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April 22, 2021
League of Legends
These 5 League of Legends players made the move from Europe to North America work
As 100 Thieves announced that they’d be joined by Abbedagge for the Summer Split in the LCS, let’s take a look at five players who made similar moves.
100 Thieves recently announced that Abbedagge would be leaving Schalke 04 to make a move to the LCS, where he’d be joining the starting line-up as their mid laner. While he isn’t the first, he certainly won’t be the last player to make such a move. Let’s take a look at five European players who successfully made a switch to playing in North America. They were either successful in Europe and repeated their prowess in North America, or they actually started playing well while in the LCS.
5. Svenskeren – A clean slate
Svenskeren is currently the jungler for Evil Geniuses as he helped them reach a 5th-6th place in the LCS this past split, but don’t let that result fool you. The jungler started his career in Europe, playing for successful organizations such as Ninjas in Pyjamas, SUPA HOT CREW and SK Gaming. He only secured his first trophy however while playing for Cloud9.
That’s some tough losses, if we played a little better we could have won. Proud of all my teammates for playing well and working hard, let’s try hard for summer split!
Despite the fact that Svenskeren was able to secure first place in Europe multiple times, he never won the playoffs that followed. Before joining up with Evil Geniuses he played for TSM as well, where he was also able to bring home another trophy.
4. Zven – The American Dream
After a successful career in Europe riddled with trophies for Origen and G2 Esports, Zven decided it was time for a change and moved to the LCS to play for TSM, together with mithy. At the time, this decision caused an uproar among the League of Legends community and following the transfer, Zven and mithy struggled to reproduce their past successes.
It was only when Zven started playing for Cloud9 that we saw glimpses of the European marksman who dominated the competition. After he secured his first trophy in the LCS he was the first player to ever win a trophy in Europe as well as North America.
3. Jensen – Looking for freedom
Jensen got a reputation in the European League of Legends scene for all the wrong reasons, which led to him getting banned by Riot Games which in turn meant he wasn’t able to compete for a team. He was able to turn all this around however and after 10 months, during which he was active as a coach for SK Gaming, he joined up with North American LCS team Cloud9.
At Cloud9 Jensen would go on to establish himself as one of the most influential and strong mid laners within the region. As a member of Cloud9 Jensen was able to find success in the LCS as well as internationally, as he was able to reach the top 8 at Worlds in 2016.
2. Perkz – An icon swaps regions
One of the most talked about moves between Europe and North America in League of Legends was the one of Perkz, who previously played for G2 Esports. With G2, Perkz was able to win MSI 2019 and brought Europe their first international trophy (ignoring the season 1 Worlds one).
Perkz is without a doubt the most decorated player to ever make the move from the LEC to the LCS. Wanting to play as a mid laner once more, which he was unable to do at G2 Esports with Caps in the role, he moved to Cloud9. As a testament to his value, he would go on to hand Cloud9 another trophy in his first split in the LCS.
1. Bjergsen – The pioneer
Despite the fact that Bjergsen only played a few games of League of Legends in Europe, it’s safe to say he’s been the most successful transfer between regions up to this point. TSM discovered the potential of the mid laner early on and picked him up back in 2013, only to never let him go.
Right now Bjergsen has retired from League of Legends as a player but he decided to take on the role of head coach over at TSM. Bjergsen is viewed as one of the greatest players in the LCS of all time and has won the MVP award multiple times.
As you can see the LCS is no stranger to importing European players to compete in their league and with the talent development the LEC and lower ERLs are currently seeing, it’s likely that won’t stop in the foreseeable future. It’ll be interesting to see which players will make the move next.
