it started to look a bit embarrassing. He played so patiently, knowing that he was playing a classic weak side Gnar, and he was rewarded with a glorious four-man Gnar ult (admittedly, sans wall stun) that put the game beyond doubt.
As someone who had previously dedicated his blog to XL, it’s gratifying to see them improve so much over such a short span of time. Worlds is always the goal for any team worth its salt, and if XL can maintain their current form that goal is not as absurd as it seemed just a few months ago.
