Kikis to start for Vitality this week against Giants

Long-time EU LCS veteran Mateusz “Kikis” Szkudlarek, who was signed to Team Vitality as a substitute player two days ago, is starting for the team this week, according to his Facebook post today. Team manager Clément Laparra confirmed this news with Dot Esports.

His announcement only mentions the game against Giants, so there’s a chance starting jungler Erberk “Gilius” Demir will still start in their other match against ROCCAT. The original team announcement on Tuesday mentioned that Kikis would strictly be a sub for the foreseeable future, implying that it would be unlikely that he’d start a game so soon. That being said, this does come as a bit of a surprise.

Kikis has been on a few notable teams throughout his long career in the EU LCS. He played on Fnatic, G2 Esports, and Unicorns of Love. Sure, UOL is playing perhaps the worst they’ve ever played this year, but at one point they were a formidable team.

Vitality often struggles in longer games, which may be due to their overall lack of experience. A couple of players on Vitality have been playing for a few years, but none have seen much success in the league. Kikis, however, has.

The Giants are currently tied for eighth place in the standings, while Vitality is tied for fifth. This makes the Giants good practice for Kikis, who has only been with the team for a very short duration. Vitality’s second game of the week is against ROCCAT, who share fifth place with them. That game holds a little more pressure seeing as it might determine who belongs at the top of the middle of the pack, so we expect Gilius to return for that.

Vitality’s first game against the Giants starts at 1pm CT tomorrow.