Just one year ago, Leo was regarded as the best player on the best team in Valerant history. Now, he hasn't played a match in nearly 12 months. All because of something entirely out of his control.
This is the story behind one of Valerant's greatest ever players and why he might not be able to create the legacy he deserves. Leo started his pro Valerant career on Swedish team Bonk, who quickly got picked up by Guild Esports for the 2021 season. He played under guild for two years.
And although they didn't really do too much internationally, Leo stood out as a great initiator player, particularly on Sovere and Breach. At the one international event they did end up qualifying for, he orchestrated a win over world champions Optic, going plus 22 on the series, and he would routinely pull out some ridiculously clutch moments during the regional European games. Leo is going to get it one way or another.
What is that shot? No, this man has been known for clutches, but this would be absurd. He isolates the jewel onto Dino as well.
All right, one. Although he's looked away at the moment, he snaps back and punches it. Come the end of the 2022 season, we were heading into the era of Valerant partnerships and Guild hadn't been picked to join the European League.
That gave Leo the opportunity to join a new team, one that could realize his potential as an international level talent, and I'd say he found a pretty good one. Fnatic's team for that season was just unfair. They kept the core of Boa, Durka, and Alfa, leaving them with slots to fill for two initiator players.
Ex Gambit superstar Chronicle joined the squad, someone who had been seen as the best player in the world at one point. And after Boa accidentally leaked his signing early, it was confirmed that Leo was joining Fnatic. Compared to the other four internationally experienced players, Leo probably had the most to prove on this roster.
He had looked great on Guild, but the pressure on this Fanatic super team would just be a different level. However, as soon as he joined the team, it was clear that he was going to be something special. One thing initially I thought with the team was that I had the sense that Chronicle played more like how Leo did and Leo played more like how Chronicle did.
I presumed like Leo was more of a just like bragging youngster and Chronicle was more cerebral but like it was like the other way around like Chronicle is much more micro kind of aim kind of focused and I think that Leo like Chronicle is still smart but I think Leo really has kind of perfect kind of way to play the game and relies much less on his mechanics. That's Minnie, the head coach of that Fanatic Super Team and the one who led them to, spoilers, consecutive international trophies. The play style he's talking about there was something we immediately saw from Leo during Fnatic's run at lockin.
He dominated every match, but not in the way we were used to seeing players dominate, like just running around and killing everyone. He was incredibly disciplined, always had the perfect piece of util ready for his teammates, and consistently pulled off really important clutches. Some of his stats during the tournament were just insane.
He didn't have the first death in a round a single time during Fnatic's first three matches, which was a testament to his unshakable discipline. Just by watching him, you could tell he was an extremely intelligent player. I remember him making calls that were very good quickly and kind of um I remember him calling specifically for like a fake round and he organized the whole fake and kind of like set it up himself and understood the kind of timings and rhythms of how it worked very naturally without having boasted to have to tell him everything which is usually how it goes for Fanatic to be honest.
And as the tournament continued, Leo kept impressing the world. And even though he racked up a few more first deaths during the final versus Loud, they managed to take down the Brazilian team with the most legendary comeback in Valerant history. Fnatic super team was a success.
And a lot of that success had come down to Leo's play at this tournament. He was the undisputed MVP of lockin and had staked his claim as certainly the best initiated player in the world and possibly even the best player full stop. I was always trying to get the players to play more like how Leo plays the game.
Like I think the way that intuitively Leo plays the game is the way that I want the game to be played on some level where it's like I almost like compare it to poker where it's like you're kind of um assessing all the different variables and then trying to make the best percentage decision possible. And Leo continued these performances through to Masters Tokyo where Fnatic won the tournament even more dominantly than Lockin, becoming the first ever team in Valerant history to win back-to-back international events. Leo only died first twice across the entire tournament.
Whenever players saw that red recon phantom, it really felt like there was nothing they could do against the Swedish SOA. His most impressive quality. What would you pinpoint that as?
There's a few he has and some are not replicable. His just game sense is the best in the world probably, but that's impossible to replicate in in my opinion. But as much as his performance in game was incredible, Leo's discipline stretched further than just inside the server.
His hard work and his discipline. And then when I say discipline, I don't just mean in game, like out of game. He was always the first in when I was in at the office and he was always staying probably later than even I was.
And I was pretty hard working. And then also if I was ever trying to like help players with stuff and players were kind of like combating me on any level, Leo would be one of the first players to be like, why the [ __ ] you trying to argue with me? The only thing left for this Fnatic super team to do was win champions.
But unfortunately, they didn't manage to complete the golden road. But even though they didn't win the tournament, Leo still finished as the second highest rated player, only behind Demon One, which I think is fair enough. And of course, with the lowest first deaths per round out of all the players at the tournament, Leo was the best player on the greatest team in Valerant history.
It doesn't get much better than that. And so, it was a pretty big surprise when Fnatic didn't qualify to Masters Madrid at the start of the next season, but it wasn't devastating by any means. I mean, Boster was convinced they would have won the tournament anyway.
If you did make this tournament Yeah. Um, which teams do you think you would have beaten? Gen, I think we would beat them.
Paper X, we scrimmed them. I think we beat them. Sentinels, we would win.
