Why did he leave?
League of Legends: Odoamne Reveals Messy Breakup with Koi/Rogue
The 2023 LEC off-season was wild, with new players joining the ranks, multiple veterans not finding teams at all and some pretty surprising signings. One of the biggest signings was the LEC champion, Andrei "Odoamne" Pascu going to the British org EXCEL and moving away from KOI/Rogue.
In an interview Odoamne went into greater detail of what happened this off-season and why he ended up donning the XL jersey at the start of the 2023 LEC Winter Split.
League of Legends Top Laner Odoamne Doesn't Blame Org on Departure
After Rogue had one of the best seasons ever, with an LEC title under their belt, as well as one of the best western performances at the 2022 League of Legends World Championship, everyone figured the team would stay together in the next year.
What a surprise it was when it was announced that top laner Odoamne would be leaving the team and moving on to join EXCEL in the upcoming season. During the first weekend of LEC action, the top laner went on air and explained some of the details of what happened behind-the-scenes and how it came to his departure.
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He explained that he always thought he would re-sign with KOI (formerly Rogue) for the 2023 season. He later found out that a few individuals, with whom he didn't have the best personal relations, went behind his back and told other orgs not to talk to him, since he would be retiring at the end of 2022 anyway.
I was kind of disappointed with how it ended up with the fact that I was kind of misled for the whole year into thinking I was gonna be first option and I was gonna resign. And the person in charge of this move is telling other teams that, at the beginning of spring split, that teams should not reach out to me because I’m planning on retiring at the end of the year.
Due to this he didn't have any offers on the table, and KOI decided not to re-sign him during the off-season leaving him with no real options for the future. Thankfully, EXCEL came in with a great offer which meant he could play in 2023.
Odoamne did state that his time on Rogue had been one of the best and that the org itself was not to blame for this mess, but rather, that it was the fault of one or two people within the org that had a "personal vendetta" against him, "For me, it just felt like a full-on personal vendetta just because the person who was in charge of this decision didn’t get along with me on a personal level."
EXCEL lost their first two matches to kick off the 2023 LEC Winter Split, but will play one more game on Monday, January 23, 2023 against Team BDS at around 7:00 pm CET.
ShowMaker also feels like Riot has screwed him over with the current state of Mages in LoL: