MAD Lions KOI had a turbulent 2024 season. After a 2nd place finish in the Winter Playoffs, many fans expected the team to remain a top contender for the rest of the year — but they finished 6th and 7th in the Spring and Summer Playoffs, respectively. It wasn't until the Season Finals, where the team eked out a shocking 3rd place finish and qualified to Worlds, that fans of Ibai's esports juggernaut were finally vindicated for their support of an otherwise flailing roster.

Retaining all but one

Going into the 2025 season, Movistar KOI, owned by OveractiveGG, has decided to retain four players: toplaner Alex "Myrwn" Villarejo, jungler and captain Javier "Elyoya" Prades, AD Carry David "Supa" Garcia and support Alvaro "Alvaro" Campos. "For us, making Worlds, placing third [at the Season Finals], was good to decent," Till "Feiron" Werdermann, VP of Team Operations at OveractiveGG, explained. Feiron thought it should've been "obvious to everyone [that KOI would] keep Myrwn, Supa, and Alvaro" — all three players demonstrated potential throughout the year and were assets to their victories in key moments.

The toplaner was lauded for his peak performances, most notably against G2 Esports in the playoffs. "When you have a player with that high of a peak," Feiron explained, "it's about figuring out [one thing]: 'How can we support him further to consistently be closer to that peak?'." Per Feiron, the botlane was a similar story. Supa "was a very consistent, strong performer that made sense to keep [on] the team," and the team was even more impressed with his lane partner, Alvaro — "In his first year, [Alvaro] already established himself in the [best LEC] support conversation. Obviously a player we keep and we want to keep."

Though the roster's core was inundated with criticism throughout the 2024 season, management, therefore, saw the season for what it was — a shaky, but overall successful, first step in a long-term project. Even with some of the LEC's biggest names entering free agency in the offseason, KOI was committed to this roster, never entering serious conversations to replace any of these roles: "When we started this whole process with this roster over a year ago now, we knew that this was a long-term project," Feiron said. "Melzhet (Tomás Campelos, the Head Coach) has a three-year contract. All players that we signed have a three-year contract. Elyoya extended [for] three years, which is always kind of a great show of trust. So we knew that we were committing for this for the long run."

The decision to pick up Jojopyun

The team has also made only one change to its roster: KOI will field Joseph Joon "Jojopyun" Pyun in the midlane over Bartłomiej “Fresskowy” Przewoźnik. Jojopyun is set to be the first-ever North American import to the LEC. Last year, KOI built their roster entirely around Elyoya with four rookies for him to lead. Now with their sidelane rookies demonstrating their potential, KOI hopes that Jojopyun can bring stability to the team and allow Elyoya to play at his best. Feiron is convinced that the Canadian player will be the final piece that cements KOI's place at the top of the table in the LEC.

With a profile as an extremely strong mechanical player with some of the best laning in the West, KOI had their eyes on Jojopyun before the 2024 offseason. In 2023, when the young midlaner committed to Cloud9, Melzhet had already flagged him internally as an interesting talent who could bring a lot to their roster. With his offseason options suddenly opening up after Cloud9 dropped his contract, KOI reached out — and they were immediately impressed.

This conversation with the jungler, according to Feiron, was decisive in the final Jojopyun's decision, as the midlaner was one of the most sought-after players during this offseason: "I could see his interest in our project rising after he spoke to Elyoya. Those two really got along, and could see eye to eye — maybe this [could be] a good duo. So that, in turn, then made me more interested in him. He clearly understood what we were about, and made the effort to understand that."

Team synergy and fandom

For a team that, in Feiron's own words, usually goes for rookies instead of big-name talent, picking up Jojopyun was an abnormality. As one of the few teams outside of G2 to win an LEC trophy in the last half-decade, Melzhet and Elyoya made a strong case for KOI — and Jojopyun chose them over everyone else. "It's always good when a player like that chooses your [team]," said Feiron, "because it shows you that [the project] is respected by the best player."

With Fresskowy being the team's only non-Spanish player last year, Jojopyun is set to be the only non-Spanish player on the team for the 2025 season. "It's certainly challenging [...] Luckily, we have coaches and other members of the team that are not Spanish-speaking as well, so it's not like [Jojopyun is the only one]. [...] But it's always a challenge culturally, it's always a challenge in terms of language — it's something that that we try and manage that our coaching performance staff work with quite closely. Jojo is quite a social, talkative guy, so once he's in a room, he will be part of the conversation. That generally makes integrating someone also easier."

Feiron also pointed out the immense advantages of diversifying their roster with a player like Jojopyun, especially among fans. With his focus on streaming in the offseason, KOI has already cross-pollinated its fandom with Jojopyun's, opening up avenues to English-speaking fandom that were previously difficult for the organization to reach. "He is just a player that has strong opinions, and that is fun to watch — you will either love him, or you will love to watch him because you love to see him lose," Feiron explained. "People have an opinion about him, and to me that's a good thing because, ultimately, esports [is] an entertainment product. We want to be entertaining, and adding someone like Jojo to the mix certainly makes us a more entertaining team."

Movistar KOI's 2025 completed roster: