Ukrainian LoL player from Karmine Corp Blue Volodymyr Maynter Sorokin talked with Players journalist Serhii Taran. We talked about the Ukrainian LoL scene, Maynter's career path, and the prospects for the discipline in Ukraine.
How did it happen that you chose League of Legends, even though CS and Dota are the most popular games in Ukraine?
I had the life of a younger brother, so I didn't choose what I played. I played a lot of Dota 1 with my brother for about five years in a row, and I was very young, I was 5-6 years old. Then LoL and Dota 2 came out almost at the same time and we tried it at the end of the second season, and I've been playing for about 12 years in a row. I spent more time playing just for fun, to play something, to play it with my friends, and then I started playing professionally.
How can you make a transition from playing for fun to professional performance in LoL?
It's different for different people. For me, it happened by chance, because I played and played and I thought that esports was not for me, that people play somewhere else, people are in Marvel movies and something like that exists, but it's hardly for me. But then I saw that they were holding a selection for the team. My brother sent me a picture and wrote: ‘Try it, you have a good rating there, why not?’
I went to try out and it worked out, they liked me, I was accepted. Later, when you already feel the taste of competition, the taste of victory and even defeat, you really like it and move on to a more interesting league. First, the second division of France, then the names in the first division of France, you play against them and get a lot of pleasure.
Tell us a little bit about your career path, did you play in the CIS league while it existed?
It all started with the LCL, where I tried the first qualifiers more for fun. There was a very bad attitude of the teams to the league, they were just looking for money and that was it. Managers got theirs, coaches got theirs, one person could be a player, coach and manager at the same time, get 3-4 salaries and it didn't really matter how it went on the split. But there was one team that was trying to win, because it was the way to the Worlds.
Thank God, this region was closed, because of the war, everyone was dismissed and I was thinking whether to wait for it or not, everything was unclear, so I just went to learn English to play somewhere in an English-speaking team. And I managed to escape from LCL, and the moment I left LCL for the second division in France, my career started in the right direction.
Now you're the champions, but you didn't manage to go to the LAN finals. Was it because LoL is not recognised as a sport in Ukraine?
Yes, they tried to help me with the Federation of Esports, to do something, but LoL is not considered an esport in Ukraine, it's more like entertainment, and no one will let you out for entertainment during the war. For example, CS and similar games are accepted as esports in the legislation, but LoL is not. It was very difficult, I couldn't go to the French championship final, but a little later I was able to.
Now I'm already waiting for the tournament I'll play to get into the national team, I'll play with all my Ukrainian friends who also play the game. We have a small group of 50-100 people, we will play.
After winning the league, your teammates were photographed with flags, and among them was the flag of Ukraine, how much motivation did it give you?
It was at the beginning, when we had a media day, and the audience came. We have an international team, there's a Turk and a guy from Lithuania, I'm from Ukraine, there's a Frenchman, we gathered everyone. Everyone brought their flags and someone, I don't know who, some spectator or someone from the management brought the flag of Ukraine to support us. It was very nice when they shouted my nickname when they got the flag. It's certainly motivating.
Do you talk about the war in Ukraine in the team and in the club?
It happens when you talk outside the game, somewhere on the street, on a walk with your friends, with your teammates, and they become friends later on. A lot of people misunderstand something, for example, ‘russia attacked you because...’ and all that nonsense. I try to explain it to them more gently, without pressure or ridicule, ‘God, what are you thinking’. And they understand, they try. It's really nice when they weigh up the facts and understand what's really going on. We talk a bit, but it's not like I have to explain something about the war to them at the beginning of every rally, every day.
Tell us about the daily routine of a professional LoL player during the League?
Let's take a week, if it's a regular season and not the playoffs: two days of official games, four days of training with the team, 5-6 games a day with the team and some more alone. It turns out to be 10-12 games a day, if it's a normal day. And one day is a day off. You can play, you can go for a walk. We usually play, but it's still considered a day off. And so it goes for 9 weeks in a row. Then there is a short break, a week or five days, and the playoffs start.
How do you relax from this schedule, do you have any hobbies?
I think it is very important to rest even on the days when you train with the team. You wake up, if you're good today, you go for a walk for 20-30 minutes, eat and then sit down to play. You play, you start training with the team, you play with the team and then you need to rest. If it's ideal, it's to go in for sports. For me, sport is a kind of workout at home three times a week at most. You work out, then you play, try to improve.
