"Every player would like to join a team with Caps" — Inspired on LYON's Identity, Facing LOUD, and Hunting Down Canyon
LYON arrive in Brazil for First Stand with a score to settle — after C9 and Sentinels both fell to Brazilian opposition at the Americas Cup, Kacper "Inspired" Słoma and his teammates know NA's pride is at stake in their opening match against LOUD. The jungler sat down with RFT just before the tournament gets underway to discuss his offseason, what it actually means to build a winning team, and why he still believes anything is possible, even against the best in the world at FST.
How are you finding Brazil so far and have you had the time to scrim?
We arrived two days ago so I'm pretty tired. We already managed to scrim against Secret Whales and Bilibili Gaming, which was nice. International teams always play way differently than what you're expecting in your region.
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To comeback a bit on your offseason, you made it public that you always wanted to join G2. Can you explain why?
Overall I think every player in Europe would like to join G2 eventually because it's the biggest org ever since they have Caps (Rasmus Winther). He is the best player in Europe, and I was always wondering how we would match as a duo. I think every player that plays League competitively would like to join a team with Caps eventually and, G2 is just the best org since forever.
So you don't have a preference between EU and NA?
I don't really mind if I'm playing in EU or NA. I just look at the roster that has the highest potential to win. If I had a good roster in Europe I would have been down to come back even this year when I was a free agent. But I felt like LYON was just the best option I had in front of me, so I went for it.
A super team to me is a team that has five — or at least four — of the highest-rated players from the region. Like Team Liquid in 2022, I remember they made a really expensive roster with veterans and top players at every position. That's a super team to me. Our roster at first was Zamudo, who was a rookie, Isles that hadn't really achieved much in NA yet because he was always on bottom teams, and people had a bad perception of him. Saint that just came from Korea and didn't have the best showing. And just because Berserker and I joined, people thought it was going to be a super team. But I knew there was still a lot to learn.
And yet here you are — LCS champions for your first split together.
I think we're just more clutch in playoffs and more aware of what's winning and what's losing compared to other teams. From practice and from watching other teams, I'm kind of good at judging what's going to work against them, how we should approach the games, what's working in the current meta, what we should avoid. I feel like throughout my whole career I'm just good at pinpointing those things, and I think that's why we managed to win the playoffs.
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Berserker said he doesn't really believe you can beat LCK or LPL right now. Do you agree?
Berserker said that because of his career — he played there and felt like those teams were unbeatable. But I think you can for sure win against them. You need to have a really good approach on how you want to take the series. You either have to have very smart drafts or a very clear idea of how you want to play from the beginning. You can't just play standard meta comps that they're already comfortable with — they're just really good and it's going to be tough to win that way. I also think First Stand brings the best teams from every region, so it's definitely harder. But I'm looking forward to playing them. I hope that if we beat LOUD we play against JDG — I think they are for sure an easier opponent than Gen.G.
If you win against LOUD, there's a high chance you face Gen.G actually.
Yeah, Gen.G is for sure the biggest threat in the tournament, but eventually we would have to play against JDG and I think they are for sure a team that we could beat. I played against Junjia (Yu Chun-Chia) and HongQ (Tsai Ming-Hong) a lot last year during practices and even in official games. I think they are really good and the rest of the map is also really strong. But you never know what's going to happen in an official game — it's way different than scrims, people might make mistakes, might get nervous, and who knows, you can always win.
Photo Credit: Christian Betancourt/Riot Games
Your first match is against LOUD. The gap between NA and Brazil has felt obvious for years, but it seems like it might be closing...
I think FURIA is just the strongest team in Brazil. Them going to Americas Cup was a bit unexpected from my side — I saw that team had a lot of potential already last year when I played against them, so I was surprised they didn't make it through CBLOL. And I think Cloud9 was also pretty demotivated after that final. Then having to fly out the day after and play against a team like FURIA in their home arena — that was for sure a hard task. I don't really know much of what to expect from LOUD. I just know their toplaner is a rookie showing a lot of potential. Berserker told me their jungler and ADC are Korean players that did well in academy — their ADC even played in the LCK a little.
I actually didn't know about the jungler. I think they for sure know how to win games. When I watched their recent CBLOL games it felt like they were heavily playing around botside, which surprised me a bit because I heard their toplaner was a carry player.
Photo Credit: Yicun Liu/Riot Games
If you get past LOUD there's a good chance you face Canyon again — probably the jungler you've faced most at internationals. Have you learned anything special that could help you beat him by facing him so often?
No, there are not many ways. Just don't make mistakes. We as a team just need to not make mistakes, keep the game stable until around fifteen minutes and hopefully win in teamfights. At fifteen minutes, if you win a teamfight you can get a game deciding lead. Gen.G have many strengths but they are so much better than every other team especially at laning phases and getting small advantages — I think trying the approach of taking a lead in the early game [against them] is just impossible. But teamfighting is the most chaotic and creative part of League, where you can actually outplay teams even if they are better than you. From what I remember when we played against them with FlyQuest it was kind of like that — we stole the game until fifteen minutes, tried to fish for mistakes, and if they somehow make a mistake you can try to capitalize on that. I think that's the best strategy to beat them.
How confident are you in your individual level compared to the best junglers in the world?
I always know that I can do well enough to win, so I don't really focus on which jungler is better than me. At the end of the day I'm not even meeting him much during the game — we're both just clearing camps. A lot of the work a jungler does is inside the team, so it's hard to judge that.
Photo Credit: Stefan Wisnoski/Riot Games
To end on a more global note — when you started your career, was winning Worlds always the end goal?
Not really. I never really thought about it. When I started I was just thinking about getting into the LEC, then winning LEC. I didn't manage to do that, and when I came to NA I was just thinking about winning LCS as well. I never thought before I started playing "I want to win Worlds one day." I was just taking it step by step, focusing on the next game in front of me. Every time I lose a game I'm very mad because I want to win every single game.
Have you ever wondered what you’d like to achieve in your career?
I just want to improve from every game and make as little mistakes as possible. If you have that type of goal, you don't put much expectations on yourself, you don't choke under pressure — you just want to play as good as possible and hopefully your best will be good enough to beat any team you face.
