Perkz talks up Vitality’s international hopes: “I believe we are capable of winning Worlds”
Riot GamesLegendary European mid laner Luka ‘Perkz’ Perkovic appeared this week on the LEC’S EUphoria podcast, where he shared his expectations for Vitality’s 2022 roster.
European League fans were unsure what to expect from Perkz, widely considered to be one of the greatest Western mid laners of all time, after his return from an LCS stint on Cloud9. He is the cornerstone of Vitality’s ‘superteam’, a project that sent almost as many shockwaves through the community as his move to North America had.
On February 9, he appeared on an episode of the EUphoria podcast alongside LEC casters Daniel Drakos and Marc ‘Caedrel’ Lamont. During the episode, the conversation quickly turned to Vitality’s international hopes, and their plans for success through the spring split into summer.
Perkz has made no secret that, throughout his career, his ultimate goal has always been a World Championship trophy. He’s one of the few European players to hold an international title, having won the 2019 Mid-Season Invitational with G2 Esports. But that Worlds title still eludes him, after G2 were defeated 3-0 in the 2019 Worlds finals by FunPlus Phoenix.
On the podcast, Perkz opened up about how, during G2’s 2019 championship run, he became “obsessed” with the idea of lifting the Worlds trophy, to the point where it began to negatively affect his mental health and attitude towards competing. This obsessive mindset got G2 the closest they’ve ever been to a Worlds title, but Perkz describes that throughout the season, he “wasn’t feeling great” about his successes.
Vitality’s hopes for international dominance
He explained to Drakos and Caedrel how, with Vitality, the aim is “to try a bunch of different styles, and to see what our strengths and weaknesses are” during the regular season. Their 0-3 start in Spring has given them a little less room for experimentation if the team still hopes to make it to playoffs, but Perkz remains confident.
In terms of raw mechanical skill, he believes that, on Vitality, “everyone has the capacity to be a player that can win Worlds.” Outside of support Labros ‘Labrov’ Papoutsakis, every single one of Vitality’s players has experience on the international stage, which will be a huge advantage to them if they’re able to qualify for international events in 2022.
This hope of a Worlds title was something he simply couldn’t find in NA. Recounting his experiences on Cloud9 in 2021, he explained how he couldn’t see a world in which roster changes would lead to a Worlds trophy. He also admitted that he didn’t enjoy certain elements of the team’s culture.
“What I didn’t like about C9 is that I got there and I got plugged in a team,” he said. “I came into this team that was already developed in their own way, with their own system. And Fudge and I just got placed there.
“There was a pre-existing team culture that I didn’t like. I didn’t like how they communicated with each other and the way they did certain things. It was not how I had envisioned it.”
Cloud9 put up a decent showing at the 2021 World Championship, making it out of their group in second place after winning a three-way tiebreaker between them, the LEC’s Rogue, and the LPL’s FunPlux Phoenix.
However, Perkz explained that their 3-0 loss to Gen.G in the quarterfinals was the final straw, and the moment at which he knew he would have to return to Europe if he wanted to keep his dream of a Worlds title alive.
Vitality’s poor start
But before Vitality win Worlds, they need to win domestically. And while that’s still a very real possibility, it’s been hampered by their poor showing in the opening week of the LEC. They started the split with a 0-3 record, something which Perkz says he doesn’t take into account when looking at the team’s performance.
“We were all really sick, and I literally had a fever the night before and couldn’t sleep at all,” he explained. “So to me, it seems so troll and unreal that I don’t believe what happened that weekend will determine how we are in the future.”
They’ve turned that poor performance around into an undefeated streak in the remainder of the first round robin. Perkz explained how important it was that early losses didn’t “define our mindset” for the team, and that while he doesn’t think “we’re great or anything, I also think week one is just not at all what we are.”
Due to the aforementioned illness, the team all played from home for the opening week of the competition, something which Perkz asserted was a key contributor to their poor performance. He claimed that “as soon as we’re all together, it feels like we’re actually a team”, and that there had been a “big shift in atmosphere and excitement for the games” when they’d started playing together from the team house in week 2.