The European League of Legends Championship series has seen its fair share of upstarts rising from seemingly nowhere. Examples are plentiful: Team ROCCAT, the Unicorns of Love, G2 Esports, Splyce, and a bunch of Misfits are but some of them, each shining in their own way. It may be too early to say, but Team Vitality sure looked the part in its first week of play in the 2018 LCS spring split.

As three rookie players advanced to the stage alongside top laner Lucas “Cabochard” Simon-Meslet and jungler Berk “Gilius” Demir, few would have predicted a takeover over the course of two games – against H2K Gaming and Giants Gaming. Yet here they were, exchanging jokes in the middle of a flurry of decisive calls, celebrating when aceing opposite teams, and overall ‘just having fun.’

If you had to choose someone to embody that team, it would have to be its Italian mid laner, Daniele “Jiizuke” Di Mauro. Has seen all that solo queue could offer: Diamond in Season 2, 99 LP in Season 3 – also known as ‘unofficially challenger’ – then Challenger from Season Four onwards. Yet, he only qualified for the LCS in late 2017.

“What took me so long to reach the LCS is just the Italian culture and its problems,” Jiizuke says. “Say you live in Spain, Germany or France. They have insane tournaments, everyone can play with you, and you can build friends and build a team in the region.”

Italy is no friendly land for aspiring pro gamers, and those that reach such an echelon are often exceptions – such as ClouD and Reynor in StarCraft, Nicolò “insa” Mirra in FIFA, and Cybe8 in Paladins: The Game. Jiizuke remembers that, once upon a time, the number of top-caliber prospects in League of Legends from the country could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even then, some of them renounced their passion.

Several factors are to blame, but societal pressures came to Jiizuke’s mind when asked. “Families prioritize school. I can never tell why they prioritize school that much; it's there, you can go whenever you want – at 50, I could go to school,” Jiizuke points out. “Meanwhile, playing professionally is now. I'm 22, and I have my next 8 years, maybe, if I pull a LemonNation I can go to 30, but that's it. It's only now that I can do that.”

And so he carved his own path in esports, despite the lack of a large enough competitively-minded player base – which brings another slew of factors: the stigma competitive gaming has in the country, as a source of misplaced mockery at all ages, some of which he was subjected to as a student.

“People tend to just play for fun, and they don't want to sacrifice anything to succeed,” he said. “It's frustrating, because I get seen like 'oh, you are playing a game! what are you doing with your life?' so many times.”

Despite that context, he was able to move into the Team Forge house in 2016 and fully dedicated himself to his craft. During that time, he had seen Misfits’s rise, then helped his squad reach the Challenger Series’ summer split at the expense of SK Gaming. A year later, he moved to the Spanish League as a member of Giants Gaming’s secondary squad and eventually reached the LCS with four of his current teammates.

“I knew I can do it if I had this environment since Season 2,” he said, in retrospect. “I could be pro at Season 3 if I had that environment at Season 2, I think I could play without parents screaming, school stress, all this stuff. I'm happy that I'm here now, and I'm having all the fun.”

On January 20, the day of Team Vitality’s victory against his old organization’s squad, he was not the only one having fun. Despite a slow start, the squad’s composition – Cabochard’s Gangplank, Gilius’s Gragas, Jiizuke’s Azir, Amadeu “Minitroupax” Carvalho’s Caitlyn and Jakub "Jactroll" Skurzyński’s Tahm Kench – ramped up into the lategame, where damage threats outscaled their opponents’ Cho’Gath, Ryze, and Xayah. The matter was in full display when minitroupax killed Felix “Betsy” Edling’s Ryze in the blink of an eye, eliciting cheers from his teammates. The day before, against H2K Gaming, Jiizuke was the one laughing following a dazzling performance.

Minitroupax and Jiizuke have been taking turns ever since they met in Giants in 2017. “When I first joined Giants, I had an instant connection with Mini,” the mid laner said. “We were two players that had a lot of fun, laughing all the time. Then, we just realized that we could do that even in a serious environment.”

But it was not solely about fun and laughs, as team members exchanged relevant information without distractions from within and synchronized in seemingly chaotic settings, such as team fights. In the latter, Cabochard’s Gangplank stalled the front line and dented the back line, allowing the carries to finish opponents off without disturbance. If anything, the team played with confidence in its draft and in its preparation.

“I just think that going into this week, I knew we could take the 2-0 given our practice and how everything was going,” Jiizuke said. “I knew our potential. Minitroupax and I are really good at our roles, so if we just got to late game like against Giants Gaming, we fall off early game, but we just scale with two-three items and we start fighting. Minitroupax and I are really good mechanically, and we just won by mechanics in team fights.”

Much as the day before, there was total annihilation – or ‘destruction’, as the mid laner pointed out on a postgame broadcast interview. And there was coordination in the process, with Gilius at the helm, sparking skirmishes. What about him? “He's GodGilius,” the mid laner asserts with a smile. “He's not Gilius. GodGilius is unique.”

“He's a really good jungler,” he says. “He taught me a lot of mid-jungle [synergy matters] - what we should do together. I understood what he needs, he understood what I need. We pretty much adapted to each other. I think I'm a good player because of him as well.”

A 2-0 later, laughter ensued as the players left their booths, all the way to their shuttles, in first place before a Week Two clash against Misfits Gaming that may display what the team is capable of against the elite. But the biggest concern, the stage environment, had been nullified – rather, conquered. “My only fear was that we wouldn't all perform on stage,” he added. “Luckily, after I saw yesterday, I was sure about myself that I would perform, but as a team, at least, there are teams onstage that you cannot perform like teams on a scrim. Scrims are more relaxed, and that's why I was worried a bit. In the end, we performed well.”