As soon as the 2019 League of Legends World Championship finished, social media and forums filled with rumors surround upcoming roster changes. Some of these rumors will prove to be true, some won’t, but fans are surely heading for an exciting preseason of League esports.
Numerous rumors have been circulating around the community for the past few days, especially when it comes to the LoL Championship Series. From predictions of European players joining the LCS for the 2020 season, to new franchises taking on old rosters, here are the biggest LCS transfer rumors.
According to Travis Gafford’s YouTube video, one of the rumors talks about Team SoloMid’s bot laner Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen joining Cloud9. The Danish player joined the LCS in 2017 and has been a part of TSM since, which hasn’t been going that great lately. However, he might also be going back to LoL European Championship.
A Twitter account under an alias “Skeleton” that leaks roster changes claims that Zven will be moving back to the LEC, which is a more fitting theory if another rumor shared by Skeleton regarding the bot lane is to be believed. Apparently, there have also been talks of Team Liquid’s bot laner Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng joining C9, but this sounds very unlikely as Liquid is currently standing at the top of the LCS and is thought to be working towards maintaining its current roster.
Another European bot laner that is interested in joining LCS is Fnatic’s Martin “Rekkles” Larsson. Rekkles has been with FNC for most of his competitive career, but has also previously shared wishes to go play in North America. According to Reddit user u/mrjaywastaken, a Spanish esports talk show Esportmaniacos shared that there are “heavy rumors” surrounding Rekkles joining C9.
Gafford, however, claims to have heard it’s TSM who is more interested in Rekkles.
ESPN’s writer Jacob Wolf shared C9 has verbally agreed to transfer Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen, Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam, and according to a later Tweet, Academy players Ziqing “Kumo” Zhao and Matthew “Deftly” Chen to the newest LCS franchise, Evil Geniuses.
EG is returning to LCS next season after acquiring a vacant slot left by Echo Fox, and the team could end up being heavily influenced by C9’s 2019 roster.
After having previously relied on splashy signings of players like former SK Telecom T1 bot laner Bae “Bang” Jun-sik, it’s believed that 100 Thieves will now be focusing more on developing talent native to the North American region.
This new directive would come straight from the organization’s new ruling pair of general manager Christopher “PapaSmithy” Smith and head coach Tony “zikz” Gray, who have been brought on to provide a new direction for the squad. This comes after 100T’s disappointing 2019 season in spite of what was an expensive roster of players.
No matter what the teams’ rosters will be once the new competitive season starts, the LCS is looking to build strong teams that will do better at the 2020 World Championship, and the roster shuffles are where much of that work begins.
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