"The haters love it right now, I know" — Own3r on SK's Rough Start, LIDER, and the Road Back

SK Gaming came into the LEC 2026 with genuine ambitions. A top four finish was the stated minimum. After a disappointing Versus, Spring didn't start well either. Two series in, they've lost both — including a game three against Heretics that David "OWN3R" Rodriguez de la Torre himself described as a forfeit before the game even started. RFT caught up with the head coach right after the NAVI series to have more insights on the situation of the team.

How is it going?

It's rough. We don't have to lie about it, we don't have to be fake about it. It's been really hard for the team at the moment. Yesterday we didn't even show up — game three was a complete disaster. I think we FF'd before even joining the rift, and that's so sad to watch.

Everyone was embarrassed after.

Today at least we showed that we can play the game — we can hold a game for an Elder fight, a 50/50 Drake. If we get it, we probably win. At the moment we're working a lot on the resilience, trying to make the players keep doing what they have to do. It's a new team, it's true they wanted to play together, but they didn't play together before. We need to fix a lot of things — drafting, team dynamic. We are on it. But it's been rough. I'm honest.

You're talking about working on resilience, is it because the early game cannot be made up for? Laning phase, especially in the sololanes, does look like the main issue so far.

I think it's more than solo laners and laning — we just don't respect the jungler. I'm honest with you. The enemy jungler has one more camp to farm, he's full-clearing into kills in bot, mid or top. It's happening every game, it's happening in scrims, we are aware of it. Even when we know where the jungler is, we still die. Today we TP'd into Mundo, got caught out, and the whole early game fell apart randomly.

These are mistakes that should never happen at this level.

We are talking with the players, we are trying to improve. We are on it.

LIDER has had a rough start — not just this split, even last split. He seems to be struggling in the 1v1, and struggling to find his identity. Last split it was mages, this split he started with Orianna, then Zed that didn't work, now he's on Yasuo and Yone. Is it about confidence?

No, we are trying different styles as a team. That's something we're having internal difficulties on — do we go for mages or do we go for melee type carries? Sometimes it's really hard to find a good angle for those picks because of the meta and the champions being played against them. There was that game where we played Yone into a Ryze who stacked armour — unkillable — and we're trying to figure out how to handle that, how to blind pick around it.

I trust LIDER on Orianna, I trust him on Azir.

Yesterday he just didn't show up. It's more that we need to understand as a team how to play the windows with those champions. Sometimes we do it well, sometimes we don't — and when we do it badly, the resilience isn't there to recover. Today was a step forward: all three games we showed we can compete. We just need to keep practicing the champions and keep executing the plans, because sometimes people on the team ignore the plan in-game. We are on it.

Does the weight of expectation — the 'he's washed' narrative — affect his confidence?

No, I think he's a player who is confident by default. He showed up in game one today, he doesn't care, he goes for it. I think in the 1v1 he's a beast. He can play well — the issue is that he needs to respect the windows.

This is not solo queue. Teams are studying you, they will show up in the mid lane and kill you if you don't respect that. He has habits from solo queue that we are trying to fix.

But in terms of confidence, I think he's fine. We trust him, we believe he will improve. The haters love it right now — I know. But we know, and we are trying to improve.

Mikyx was also really underperforming last split — arguably one of the worst splits of his career. He was supposed to be the reliable rock that everything is built around. How do you explain that?

It's the team dynamic. Something we realised last split and are working on is that we keep defaulting to opening the map through mid. And that's a big internal fight between staff and players — because yesterday for example, we had a Cassiopeia with 1500 gold in her pocket and we're still opening through mid when she is about to base. That makes completely no sense.

Sometimes we plan ahead pretty well and we follow the plan based on the champion, the tempo, what we need to do. But other times we're really asleep. When we make a mistake, we need to reset — okay, what's the next map opening? What are we doing now? Sometimes we make a mistake and we just go on autopilot. We need to keep planning, keep going. We are underperforming. Everyone is right about that.

You mentioned top four was the bare minimum before the split. Do you scale back those ambitions now?

Whoever doesn't play to be top four — or even to win — shouldn't be in the competition. That's the message we send to the players. Doesn't matter if you're SK, doesn't matter if you're whatever team — if you're competing, you play to win. Everyone in the team is genuinely trying to win. We're just having some difficulties right now.

But I believe with time it will come, and we still believe we can win. Legit.

How do you manage this as a coach? How do you bring the confidence back?

I think it's about making the players aware of the mistakes — myself included. Some of the drafts are not good, and that's on me. The decisions on how we play around certain champions, we're not doing it properly, and that's on me too. We need to be aware of the mistakes, keep talking about it, not mentally FF, even outside of the game. Keep trying, keep trying, keep trying. If we believe, it will come for sure.