The League of Legends European Championship is headed to its fourth weekend, giving us a good outline of the best and the worst performing teams. With a rocky start, the Misfits currently find themselves tied for third place with Origen and the MAD Lions. Mid Laner Fabian "Febiven" Diepstraten talked to us about the team’s performance and why the Misfits are hopping to the top. 

Misfits started the first weekend 0-2, raising questions about the team’s performance. Now in the third week, your team is on a winning streak (4-2). What has changed in the way you guys are working?

A lot has changed, actually. Ever since the bootcamp in December of last year, we have had so many mindset changes, people grinding their as*es off, really starting to understand what it actually takes to take on the losses and use them as fuel to come back stronger the next week. Maurice and I have a lot of experience and have had a lot of success before, so we need to make sure we share that and put that into our teammates. So after losses and in practice in general we have a real good feel on how to get better and we are actively improving day by day. We have a good structure and there’s a lot of sweat, because if I feel like, or the coaches feel like, or the players feel like we are not doing well enough in scrims, we can already predict what’s going to happen in the week. If you lose against anyone in scrim and go 0-5, 0-5, 0-5  and you play against Fnatic on the weekend, you know you’re getting stomped.

And how about outside of the game, what has changed and impacted the way you perform?

We have mandatory workouts, I think that helps for everyone, but we haven’t done so many team activities, but we go out for dinner, have lunch together. After scrims we spend a lot of time together as players. We have a sports psychologist, Robert, who weekly does meetings about what we can improve, how we are doing at the gym, what’s good for our body to eat, how to increase focus and performance. We don’t really have fun outside activities, but I hope we do more in the future.

You mentioned that you and Maurice are getting along well with the team. How do you think he is doing as a coach?

He is doing really well actually. Obviously because he was a player and has been successful before and been at the top you can see the fire in the guy, especially because he is not playing now. It must hurt even more when you’re not playing, because I have sat on the bench as well and seen my team play. When they are losing or winning, you just feel like… you’re never satisfied. He is that kind of guy that even if you stomp the enemies, there will still be something he will say, which I love, because I am the same way. I think he is really pushing the guys, the jungler especially, he is young and he is teaching him a lot. Honestly I have been really surprised and I love working with him.

Maurice is like the team’s dad…

Kind of, yeah. *laughs*

So I saw that on twitter, you guys made a Schalke meme, the S-05 instead of S-04 (sorry guys, they are S-06 at this point). You finished the game with 16 kills while they had 0. When was the last time you stomped a team like this?

I don’t really know. There’s not really much of an impact on me unless it’s a team like G2 or Fnatic for example. For me, stomping Schalke doesn’t mean much, I know that they are honestly trolling so I don’t want to give myself false confidence

What do you mean when you say they are just trolling?

Well, we just have better fundamentals than them. They have very emotional players and their playstyle is very… just bad. They have a really bad base and they don’t even know what to draft, so I feel good about winning against them, but I don’t want us to get used to the feeling of winning. I’m not here to beat Schalke, I am here to beat the better teams.

"I love the game and I hate losing so much that I have to win, or I have nothing else to play for."

You mentioned that you don’t want to get overly confident about beating a team that isn’t performing so well, so what does winning do to you?

Playing always gives me more confidence and more confidence to my teammates too, everyone gets more comfortable. I think it can be dangerous as well, always winning, because you get a bit lazy and relaxed and some people don’t know how to handle it. Winning just keeps driving me forwards, you know? This is why I started playing the game, I love the game and I hate losing so much that I have to win, or else I have nothing else to play for.

What can the fans expect from you this split?

Thank you to all the Misfits fans and all the love and support. I’m going to try to keep myself and my team on point so we can keep winning, because this is only the beginning, we’ve faced half of the teams now and we are going to keep grinding and then we’ll see what happens. laughs

(My Rabbit pun was funny)