They came into stage one determined to take back the regional crown, and eventually they did. But Leo didn't look like his usual self in the grand finals against Heretics. He still played incredibly well, engineering the reverse sweep and going 26 and 9 on the last map.
But it wasn't until after the game that we realized just how impressive this actually was. What were the coms like in those final moments when you started to know like you got it in the bag? To be honest, our coms were pretty weird, if you will say like that.
Because of Leo's bad health state, we decided not to hide that much. We were talking really quiet, so he will feel very well. He decided also not to call at all, which is very impressive for him.
After that, showing this performance, Leo was seriously ill during this match, but he decided to play anyway, but it meant he couldn't communicate for the entire thing. he was just too ill to play and talk at the same time. I think it was from the start of the match, I guess.
Um, and he basically couldn't speak. And I don't know what how he even communicated that he couldn't speak. I think it was pretty obvious.
And then for the first 15 seconds of freeze time, he would just have his head in his hands and then when it got to the last like 10 seconds, he would just start moving towards his position. But in that moment, he just went Super Saiyan. And it just it was kind of like just very entertaining to watch someone who was like I mean entertaining.
I mean, I was kind of like, you know, very worried for him, but at the same time, I'm like, Jesus Christ, like this guy is just like on another level. And his unbelievable performance didn't go to waste as he qualified Fnatic to Master Shanghai as the first seed from Europe. Most people assumed that Leo would be back to full capacity by the time the tournament rolled around.
But when we didn't see him warming up on stage before the match, it was clear something was not right. As it turned out, Leo had food poisoning and so very nearly didn't play. I I was about to sub in Shanghai, like I was warming up on stage.
So, you know, things are bad when when that's happening. But in the end, Leo did play and Fnatic lost close games to Genji and Foot to be eliminated in eighth place. This was a disappointing showing for the team, but that wasn't really the point.
The main concerns of the community were whether Leo was okay and whether or not we'd see him back at full strength for Split 2. Unfortunately though, our worst fears were confirmed. Unfortunately, after having some discussions with Leo and the rest of the staff, we've decided that it would be best for Leo to take some time away from the team to recover and get back to 100%.
Leo was benched due to health reasons, and although we didn't know it at the time, his matches at Master Shanghai would be the last Valerant games he'd play for almost a year and counting. I won't speculate about his health in this video, but Boa did say this at Champs 2024 about the situation. Bear in mind, he's talking to players from Thailand in this clip, which is why he's simplifying his sentences.
when he was ill he got like but then finished and he got long co which means like it's like after a different thing and so he play games after 1 hour moving up at a break yeah can't focus and go sleep and then he wake up next day like dizzy and so couldn't play and then next day he wake up again, try play tired again. And if you want to read more about the effects of longco, I've attached some sources in the description. But what's so incredible is that despite dealing with all of this illness, looking back on Leo's stats in 2024, he was a beast.
I'm not the biggest stats guy, though, so I asked the greatest VCT stats nerd I know, Platoon, for some help on this one. Hey guys, Platoon here, and I looked at all isolated fights in 2024 and calculated which player is the scariest to peak. And here are the results.
The deadliest player in the world has a 9. 5% higher chance of winning any given duel over the average player. That's insane to think about because if we look back at the phantom win rate graph, that's similar to the advantage you get for buying an OP over a rifle.
That means if you were a pro in 2024 fighting against this player, it felt as if you're dueling an OP. The most dominant player in the world this year was Fnatic's Leo. Even though he wasn't able to play out the whole season, he won an incredible number of isolated fights and many at a gun disadvantage.
Now, it probably makes much more sense why players think Leo is one of the best players in the world. He doesn't have as much kill impact as other duelists, but if you're a player in the server, you probably feel that peaking Leo is a huge mistake. That is just insane.
Leo also kept up his trend of being one of the top four rated players across the entire world over the whole year, which he's now done in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, Leo is a truly special player, and we cannot forget that. There's very few players I'd want to do this kind of thing for at the moment, but for someone who literally right now is off to the side not able to play the game because of something out of his control when he is in my opinion the closest to playing perfect valerant player in the world. Um it's just kind of upsetting really.
But there is still hope that we'll see him back and playing again. Fanatic haven't confirmed any official return dates as we can all imagine that's difficult to do in a situation like this. But fingers crossed he can return for next season.
I've seen comments about like people being like, "Oh yeah, but he's not going to be the same as he was before. " I'm not going to sit here and say that like he can be the exact same player like immediately, but I don't think people realize how much ahead he was from like everyone else in his role. Like I don't think people are still catching up to that level of play and that level of like understanding the game.
I don't see you know teams might get better but I don't think individually people are on his level still. Um, so for me, I wouldn't be surprised if he comes back and he's still world class. But no matter what happens from here, as fans, we were lucky to have witnessed his insane peak.
And the legacy he's left behind is already enough to consider him a true legend of the [Music] game. Thanks so much to Mini for agreeing to do an interview for this video. If you want to watch the full thing, it's down in the description.
And also thanks to Platoon for helping with the stats. You should definitely go and subscribe to him for more stats based VCT content. But with that, I've been commend.
Subscribe if you enjoyed and thank you for watching.