Before going to bed, I play Valorant with my friends, for example. You try to forget a little bit about everything that happened. Maybe it was a bad day, maybe a good day. I can watch a film with my girlfriend, there are a lot of different things, you can go for a walk, talk to your parents. You try to unload and then reboot and go play the next day. Sleeping well is very important, at least 8 hours a day. These are small things, but if you do everything together: sports, sleep, proper food, it's much easier and better to play the next day.
Do you work with a psychologist in your team?
Yes, all good teams should have, if not a psychologist, then a mental coach. He is responsible for your thoughts before official matches, for your sport, what you do, how you do it. I couldn't go away for a very long time, 2-3 months in a row, but my guys did all sorts of exercises with this coach, maybe not every day, but every other day. There is always some kind of warm-up before the game. He talks to you, tries to understand what worries you, what you don't like, more like a psychologist or a friend. We have such a guy, he helps a lot.
Did you notice his influence on your game?
Of course, he tried to introduce something to do with breathing into my life. Before going to bed, you have to breathe very deeply for five minutes and things like that. And visualisation, you just try to imagine in your head how it will be tomorrow, you sit and imagine how you go up and turn on the computer, boot up, what character you have chosen, how you play and it's important to imagine it all in a more positive way, how you beat someone on the line, killed someone.
If you have experienced all these emotions, then tomorrow, when you do it all, it will not be something new and unexpected for you, so you will not have the same level of excitement if you were worried before. It helped me, I used to be very worried that I would play badly, but when I started breathing before going to bed and started imagining things, it started to improve my condition.
Has he adapted his lessons with you in any way to take into account the war factor?
Yes, we have a page where we mark how I slept, whether I ate everything, whether I am healthy, whether something hurts. And if you indicate that something hurts and you note that you are in pain, he sees it all and immediately asks what happened, why it hurts. If you say that I have a bad chair, so my back hurts, he prescribes exercises to do after the streams, training, for example, lying down for 40 seconds in some way, which helps immediately. So they keep an eye on me.
How is the Ukrainian professional LoL scene doing? Are there many pro players? For example, there were only two at the EMEA Masters Spring 2024.
Yes, but the Masters is such a good level, you need to take first place in your countries, or at least second. There aren't really many Ukrainians in LoL, and we're just trying to get together now, we made a Google doc where we write our names, surnames, and nicknames to get together.
We want to see how many of us there are to help the Ministry of Sports, to have contacts and to introduce League of Legends as a discipline in esports. Right now, 60 people have registered through the Google form, but it's all of them, the first tier and the second, third, and those who play only Ukrainian tournaments for fun. Now there are 60-70 people. It's not a lot, but if you divide them into teams, you'll get 20 teams, which is not so bad.
In your opinion, why did Dota become popular in Ukraine, even though it is similar to LoL?
The answer is very simple – it's money. You always see that if you win here, you get this much, if you win at The International, you get one million. You see the price, you see the tournament, you see the money. And I think the teams paid more. League of Legends was more like this, somewhere in the second division, somewhere in France, somewhere in Spain.
You didn't know what to play, and it was more confusing. There was a stereotype that Dota was for real men, and League of Legends was for anime and girls. CS and Dota were very much developed in our country, in Poland, where pashaBiceps, VP, the whole topic was very popular, and League of Legends somehow did not catch on. However, in the rest of the world, China, Korea, Europe, only LoL.
Do you think the lack of NAVI's LoL roster affects the game's popularity in Ukraine?
NAVI used to be in LoL, I think they bought a slot in LCL for six months, just to try it out, to see how much money it brings in, how popular it is. But it didn't work out well for them and they left.
I think yes, it does, because NAVI is very popular, if they played LoL and showed it on their social media, there would be more Ukrainian players. But they don't.
You played in the LCL, where there were Russian teammates. Do you have any communication with them, maybe they wrote you something?
No, it's been zero communication. I'm from Kramatorsk and at the beginning of the full-scale war I was not playing from there, but I was still very close to Kramatorsk. I was playing in the OBG team and the guy who owns the team lives in London, but he's russian. And he sent me plans to capture Kramatorsk and wrote: ‘Bro, don't worry, we'll get you out’, and I replied ‘are you crazy or what?’
It was still unclear whether the league was closing or not, we were still playing. And such completely IPSO and controversial news was thrown around. Later, the league finally closed and I left. This guy, by the way, didn't pay me anything, although he owed me 2-3 salaries, but for LCL it's normal, if the team breaks up, everyone gets screwed, the russian league and this is very common.
