Opening up the LEC 2024 Summer Season with a 1-2 score, G2 Esports is hard at work catching up with other League of Legends EMEA teams and preparing for upcoming matches. In this exclusive interview, Romain Bigeard, the team's general manager and hype man, delves into the reasons behind the team's current slump, discusses the role of a general manager, and talks about the team's future plans for other upcoming tournaments.

What are your overall feelings after Week 1?

Romain Bigeard: "We're rusty, and it showed, right? The competition is fierce, to say the least. We started preparing for Summer pretty late. Our first scrims on the new patch were last Monday, and it's quite a large one. We've had a complicated week with a lot of losses, so I'm not too surprised we are 1-2 at the end of it. We just have to dust it off. The teams we played against were really calm, coordinated, and overall better than us. It's deserved for them and I'm not surprised. We need a bit more time.

Do you feel like it's acceptable to drop some games now?

Romain Bigeard: It's never okay to drop games because you never know how the season is going to end, right? It's very possible that we'll regret those losses later down the line.

For your team, MSI ended on May 17th and the LEC restarted on June 8th. Could you walk us through how did G2 approach this 21-day break?

Romain Bigeard: We had a pretty decent MSI. Definitely not the best nor the results we wanted, but it was a decent showing. We were eliminated on a Friday, and the tournament ended on Sunday. From a logistic perspective, it's like we went through a full MSI, even if we didn't. We came back to Europe 48 hours earlier than if we had won the whole thing. We took around five days off, which was much needed since we couldn't take any during MSI. After that, we did a workshop and went to one of our partners' facilities, the Red Bull Athlete Performance Centre in Austria, which was an incredible place to be. There, we worked with doctors, did a couple of content days, and went back to practicing.

There's a lot of work to be done; it's a whole new patch now. The teams we faced this week were better prepared than us and probably had a better read on the meta. I don't think it's the end of the world though. We are playing in a best-of-one format, and you just need to make the top 8 to advance to the next stage. I'm quite confident that with seven more days under our belt, things are going to be fine. When we restarted playing SoloQ, I think we were the lowest-ranked team in terms of LP on the ladder. We still played the most games out of any team though; we have our own systems to track that kind of thing. So yeah, we're grinding, but we need a bit more time, and then we're going to be ready to dominate the summer playoffs.

After the end of the group stage, you will be competing at the Esports World Cup. How do you view this tournament fitting into your scheduling?

Romain Bigeard: In League of Legends, the more you win, the more you work. Which makes this year-long circuit beautiful, right? The team that eventually wins Worlds at the end of the year will be the one that was the most resilient and worked the hardest throughout this marathon. We've been working a lot because we've been winning a lot. We've had to play the entire winter split, then the full spring split, and then go to MSI and play out most of the tournament. It's important for us to take some moments to recover and help our players and staff avoid burnout. Not gonna lie, a week of recovery between best-of-ones and best-of-threes would have been great, but we're lucky to have been invited to another tournament with so many renowned teams.

There are definitely some positives to take from the fact that we'll face those teams again, and I'm looking forward to playing against Chinese and Korean teams some more. I would have liked some days off and some sleep, but to be fair, we wouldn't really have had much of a break, and we would have been preparing for best-of-threes regardless, right? Everyone is still trying as hard as they can, no matter the circumstances. Once again, the more we win, the more we compete. In three weeks, there'll be two teams, ten players, who will be gone and won't be able to compete until January 2025. I've been part of teams that were eliminated in July or August, and it sucks. We are privileged to be able to play this much League of Legends, and we just have to be grateful to be allowed to keep grinding.

Do you expect your participation at the EWC to be useful in terms of preparation for Worlds and the rest of the Summer Split?

Romain Bigeard: I hope we will be able to play some scrims versus some of those best teams we usually cannot practice against. I also hope we're gonna win a lot of games on stage because any stage practice is good practice, especially in League of Legends where you don't usually see a big crowd. It's really important for players to get stress-tested and to get this practice, right? So that's also something I'm looking forward to. When you spend all your time in a gaming house or a facility like we do, it's fun to travel, right? We're spending a lot of time to make sure every minute is made conscious and efficient.

But it's also always the same day on repeat, again and again. So, if you travel together, you confront yourself, you challenge yourself with the real world. And yeah, you learn as a team. You create nice memories, which are a bit different than just sitting together in the facility. So just for those points, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. We're gonna turn it into a really nice team adventure. We're gonna try hard both in scrims and on stage; we'll have to give our 100%. The way you practice is the way you're gonna play on stage. And no surprise, our week of practice was complicated. Our weekend on stage is complicated, you know?

You've always been a strong leading figure and very outspoken person for G2 Esports. In your eyes, what is the role of a general manager in a team? How do you approach your job within the team?

Romain Bigeard: We have 10 teams in Europe, so 10 GMs are gonna handle that job differently. You have to define your own to-do list, right? I believe my job is to create the best ecosystem around the guys, to recruit the right players and the right staff members, to make sure everyone knows what their jobs will be, and then to protect them. I have to protect them from external interferences and from themselves. I have to be the catalyst, you know? I'm not the one doing the job, but I help them make sure that they can do their job properly and see it through. My approach is that I will dedicate my entire life to them, with them, next to them, so we all advance through this adventure together.

I want to be... a mix of Gandalf and Dumbledore, right? I'm here to make sure the main characters are going to win in the end. I might die in the process, but I will bring as much knowledge as possible. It's going to be a fun adventure, a fun journey. But yeah, I have to protect this team from the rest of the world. Sometimes, they won't know what's happening in the outside world, but that's fine. That's my job.

In a way, Mikyx is the in-game support and you're the out-of-game support basically.

Romain Bigeard: Yeah, literally! I have to voice their concerns and fight some of their battles so they can dedicate all their time and brain power to fighting their in-game battles. The same goes for the players, but also for the rest of our staff.

Do you have any words for fans who have kept supporting you, especially through difficult periods like MSI?

Romain Bigeard: Thank you to all of you. It's always the same, right? There's a loud minority that can be extremely annoying, the toxic ones. It's good to remember that the majority of people are supportive. So yeah, thank you all for your support, and thank you for your love. I hope we made you at least a bit proud at MSI. I can imagine some of you are feeling a bit ashamed after this weekend's 1-2 score, and we're sorry about that. This is just the beginning and, it's the best-of-one phase. We are rusty and, that's all I can share right now but, no worries. Seven more days, we need to scale and get back into all our processes. It's fine, everything's under control for now."