Five join Fnatic Rising for 2021

Fnatic Rising sees five new arrivals going into 2021, but with one name with whom you all may be familiar.

Mahdi "Pride" Nasserzadeh is joined by Magnus "Maxi" Kristensen, Fabian "FEBIVEN" Diepstraten, Louis "Bean" Schmitz, Rúben "rhuckz" Barbosa and new head coach Paweł "deIord" Szabla.

Fnatic Rising has won all four splits in which we’ve competed since entering the European Regional Leagues. Most recently, we won the inaugural NLC after the UKLC merged with the Irish and Nordic leagues.

Pride joined Rising earlier this year and has since become a figure of consistency, regardless of metagame or draft. As the only remaining starter for Rising, the Swiss toplaner will look to make 2021 his true breakthrough year.

Maxi joins having most recently completed spells with Barrage and Riddle in the UK and Nordic scene. Despite his relative youth, he comes with a wealth of experience having already competed in the NA LCS Academy as well as joining FlyQuest’s main team during an LCS tiebreaker.

FEBIVEN needs little introduction. (IT’S FEBIIII, AND He’S BACK.) In 2015, a rookie arrived in the Black and Orange to replace the legendary xPeke in our midlane. Top four finishes at MSI and Worlds, two EU LCS trophies and one being the legendary 18-0 split later...FEBIVEN became a bonafide Fnatic legend. He joins us not as a rookie now, but we are incredibly excited that he returns home with unparalleled experience to help the entire Fnatic League of Legends division.

Bean becomes the second German botlaner to join Fnatic this winter and, like Upset had before, has long been touted to join the big boys in LEC. As is customary for Fnatic Rising, now, Bean arrives as our resident SoloQ smurfer. The former-BIG ADC finished fifth in the EUW soloqueue rankings and even made Challenger in midlane.

Rhuckz arrives after a long spell with Movistar Riders in Spain. The Portuguese support spent his time in Spring knocking Fnatic Rising out of EU Masters, but now comes to form what we hope becomes the best botlane duo in the ERLs.

Joining the players as Head Coach will be delord, who has already shown incredible rise in his one-year tenure within coaching. Since retiring from pro-play last year, delord has taken K1CK Neosurf to an EU Masters Grand Final as well as a first and second finish in the Polish Ultraliga.

Javi ‘Dardo’ Zafra, Fnatic’s Director of League of Legends, said:

We’ve created this team ultimately to win it all. We are Fnatic, and it is always our job to create the conditions for Fnatic to be the best. We wholly believe that, on one hand, this set of players joined by delord can become the future of LEC. As well, we have a group who can practise well with our main squad to make sure we’re in better shape than ever going into LEC next year.

Between the names all Fnatic fans definitely know already and the ones you’ll learn more about, we really believe this can be the best EU team outside of LEC.

With these arrivals, we say our farewells to Dan "Dan" Hockley, Felix "MagiFelix" Boström and Matthew "xMatty" Coombs. The three beginning pieces of Fnatic Rising have seen every part of success for our Academy team throughout the past two years. As they move forward to progress their careers, we can only wish them the best of luck and hope they’ll put into practice everything they learnt whilst in the Black and Orange.

Although we remain in talks with Love "Bravado" Rapp, Rising’s support throughout 2020, he asked for permission to explore his options this off-season and we have allowed him to do so.

Nicholas "NicoThePico" Korsgård, Rising’s Head Coach throughout 2020, will not continue as in his same role, but we are also in talks with him about the possibility of collaborating in the future.

These signings are subject to Riot Games approval.