After a tumultuous start to their League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) season, G2 Esports can now breathe a sigh of relief with their first victory against SK Gaming. Despite struggling in their opening matches, the team remains unshaken and confident. In an exclusive interview, head coach Dylan Falco reflects on the recent results, discusses the way forward for the revamped squad, and explores the impact of the new Season 2025 changes on the meta.

What was the first thing you said to your players when you got on stage after the win against SK?

Dylan Falco: "I just went to Caps (Rasmus Winther) and said "Nice Pentakill". I thought it was a good match. It's nice to get a win for sure. I'm not putting too much weight on these best-of-ones this early in the year. So, I'm still optimistic.

Everyone’s talking about G2 starting the split 0-2 for the first time in history, and there’s been a lot of overreaction. How has the coaching staff handled these losses? Has the team’s approach changed, or is it too soon for that?

Dylan Falco: We've had a few 1-2 weeks since I've started coaching G2, and we've won those splits, so I don't see this as turbulence or weird at all honestly. We came into the week expecting to be one of the best teams in the league, if not the best, and we were in winning positions in two out of the three games, even with the new objective. In my mind, it’s just not that deep.

Was it just poor execution around new mechanics like Atakhan in your mind? Is it just overpowered?

Dylan Falco: I'm not even sure this was the best Atakhan execution from our side. But it's just so overpowered that we got the Pentakill, and then the game was over. I think it's just very swingy. Maybe we could have prepared a bit better. We were actually very good at playing around this objective in practice. So, it was very odd to see it go the way it did in the stage matches. We talked about it a lot and felt like we had a good plan, but, you know, it’s just new scenarios in a stage match, and it’s fine. Not too worried about that.

Despite entering the split with different expectations than your current record, it seems like your mental state hasn’t been affected too much, right?

Dylan Falco: I think if we’re behind, like today, losing earlier in the game, it’s definitely a bit more stressful. Being 0-2 and behind in the game, as much as we all know on G2 that we’re still one of the top teams, it still adds that extra pressure or stress in the moment. Luckily, we handled it well, and we were better than our opponents and managed to outplay them.

So, I wouldn’t say it has no effect on us. Any team on a loss streak will feel some sort of effect, and you need to get through it. You need to make sure you’re not overthinking the draft, not overthinking your plays in the game, and not hesitating or over-aggressing because of past losses. But at the same time, we still, at our core, believe in our skill edge, our understanding edge, and our ability to outplay and ultimately win the games.

Some people argue that with the addition of rookie SkewMond and Labrov, G2 might not be considered favorites this split but could scale up over time. Do you agree, or should G2 still be considered favorites in winter?

Dylan Falco: I would just ask you, in the past years, with a 7k gold lead, how often would we win? And what’s changed that we don’t win with a 7k gold lead this week? If we had gone 2-1 this week, what would the storyline be? I just think it’s fine. We’re not involving ourselves in these sorts of debates about whether we should be considered a top team or not.

We’re here to win the split, and we think we can win it. The competition is better, and if people want to say that, sure. These versions of teams like Karmine Corp, Movistar KOI, Fnatic, and GIANTX, for example, are arguably much better than last year’s versions. So, if you want to use that argument, fine, but if you want to base it on these best-of-ones, then I’m not buying it as much.

Where do you see room for improvement after Week 1? Would you say there was some bad luck involved in your defeats?

Dylan Falco: Well, it’s never luck, right? We’re ultimately making those decisions in the game. If we make those decisions in the finals, we’ll just lose. So, I think you always need to take responsibility for the decisions you make. Some of the drafting could have been better too. In our first two matches, we drafted team compositions that scale poorly. It makes those throws much more obvious, right? If you scale badly and you throw, you just lose. In the third game, even though our early game was worse, we still could have won anyway. So, we want to play aggressive team comps with a lot of playmaking, but maybe we just need to be more careful with how we draft them, without saying too much.

How have SkewMond and Labrov been integrating into the team?

Dylan Falco: They've been integrating great, I think. SkewMond was really ahead in the first two games. He’s a very talkative shotcaller, which is a very important role in the team, and he’s been playing super well. Labrov is also very solid with Hans. I’ve watched them play for the past two months, and they look like one of the scariest bot lanes I’ve ever seen. I’m really happy with them. It must be tough for them to come into such a big org and lose the first two games, but there was a lot more than just their individual performance that led to our losses in those games. So, I’m really happy to have them on our team.

How do you feel about the upcoming matchup against Fnatic, especially since you’ll be facing Mikyx?

Dylan Falco: I think they’re a very good team. They played well this week. They got stomped in one game, but then they stomped the two games they won. We actually scrimmed them a lot, and that’s kind of what I felt it was like. They’re a very hit or miss team. When they hit, they look very good, but when they miss, it looks very bad. So, I’m hoping we’ll be on the good side of that one next week.

What do you think about the other upcoming matchups against GIANTX and Vitality?

Dylan Falco: GX was actually the strongest team we faced in the offseason. They gave us the most challenge of any team we faced out of all the nine teams. People might not have expected it, and I certainly wouldn’t have expected it before I heard the rumors that they were a very strong scrim team. They’re definitely one of the strongest teams right now. As for Vitality, they’re another hit-and-miss team, so I’m not too sure how they’ll do.

What are your thoughts on the current state of the game in Season 15, especially with the snowballing issue and differing opinions from players and Riot?

Dylan Falco: The way things feel and the way things actually are can be very different when it comes to solo queue. It always feels bad to lose solo queue games. And when you have these things and reasons you can talk about, it can be... Like, the optics of things actually matter, especially from a game design perspective. I'm not sure if a couple of extra stats on boots, which don’t even have much gold value, are really the thing that's winning or losing games, but I guess sometimes it feels like it. They didn’t nerf those. The Atakhan stuff, as much as we threw games at it, is a great addition to the game. Maybe it’s a bit too strong, but we’d have to see more of how it plays out in pro matches. Maybe it develops. I don’t like that when you get it, it feels so hard to actually win the game. But at the same time, I feel like the revives—specifically because that’s usually the competitive one we get—are interesting, right? They create interesting scenarios where you win the fight, but you actually lose the scenario, or you lose the scenario, but you win the fight. And I think that can be cool. I think anything that adds new, creative scenarios like this to the game is great for League in general. So, I really like the idea of what they’re going for here.

Is a 20-minute Atakhan stronger than a 20-minute Nashor in the previous season?

Dylan Falco: I’m not sure. But definitely, the later the Atakhan is taken, the better it becomes. Your champions are just stronger at that point. So like, with a 25+ minute Atakhan, you can chain it into a Nashor and then just run it down mid with both buffs which then lets you push for free. It just feels very strong right now.

There are three Nunu mains in the team now—SkewMond, Kesha, and yourself. Any chance we see it picked?

Dylan Falco: I would be the third one [laughs]. Yeah, of course. It’s great. I’m not sure if we’ll be seeing it in our competitive matches, but we’ll see.

Do you have any final words for G2 fans, especially after the 1-2 week?

Dylan Falco: We’re going into next week thinking we’re going to win or at least win most of our matches. We feel actually very good about the way things are going behind the scenes. We don’t feel like we’re struggling at all. I think it was just some extreme cases in this week, and if people want to judge the roster and judge our performance, I think this year’s LEC is actually stronger than last, first of all. And second, if you’re going to flame, just flame after the split. That would be the best."