Josedeodo aiming high with FlyQuest in 2021: “I didn’t come here to be 7th or 8th”

Argentine jungler Brandon ‘Josedeodo’ Villegas isn’t settling for mediocrity in the 2021 Spring LCS season. He tells Dexerto that FlyQuest can be a strong competitor in the league, and thinks they’re quickly getting there.

FlyQuest is pegged as a hopeful middle-of-the-pack team in most preseason power rankings. It’s a fair assessment of the team that has promising young talent along with top lane legend Eric ‘Licorice’ Ritchie. But the same could be said about most teams in the LCS this season, with only the top-four teams, including 100 Thieves, Cloud9, Evil Geniuses, and Team Liquid, showing signs of consistency early on. The season is young, but FlyQuest has already wet their feet against great competition like EG and Liquid. While they lost both encounters to end Week 1 tied for fifth at 1-2, the 20-year-old jungler is soaking in every match for all they’re worth.

“We still have to improve,” he said to Dexerto. “When you’re a new team you expect these losses that aren’t bad, but give you an opportunity to improve. When you’re in a stage game, it gives you more vision [of where we’re FLY’s at] and more opportunities to improve from this game.”

FlyQuest focus on rebuilding after Worlds 2020

After his exciting Worlds 2020 campaign with Liga Latinoamérica (LLA) 2020 Champions Rainbow7, Josedeodo’s cross-region transfer to the LCS was especially exciting.

• Read more: LCS Spring Split 2021: scores, schedules, table

But the the team’s subsequent roster shuffle left FLY without their promising core of mid laner Tristan ‘PowerOfEvil’ Schrage (TSM), support Lee ‘IgNar’ Dong-geun (Evil Geniuses), and ADC Jason ‘WildTurtle’ Tran (CLG). Instead, FlyQuest shifted gears. They created a team of young NA talent around Josedeodo, including Johnson ‘Johnsun’ Nguyen (22), Cristian ‘Palafox’ Palafox (21), David ‘Diamond’ Bérubé (24), and veteran Licorice (23).

“As a team, we have really good individuals. Even though on the stage, we don’t show up for now,” the jungler said of FLY’s first outings. The team’s only win so far is against Søren ‘Bjergsen’ Bjerg’s TSM. In his LCS opener, Licorice went 5/4/3 on Camille while giving out 350 damage per minute with a 336 gold difference in 10 minutes, according to LoL Stats. Johnsun has a top-five K/D/A in the league through three games at 8.3, per data from Oracle’s Elixir. Josedeodo is in a seven-way tie for third in First Blood takes at 67%, which translates to two games of their three played so far. Going by what they’ve shown on the Rift, this team is still figuring themselves out. But in the meantime, they can rely on their individuals to pull the slack while they gel throughout the season.

Josedeodo flying the flag for Latin America

But Josedeodo didn’t become the first LATAM player to transfer into a major region just to slip into the shadows of the teams with bigger names and deeper budgets. “I want to be the best in the league,” he said. “I didn’t leave the LATAM scene and come here to be 7th place, 8th place, or just to be like a runner-up. “I feel like our roster is really good, and FlyQuest [fans] are also expecting things from us… I feel like our objective is always to win the league, even though people might see other teams better. We all agree, at FlyQuest, we can do a pretty nice job and we can do better than all of them.”

• Read more: Vulcan believes Cloud9 can “really abuse” their LCS rivals

He’s not the only one with something left to prove. It seems like forever since the league was singing the praises of American top laner, Licorice. In 2018 he was promoted from C9’s academy team to replace 2013 World Champion Jeong ‘Impact’ Eon-young role in the starting lineup. That was the start of an amazing 2018 run with Cloud9 which took the team from last place in the LCS to an eventual 4th-place finish at Worlds. That was the highest any NA teams had ever finished at Worlds.

But since he was traded away from C9, there’s been a shadow cast on him too. Now, he’s out to silence the haters who think he’s washed up and “prove them wrong” with the new team he’s now tasked to lead.

• Read more: Finn on CLG’s chances in Spring 2021: “The LCS right now is an open field”

This FlyQuest team is young, talented, and hungry. They have players with something to prove and long-term goals they want to crush. “I think we’re doing a pretty nice job, obviously we can do better. Always,” Josedeodo said. “But I feel like we’re catching up really fast to the best teams… As a personal objective, I want to win the league. “We are going to get better.” FlyQuest go up against 100 Thieves to kick off Week 2 of LCS Spring 2021 on February 12.