After a tough loss to China's Anyone's Legend, FlyQuest is back to the drawing board with G2 now standing in their way in the 2025 Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) lower bracket. With everything on the line, the League of Legends Championship of the Americas North (LTA North) representatives must regroup and adapt if they hope to keep their tournament run alive. In an exclusive interview, jungler Kacper "Inspired" Słoma reflects on the defeat, whether the West’s issues can be fixed, and his upcoming match-up at the event.

How are you feeling after the 1-3 loss to Anyone's Legend? What’s been going through your mind since stepping off stage?

Kacper "Inspired" Słoma: "I'm pretty happy with how we played. It was winnable. If we had won game three, who knows what would have happened. The games were fine. We lost some of the teamfights that we should have won, and at this moment, I'm not really sure how we lost. We’ll have to look back at the match and see if it was maybe our misjudgment or someone making mechanical mistakes.

They were just used to this kind of games. They were playing very aggressively, and whenever you gave them an opportunity, they were fighting you. And that’s what you expect from the best teams. It doesn't really happen in the Americas. So I'm pretty happy with how we played—it was really winnable.

What did you take away from this match? Are there differences in what you can learn between scrims and official matches?

Inspired: There's nothing really different. I knew going into this tournament that Asian teams aren't as good on stage as they are in scrims. In scrims, sometimes it's just really hard to breathe against them. But on stage, they just win their lanes slightly, and then they turn those small advantages into bigger ones. It's not like scrims—there, they sometimes just snowball through you, and it feels like there's nothing you could’ve done.

But in official games, there are often positions where you can actually win if you just play better. And they also make mistakes sometimes—more often on stage than in scrims, even. So I didn’t really learn anything new. Lke I thought before the tournament, everything is beatable. Gen.G has the best individual players, they’re the toughest team to beat. But I still think every team is beatable. As long as you play your best game and they make mistakes, you can win easily.

Western teams tend to struggle in lane at international events. Even today, we saw some early deaths that disrupted the tempo. Do you think this is something that can be fixed, or is it just a matter of individual skill gaps?

Inspired: There's nothing you can do about it. You just hope you play well and you don't die. Against these teams, if you draft for early lanes where you have to beat them there to be good in the game, it'll end up badly and it's a very bad idea. Usually, you just want to pick useful champs that don’t need to get too much of a lead but are still strong in the game so they can do whatever they want.

I don't think there's anything to be done to fix that. I mean, I don’t see how my midlaner or my toplaner can improve harder than they already do. They play so many games during the season, and in scrims they dominate every team. Then they go to an international and have only one week of prep to play against someone who just won LPL and has probably been practicing against Chovy (Jeong Ji-hoon) once a week for the past half a year—or even longer. So I mean, I don’t know what you can do about it. You’ve got to have a good idea of which champion you're gonna play on the day and be really prepared for that matchup, because they’re just very good.

You have to pull the old CLG strat—send the main team to Korea to bootcamp during the regular season while academy plays the official matches.

Inspired: That is actually a good idea. I didn’t even know someone did that before, but if you want to do really well internationally, this is a good way of doing that. If you practice a lot against the best teams, you for sure will learn a lot. Obviously, it’s not like magic—that you go there and you instantly improve—but you will for sure learn way more than you are learning in the Americas.

As I said, I don’t know how I can improve my game that much playing in NA. It’s really tough because you’re either not getting punished for your decisions, or in teamfights, you’re winning just because the enemies can’t really control the champions as well as Asian teams can. So sometimes, it just feels hard to get better.

There’s been some criticism around your drafts in later games. Do you feel the criticism is fair, or do you disagree with those sentiments?

Inspired: Our drafts weren't that bad. In game four, maybe we should have just left Zed open and banned Poppy—we already had the Lee Sin locked in, but I felt like I would be fine in the game against Poppy and I didn’t think it was gonna be a problem for me. Game three, we played Twisted Fate, it was fine. Well, Anyone's Legend decided to take Sion because they saw the Twisted Fate, but I do think Cho'Gath was a good answer. Playing Cho'Gath, Twisted Fate, Viego—you have very good chain CC. Jhin doesn’t really lack that much damage. We just misplayed in the skirmishes, so we lost.

Why do you think Western teams often win game one but then lose the series? Is it because they use most of their strategies early and struggle to adapt later, something else?

