BrokenBlade: “The tier list is really not accurate at all”

WIN.gg spoke with G2 Esports top laner Sergen “BrokenBlade” Çelik after his side’s opening victory over Team BDS in the LEC Summer split. He gave his thoughts on the break between MSI and LEC, starting later than other leagues, and beating “S-tier” squad BDS.

WIN.gg: The LEC’s tier list by Drakos, Dagda and Caedrel had BDS as the only S-tier team, ahead of G2. Was that a good win to get in the opening match, then?

BrokenBlade: It’s definitely a good win. I think the tier list is really not accurate at all, but nevertheless, it shouldn’t matter for us. we’re not here to joke around. We just came back from MSI trying to win it all. We have to come back strong, show up, because we want to make it far the next time we go to an international tournament. We were very disappointed with how far we came. 

I’m very proud of how we played this first game, I think the enemies had a very, very dangerous comp to play against. If you don’t have vision especially because they press a button and you might just die. I think we managed to play very well around that, that’s the reason why the game was very slow. The faster we played the game, I think the better it was for the enemy. So we kind of choked them out slowly. I think we played pretty good.

There’s been a lot of focus on Zeri/Yummi in this patch, how was it playing a carry top game during this meta?

I think Zeri/Yuumi was banned in our game, at least Yuumi, so there is that. We kind of tried to do something in top lane. I also think I messed up once where I could’ve killed Adam on top where he had no flash and I just forgot in the heat of the moment. But I think the teamfights I really popped off; I had really clutch positioning and I killed Xayah so many times. I think, overall, I’m happy with my performance. 

Me when I’m the first to kill @Noah_lol1004 pic.twitter.com/77MwMTjSPU

— Sergen Çelik (@BrokenBlade) June 19, 2023

You’re against MAD Lions next. Are you confident of having another game like that?

I think MAD Lions is a team we always want to beat, especially after they knocked us out of playoffs last split. It’s really still in me that we should’ve won the split, but things like that happen in esports. It’s up to us to come back, and we managed to beat them 3-0 at MSI – we can beat them now as well.

The last time we spoke, you said you were going to “take all that we learned to Europe, to smash Europe.” Are you still equally as confident after today’s win?

Yeah, I’m very confident. I’m always confident in my team. I think we have great individuals, not only the players but also staff. I think we can reflect really well, I think reflecting is something that is very important. Anything in life, basically, if you want to get better, then you need to reflect on what you did wrong and what you did good – to keep on doing it – and I think that we have a really good structure on how we reflect on things. So I feel like with this iteration of G2 we can only get better. That’s what’s so exciting for me.

I think that, especially individually, I struggled a bit at the beginning of the year, and now I’m back to where I should’ve been all the time and I feel very at peace with myself, my performance and with my thoughts on how I should be playing the game. It feels really good.

What are your thoughts on the LEC starting later than other leagues and how this has allowed G2 a rare post-international tournament break?

I definitely took the break to my advantage, I went on vacation to Egypt and it was very, very nice. Very relaxing.

It’s nice to see other regions play. It was a bit sad because they still play the same champions. Especially in the Asian leagues, I feel like there’s a lot of the same champions, which is a bit sad. I think when it comes to LCS and LEC there’s usually more variety. Obviously it seems to be working out for the Asian teams since they are winning every year. 

But yeah, it was definitely helpful, I think we had now a whole week of scrims before starting the LEC and we are still accelerating right now which is really good. Everybody has the fire, knowing what happened in MSI and taking that with us to Europe.

You’re known to give speeches to the team, did you have any words ahead of the opening game of the split today?

Yeah I did. I told my teammates to be present in the moment and really be there for each other once something happens in the game. There’s always stuff happening in the game – when someone gets behind we need other people to step up for them. I think that’s something that’s very important if you want to be a successful team because, realistically, not everyone is going to have 100% good performances, but when someone is having a bad performance or a slightly worse performance then someone else should be there to step up and balance it out.

The other thing was just to be precise in what you say, the plays we do, and I think it showed in the game, especially because of how slow we played. We were mostly precise. We didn’t play perfectly, the map rotations and stuff, but we also did not get caught a lot. So it was somewhat precise, and that turned into a speech.

So you’re saying your speech was the reason G2 won?

Yeah. It’s what you could say, yeah.