"When I was fourteen I told myself that if I didn’t make it to the LEC by seventeen, I would just retire."

Matyáš "Carzzy" Orság has entered the League of Legends European Championship stage for the first time this Spring Split. The youngest player in the league had all eyes on him, as MAD Lions outshined favorite teams in the competition, making it all the way to the top of the standings in the LEC Playoffs.

Just as you would expect, if you are familiar with the MAD Lions and their teammates’ relationships, at the beginning of our conversation, Marek "Humanoid" Brázda uninvitedly enters the room to describe the life of Carzzy before LEC stardom: “So Carzzy lived in a village, then played games like an idiot and…” He is immediately shut down by Carzzy and we laugh.

Born in 2002, the now LEC pro had started to avidly play video games at age ten. Carzzy spent most of his childhood locked indoors, clicking champions with his mouse, despite growing up surrounded by nature, in the village of Huslenky, in Czech Republic, which he describes as a calm place with “really good internet.”

The Bot Laner’s semi-pro career started at age fourteen. “I used to play random tournaments in Czech Republic in exchange for Riot Points, and eventually, eXtatus noticed me. After playing with the team for a while I got to enter the Czech League, climbing to playing on better teams. From the Czech League I went straight to the LEC,” Carzzy recalls.

“It was always my dream to join what was the LCS then, and is the LEC now. When I was fourteen years old I had told myself that if I didn’t make it to the LEC by the time I was seventeen, I would just retire. Even if I had not made it then, I don’t think I would have ended up retiring.”

Entering the LEC, Carzzy had been in a completely different environment. Feeling like he had achieved something meaningful, getting used to playing on the big stage was no issue. He admits: “This was something I really wanted. It came through”. Carzzy describes every match as a learning experience, feeling blithesome when considered the underdog that is able to beat top tier teams.

He explains that being a rookie means that most times, people expect a lot of  your performance. "I would say way more than what they should expect, like people that say “Oh my god, these rookies are insane, they are the new kings of Europe”, reinforcing that the team still has a lot to learn, and that teams like Fnatic have a lot of advantages when it comes to experience compared to rookie teams. Dethroning the best in the West is not a simple feat. Yet, they impressively have knocked down G2 Esports twice, proving they're not a team to be taken for granted.

MAD Lions took risk when it built a roster almost entirely of rookies, shaping them through the coaching work of Mac and Kaas, fondly known as “Mac’n’Cheese”. Carzzy argues that Mac undoubtedly deserves the title of Coach of the Split: “when we joined mad Lions we were all dumb monkeys, and Mac is really smart about the game. Eventually, he made very smart players out of us, exceeding all the expectations with our roster and right now, no else deserves this recognition as much as him”.

Other than having very high skill in the game, Carzzy has arguably built one of the strongest player brands in the LEC. His unique tone and comedic content quickly earns him fans around the globe.

“No one ever taught me how to build my brand as a player. Most of the time, I am just bored and rather be productive, so I post on social media. Once I am done with my player career, I hope to have the foundation to be a successful streamer and YouTuber so I can keep doing what I love to do.”