Now sitting at 0-6 in the League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC), German organization SK Gaming faces a myriad of issues and, unfortunately, very little time to regroup. With dwindling confidence, fortune did not favor Steven "Reeker" Chen upon his return to the league. In an exclusive interview, the midlaner shares his feelings on the past two weeks, delves into the team's struggles, and gives a retrospective of his career.

Your team has unfortunately been struggling and is now sitting at 0-6. Can you describe your feelings now that Week 2 is over?

Steven "Reeker" Chen: "In terms of how I feel, you have to make the best out of it. I feel like during the first week, I came to the conclusion that, especially at the start of the season, ranged champions kind of have the upper hand. I played Galio twice and Yone once, and I feel like those picks didn’t work so well for us—at least from my side in midlane.

When it comes to team synergy, I believe there are some... I’d even say major differences in how certain individuals see the game. It’s a bit split. Right now, we don’t really have a solution for it. One side has to try to adapt to the other, or it goes the other way around.

Obviously, losing confidence plays a big role after going 0-3 in the first week, and scrims haven’t been going great either. A lot of things are happening behind the scenes, so I’d say everyone is playing and feeling worse individually than they would in solo queue or on former teams.

It's a tough situation. Do you think this can be fixed in the next few weeks or even by Spring Split, or does it feel like the team might be fundamentally incompatible?

Reeker: Incompatible—I wouldn’t go that far. But I do think our current situation seems difficult for the rest of Winter Split. I believe this can be fixed with a lot of hard work going into the Spring Split. That’s all I can say right now. We might not see things the same way, but obviously, we can't stop trying. Everyone is still giving their best—playing long hours of solo queue, watching games from other top leagues, and studying what other LEC teams are doing. Right now, you just have to make the best out of it.

Do you regret how your second shot at the LEC has gone so far? After the game, despite being stomped, I noticed you smiled before leaving the stage. Would you say it’s frustrating to be in this position?

Reeker: The smile—to be honest, I don’t think it was a smile of frustration. I think it was mainly to cheer my teammates up. Everyone is down, everyone is sad, and if the fifth member is also sad, then it stays that way, and everyone will just carry that sadness into the next practice day. So, I’d call it a smile of encouragement, I guess.

As for my experience with SK so far, I’d say the org is great. They provide a lot for the players, and everything around it—like the living situation—has been pretty good. But my second chance in the LEC is not going as expected. It’s a bit sad, and it's hard not to tell myself things like: “This is probably the last shot I’m going to get.” And now it’s ending up like this. It feels sad, and sometimes you wonder if the LEC is just too difficult after all. But personally, I still don’t believe that.

My conclusion is that you have to try to be a team, and I feel like we’re far from that right now. In my career, it’s been similar before—like a couple of years ago in BDS Academy. Back then, we almost got relegated, everything was bad, and the team just didn’t click. Then the next year, I stayed in BDSA, and some could say that I was carried by my teammates, but I believe my individual performance was very good in the LFL.

A lot of it comes down to how clearly you understand how your teammates want to play the game and how much you align with that. If this alignment isn’t there, it makes it harder for every individual to play. When you look at our SK games, it probably seems like every individual on the team looks terrible. But if you put them in another team, they would definitely look better.

How is your faith in the team now? Looking back, do you have any regrets about the choices that were made and everything that led the team to this position?

Reeker: Well for example, our bootcamp in December went really, really, really badly. And for sure, there are moments of second-guessing. But at the end of the day, I’m in this situation, and I’m not going to lose hope. Obviously, sometimes when you walk home at 2 or 3 a.m., some thoughts come crashing in. But then the next day, you wake up and say, “Okay, today it’s time to play 15 games of solo queue; it’s time to do full try-hard scrims and stuff.” You need to make it work. When you get those thoughts that you mentioned, I don’t want to go into the details, but they don’t stick. It’s just random thoughts when you’re not feeling so good at the moment.

How do you plan to approach Week 3 against BDS, Rogue, and Fnatic, given your current score?

Reeker: I feel like right now we’re very hesitant, especially on stage. When we’re hesitant, we play mechanically worse, and at the same time, there are many situations where we just don’t play as five. That’s probably the main thing I’d like to focus on personally. I’m not sure what our coach OWN3R (David Rodriguez de la Torre) has planned. So, I mainly want us to stick together and not be afraid—even if it’s hard. We’re 0-6, and while we don’t get stomped in scrims, we are losing most of them. But despite things being difficult, we have to learn and use these lessons if we want a chance at winning."