LYON Isles: “Playing domestically, I think there’s so many things that I could get away with that I wouldn’t now.”

Interview conducted on First Stand Asset Day, March 15, 2026.

Q: How’s Brazil?

Isles: It’s been good, I think. I haven’t had a lot of time to soak it in yet with the tight schedule that we’re on, but it’s been good.

Q: This is basically your first international, right? Worlds 2020 doesn’t count, it was remote, right?

Isles: It wasn’t remote. It was in-person.

Q: Of course — but no audience, right?

Isles: No, that’s true.

Q: So, let’s call it your first international. Gotta be pretty exciting, right?

Isles: Yeah, I mean, definitely is super exciting. For me, the biggest thing is that step up in competition in terms of just the players you play against.

I spoke to some people already about this, but the first few scrims that we’ve already done, we played against BLG yesterday. We played two games. In the first game I felt completely out of my depth, I will say.

It’s just so eye-opening playing against players like that. It’s not the same thing watching them play, as experiencing playing against them. So much credit to them, so much credit to ON, just from this one instance that I’ve played against him.

It’s just such an amazing opportunity to be in this position where you get to experience this and hopefully lead to some growth as a team and as a player.

Q: You’ve talked before about how you’re able to work on skills on LYON that you weren’t able to improve before — is international competition a similar kind of competition?

Isles: I think so. I guess to explain it in the way the question was phrased, when you’re playing with a team that struggles individually or when your team struggles as a five-man unit, a lot of the time you’ll spend in review trying to solve situations.

That could take so many hours away from your team, whether it be trying to get on the same page or trying to actually come up with a good play, trying to come up with it for the right reason and not just to prove someone wrong, trying to actually change your gameplay for the next game even though you will not play the same five champions you did before.

Especially with the introduction of Fearless, your overall view of the game has to be consistent with that of your team, and that can be a bit of a hurdle when you have to play different champions every day and every series.

But like you say, playing on LYON, a lot of that gap has been bridged. I have fantastic leaders on the team, fantastic amounts of experience, and so much ability, I suppose, for players around me to point out mistakes, to point out things that are good, to bounce around ideas. Just so much forward momentum in that sense.

A lot of it now is just coming down to individual things, and playing internationally is just that step up. And it’s not a small step, it’s a big step.

Playing domestically, I think there’s so many things that I could get away with that I wouldn’t now. If you miss one time where you should have pressured on this stage, then your whole game can be ruined by the subtlest of moments.

It’s so hard for spectators at times to fully understand how important twenty seconds is in any specific moment. It can literally be game changing.

That’s kind of the reality that’s dawned on me, that there is still so far to go. And I’m just excited to have the opportunity.

Q: Inspired and Berserker are lauded as international-class players in the West. Does it feel like they can match the international step up in competition?

Isles: It’s definitely nice to have teammates that have experienced that trial by fire situation. They can see the mistakes that I make more quickly.

For me, the biggest thing is that it feels like there’s just so much wasted time in my gameplay.

Whether it be a two-second window in lane because someone doesn’t have a spell for two seconds, and if I didn’t walk up there then I missed something, and that leads to something else that leads to this guy moving slightly earlier which leads to something else.

Just having teammates that keep you accountable for these tiny moments is what leads to greater success.

It’s not just being accountable for yourself, because I’ve always been someone that’s critical, but having people that actually give you new ideas and come up with new ways for you to improve that maybe I missed is also really important for me.

I think it is so easy to get exposed, not just by results but by the feeling of playing against people that are generally considered better than you.

But yeah, it’s nice to have these players to fall back on.

Q: The America’s Cup looked tough, but you’re still confident against LOUD, right? Easy win. You’re learning as a player, but now’s the time for ego.

Isles: I don’t know if I can give you what you’re looking for, but I will say that FURIA are a lot better than people gave them credit for.

I think Brazil has absolutely exceeded expectations from what it was last year. I don’t know when it was, maybe spring or the very first split when we played them and we only dropped one game.

That was an absolutely crushing moment.

I remember someone said that even Dignitas would have beaten Brazil at that time. I’ve locked that out from my memory, but something along those lines.

So much credit to Brazil and specifically FURIA for turning the narrative around. I’m not totally sure what to expect from LOUD as their counterpart. We actually did against FURIA here today and it didn’t go too badly, I think.

The schedule is so hard to scrim other teams, especially with the fact that we play the day after today, so fitting everything in is really difficult.

But the point being, I’m not sure what our matchup looks like versus LOUD — I did watch their finals and I think it’s clear, respectfully of course, that they’re not BLG. From my recent memory.

But they’re still not even close to a team that you should ever underestimate. League can be a very fragile game, and underestimating a team like this, especially one that was able to finish as Brazil’s first seed, would be a mistake.

NA got crushed by Brazil’s third seed before, so maybe LOUD are just that good. But I’m still confident that we can get the job done if we just stick to our fundamentals.

Transcription assistance from @earlofsquirr3l

Header Image Credit: Riot Games