Inspired: I think it’s a coincidence that this happens—that we win game one and then lose. I feel like it’s just random.

With high expectations for FlyQuest at MSI, what do you think you need to do for a successful MSI? What’s your personal goal?

Inspired: We want to win a series. Beating any team at this tournament is already a big achievement. G2 is a really strong team, same for any Asian team that is here. So winning one series already proves that you know what you are doing. We had pretty solid games against AL. As I said, I'm really happy about how we played. We just need to play slightly better and we might actually beat them. I don't know, just win a series and then we'll see. It would already be a very, very positive experience if we won.

Some say the West has a bit of a defeatist mentality, celebrating single game wins in a best-of-five rather than aiming to win the whole series. Do you think this mindset affects Western teams’ performance, and should it be changed?

Inspired: I don’t think that’s the reason why we don’t do well, but there is a bit of that mentality for sure. I mean, I don’t really like listening to people because they say for example that we did really good against Gen.G, while I didn’t really feel like it. They just gave us two games back then. Today though, I feel like we did really well. We played really well in game one, finding good angles to fight in, and they were just not ready for them. In game three as well, we put ourselves in a really good position. We could have just played slightly better and we would have won the game.

Against Gen.G, in both games that we won, it felt like the enemies just made a lot of mistakes rather than we made good plays. While today, it felt like we put up a decent fight, and that’s why I’m happy about it. But well, people celebrate when we win games just because it happens very rarely, right?

Earlier this year, you said Fearless Draft favors weaker teams in best-of-fives. After more experience and now going through a full Fearless Draft tournament, how do you feel about it?

Inspired: Overall, I said that because I think the it makes drafts a bit more random, so it’s more likely you make a mistake in the draft when you’re playing Fearless. In that sense, it favors the weaker team. But obviously, better players have bigger champion pools and can perform well on many champions.

So as long as they don’t make mistakes in the draft—like not getting surprised because you banned two champions and two more are already out due to Fearless, and then not knowing what to pick and picking something that’s not correct or doesn’t work well against what the enemies picked. If you don’t make mistakes, it’s really good for a stronger team. But it’s better for a weaker team because they might make mistakes.

Last year, you said your long-term goal was to become the GOAT of NA. Since then, you've won another title and have been crowned MVP, but you haven't had too much success internationally. What do you think it will take to reach your goal, and how close do you feel you are?

Inspired: I'm already reaching them, honestly. I just need to keep doing what I'm doing, and eventually, I’ll get a bit more luck and get there. I was pretty happy with how I played today. I felt like in every single game, I was in control of what was going on in my game. I was putting myself in good positions, playing very aggressively, and making a difference for my team. So I was really happy with how I played today. Usually, I didn’t play this aggressively in international events, but today I just felt like I didn’t really care if we win or lose. I just kept doing what I thought was the best decision.

I learned a lot from the one week of scrims we already had against Asian teams because when I was in NA, I just felt like I didn’t understand the game. Everyone was doing random things, and I felt pretty bad. Even going to finals, I had no idea what we should be doing to win the game, so I was like, "Do whatever you want, guys; maybe we’ll win, maybe we won’t." But right now, at least today, I was in control of all four games from beginning to end, and the team was just better, so we lost.

You’ll be facing G2 in the lower bracket. What are your thoughts on this matchup? Do you think their playstyle favors your team, or is it an even matchup?

Inspired: They’re a good team. I mean, I respect Caps (Rasmus Borregaard Winther) a lot. He’s the GOAT. Every time you play against him, he always shows up. It’s not easy to kill him, and every time you do, he makes sure you have to use a lot of resources. If you don’t try to punish him in the game, he will keep pressuring. As for the rest of the players, I haven’t really played against Labrov (Labros Papoutsakis) or SkewMond (Rudy Semaan), so I’m not sure how they’re going to play on stage. I don’t know if they’ll be as fast with the tempo or as aggressive in the jungle, trying to force team fights and stuff like that. So I’m not really sure about those two. But as I said, G2 is always scary because of Caps.

Do you have any final message for the fans?

Inspired: We will keep trying to win. I think it was a good beginning, and hopefully, we will focus more in future games. Maybe adjust the drafts a little and pick what we are more confident and comfortable with. Maybe that’ll be enough to win some games. So cheers for us guys."