LEC 2022 Summer Split Champion Odoamne Will Join Excel Esports

Excel Esports has picked up the Romanian top laner Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu. Who will leave Rogue at the start of the 2023 split.

The 2022 Summer Split was the first-ever LEC championship in Rogue’s history. It was a bittersweet ending for at least the name “Rogue,” as the organization decided to partner with the Spanish organization KOI and compete in the LEC using the latter’s name and branding. The last competition Rogue played was Worlds 2022, where the EU’s first seed managed to get out of groups behind DRX, one of the eventual finalists at the moment of writing, and was eliminated in the quarterfinals by LPL’s JD Gaming.

But despite the successful year for this five-man roster, troubles started just shortly after. In an interview a day after Rogue’s Worlds exit Odoamne gave an interview in which he said, “Rogue so far this year has not tried once to re-sign me, even after we won the LEC finals.” And just a week after that blix.gg’s Alejandro “anonimotum” Gomis reported that KOI would be signing Mathias “Szygenda” Jensen for their top lane position. Odoamne’s eventual destination was also reported by Gomis, who said the veteran player reached a verbal agreement with Excel Esports.

Sources: Odoamne 🇷🇴 reached verbal agreement with Excel Esports 🇬🇧. The Romanian will be Excel's toplaner next LEC season.

⬇️https://t.co/Yhw5nPfQ8N

— Alejandro Gomis (@anonimotum) November 3, 2022

Not all happy news

While it wasn’t surprising that Odoamne found his new home in a short time, in the end he is one of the most prominent top laners in EU. But the deal might not have happened under the best circumstances, as Gomis clarifies in his reporting that the time frame was very short. This was corroborated by another reputed LEC reporter, Brieuc “LEC Wooloo” Siegler, who said, “Nobody saw this coming [two] days ago.” Odoamne’s predecessor Finn “Finn” Wiestål even tweeted that he was on his way to Korea to get ready for the new season.

Just boarded my flight to Korea for a bootcamp looking forward to next spl….

Oh

— Finn (@FinnLoL) November 3, 2022

In a big coincidence, this is not the first time this happened. Finn was the previous top laner of Rogue, from February 2019 to November 2020, when Odoamne replaced him. With most of the top LEC teams already starting to fill their squads, it can be hard for Finn to find a suitable destination for himself for the 2023 season, that is if he can find one at all.

After he parted ways with Rogue in 2020, Finn signed with the North American organization Counter Logic Gaming, so it can be interesting to see whether he tries to go to LCS once again. But considering his performance significantly dropped during his LCS tenure, and how much better he was playing this year, he may decide to stay in Europe. With some of the ERL teams getting more and more competitive, the young Swede might give that option a go.