There was one guy with whom I played two teams in a row and he was my coach. He asked me how I was doing at the very beginning of the war, because at the beginning there was a lot of news that the whole of Ukraine was captured, and from that moment on we didn't talk anymore.
I tried not to play russian tournaments then. I saw a lot of Ukrainian players from our community playing some random tournaments, where ru bookmakers give their money, and a lot of people participated. I always cancelled it all, because playing in this nest is very bad for me and my reputation. So I tried not to have any contact with them anymore.
After that, you left OBG and were invited to join Karmine Corp Blue?
At first it was like this, the second division of France, the team was called Lille Esport, I was a ‘rapper’, Lil Maynter. After Lille, I got to Team du Sud, also the second division, and I already won the second division with them.
After you win the second division, you have to play Up & Down, where the first place winners of the second division play against the last place winners of the first division. So we took second place, went up to the first division, and then I got to Karmine Corp. They noticed me, said they liked me and hired me.
Have they offered you to join the LEC team yet?
It's very difficult to travel and they are not sure, and there you only need to play offline, only in the arena. And in fact, I don't think I'm ready yet, there are very big players playing there. But they had a very bad choice, the main team took tenth place out of ten.
They wanted to change something, they had two people to choose from on the Top, and they were a little bit worse than me, or at the same level as me. And they wrote that out of these three players, if you take those two and me, I'm their best option and they like me the most so far. But they said that if I couldn't go 100%, they would look at other options. But I said I couldn't guarantee 100%, so they said maybe in six months something will change.
And maybe it's for the best. When you get into such big leagues very early and play badly, they don't look at you later. If you get there now and play badly, you'll be kicked out and that's it.
You said that you are not ready to play in the LEC yet, but in what way, mentally or technically, in the game?
I don't know. In terms of morale, you can always adapt, or vice versa, be mentally prepared and then lose everything. I'm more worried about the game, because when I left the second division of France for the first, I knew that I was better than at least six or seven players in my position out of ten. I know that with this and that, we can fight for the top places. And here I go and I know that I'm the same or slightly better than two or three people, and the other seven, in my opinion, are either the same or much better.
On the other hand, it's hard to be prepared for such a league so that you go in and are better than the others. You need to play for at least six months. So it's a difficult question. Anyway, while there is no opportunity, maybe it's good that there is no opportunity. Because it's a difficult choice whether to go or not, so I'll be preparing for another six months.
You said that the LoL community in Ukraine is currently being organised. How do you plan to develop it, maybe organise a tournament?
If I were to do it directly, I would hardly have time to do it. I need to gather people, set up some stream, hold my own tournaments, and maybe make a prize pool with my own money. Maybe I can register somewhere in Kyiv as a non-governmental organisation and be the official manager of the whole thing.
But when you do all this, when there are a thousand or two online views, it's just perfect. Then you write there to Lenovo, Citrus, Allo, whoever, here we are playing, do you want to sponsor the tournament and get some advertising? Then the online becomes bigger, you get advertised, and it becomes bigger and more money. But it all takes time, and I'm currently playing in the French championship, and doing all these tournaments and streams is very difficult and time-consuming, and there's no guarantee that everything will work out.
For now, I want to bring everyone together. Maybe some guy or girl will take the initiative and we'll see. Maybe someone will create a Ukrainian league. It's a little bit and it's being done sometimes, I've seen it on Discord, I was in it - the Ukrainian UA community, they played tournaments and helped each other with understanding the game. I sometimes read the messages in this group, they work together, but there are few tournaments in Ukraine that are held on a regular basis and offer prizes. There was one tournament in Kyiv, my brother played there and I went to watch them play. It was really cool.
Do you communicate with UESF, do they plan to launch their own tournaments?
I don't know, nothing yet, they are currently working to recognise LoL as an esports discipline in Ukraine. Perhaps after they make it an esport, they will be able to organise normal, serious tournaments. So far, there are no tournaments from the Federation.
What are some of the advantages of LoL that should make people pay attention to this discipline?
Firstly, I'll say that to each his own, some people play Tetris, they are fine with it and the prize money is normal, and there is a Ukrainian Tetris player, I've heard about him. Whoever is good at what, he should play it. If I played Dota or CS, I might not like it very much, but I wake up and have nothing to do, I want to play LoL, and it's also a job at the same time.
What are the advantages. In fact, this is the most popular game in esports right now. The biggest views, the biggest events, it's all in LoL now, not in CS or Dota, LoL has been winning in terms of views in recent years. This ensures that League of Legends will not close in two years, as happens with some games, which is good.
Then it is very much aimed at the English-speaking community, it helps you learn English and gives you the opportunity to go and play for any team in the world. It's not like the game is only popular in China or Brazil, you can choose any country, wherever you live, wherever you want to play, you can play there.
It's a good game. Riot Games are always working on the game, every two weeks there is an update, there is no such thing as CS, they added one grenade in four years, they cannot fix bugs, you shoot a person and their head is here and it appears there, there are no dancing people who look like Michael Jackson. Of course, there are bugs, like in every game, but they fix them, they ban them, they monitor it. Those who created the game treat it much better than the creators of Dota 2 and CS, I don't like the way Valve handles it.
So: it's very popular, they work on the game, and you need to know English. You can easily play, learn, and there is a lot of information on YouTube, so you can learn as well.
What do you think of Riot Games' development of the game, their changes to the tournament ecosystem, the possible appearance of the third international tournament and the appearance of LoL at the Esports World Cup? What do you think of this direction of development?
I really hate Riot because they do a very bad job of doing everything for esports. They have a very popular game, more popular than Dota, and they only hold two tournaments a year for the top teams. Why is it that CS has 20 tournaments, four of which are major, as well as BLAST and anything else is top. In LoL, there are MSI, World, MSI, World, and they collect such views, but at the same time they hold only two tournaments. I really hated them for that, but now they are at least adding a third, which is good. We need to develop, they are very popular, there will always be money, some views and sponsors.
I think this was crucial when people went to play and watched, and in LoL there is one tournament that will take place in seven months and only takes place once a year. And they see that there are 30 CS tournaments a day. This was a huge difference 5-10 years ago, now it's much better. So they're good, they need to develop all of this so that I can play three tournaments a year rather than two.
Is it possible to add an open qualification?
I don't know how it would help, because there is a system here - there are divisions in each country, from the first division teams go to the EMEA Masters Spring 2024, then some teams or players get into the LEC, which is the highest European league, and there are also America, China, Korea, and these are the main regions where the strongest teams are.
If you were to organise a tournament for these regions, it's unlikely that five random people from Ukraine would get together and get there. Because the level is different, someone plays in the first division, someone in the second, someone in the first but in last place. And in fact, it's a gradual thing that is very well developed in LoL, which I like. They just need to do more tournaments, bigger prize pools, and more players.
What about adding other tournament operators?
Yes. This is also bad, because Riot makes all the tournaments from Riot, and it's more of a club thing, not like an international football competition, well, someone made some tournament, some Riot, and for my country it's nothing, they can't let me play a tournament from Riot.
It's not the Olympics, it's nothing like that, it's some kind of Riot, that's why it's bad, maybe if they did it with the sports committees of other countries, developed all this, it would be better for the players, but maybe it would be worse for the status of the Riot Games.
I don't know what to advise them, they just need more tournaments and invest more money in players, then there would be more players.
Do you know any young Ukrainian players who might soon make a name for themselves on the Tier 2 LoL scene?
Of course, there is Toplaner, his name is Slayer. I know him because he wrote to me, asked me how to do this and how to do that. He's a very young guy, if I'm not mistaken, he's 16 or 17. There are three ratings in LoL – Master, Grand Master and Challenger, and there are also all sorts of silver and gold, but it doesn't matter.
These three ratings are the main ones, and he already has Grand Master, I don't know if he took the Challenger or not, but at 16 years old, having such a rating is very good. But he's not playing very professionally yet, because if I'm not mistaken he's still in school.
I saw a post about him on Twitter that his city was being bombed, the power was cut off, and he went looking for a place to play, to play a training session or an official game with the team. You are very much inspired by such players because they give their all and do everything possible to prove themselves. They gave him good feedback, he's still a bit of a kid, he has some strange questions, ‘Am I ready to play? Would I be able to play?’. The main thing is just to work on yourself and you will see the result, the main thing is for others to see, not just you.
I think he can play with confidence. And there are a lot of players I don't even know about because they are not in my role and I don't communicate with them. It's not that there are a lot of them, but there are a lot for the Ukrainian community. So, of course, anyone can make a shot, maybe in a year some 15-year-old guy who has been playing since he was 8 years old will come in, and we don't know anything about him. So we will wait and give time to the young.
