Oscarinin has had a roller coaster of a year with Fnatic, one that’s seen him go from near last place in the LEC to earning a Worlds spot right before he had to step away due to a crippling injury. Now, at his first-ever international competition, he’s more confident than ever after overcoming a great many hardships.
For it being his rookie year in the LEC, Óscar ‘Oscarinin’ Jiménez has been through a lot. From being brought onto Fnatic, one of Europe’s most iconic teams, and being expected to pick up the pieces of a broken roster all the way up to him finally proving himself to be one of Europe’s best top laners, his introduction to the LEC hasn’t been easy.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, Oscar’s hand was severely injured. He played through the injury without telling anyone outside of the team, beating XL before going through surgery to heal his wrist.
Though he’s been grappling with the process of recovering from his injury, he’s still confident in his ability to represent Europe on the world’s biggest stage. That, and he feels like the gap between his skill level and that of Eastern teams isn’t as big as many led him to believe now that he’s at Worlds 2023.
Getting back on track
Despite having to go through multiple surgeries to fix his wrist, Oscarinin was playing solo queue and trying to practice when he could. At first, he made it sound like he got a small cut rather than a crippling injury.
“My team went to Korea before me one week before me, I think. I had to stay in Germany, I was preparing to have a little surgery before coming, like a really little one. It’s nothing that matters a lot. Like, I was still playing solo queue even before that surgery, so I was fine. I was playing solo queue after a month of a break, so I was still getting used to playing again.”
Oscarinin continued, “So it was a bit weird at the start. But, when I came to Korea one week after, I think I started playing way better and I felt more confident.”
Though Oscar was all smiles when we spoke with him, the road to recovery wasn’t kind. His injury has quickly healed, but the time spent not being able to fight with his team really hit him hard.
“I couldn’t play League at all. […] I was thinking too much in my head, like, ‘Oh wow, I’m not going to play League, then I have to take another surgery, then I have to fly to Korea later. I’m not gonna have that much practice.'”
“In the end, I just played solo queue until I felt good with myself. I tried to not think about that because at some point I said, ‘Okay, I have to chill because if I think like this, I’m going to go crazy and I’m going to actually not be good enough’. So, I just had to trust myself.”
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Oscarinin went a bit more in depth on how he dealt with the depression from his injury in this clip:
Lovely chat with @OscarininXD 🧡 He told us Noah has been the official travel guide of the team, and we also got to talk about how he overcame bad thoughts during his recovery. Love this guy! 😊 Full interview on Dexerto! #Worlds2023 pic.twitter.com/OQCLQTgwIR
— Lara Lunardi (@LaraLunardi) October 26, 2023
Oscarinin doesn’t feel like any Worlds 2023 team is unbeatable
Oscarinin is staring down the challenges that come with his first world championship with a smile rather than with worry. He seems to be trying to get the most out of practicing against the other teams at Worlds, against players he normally wouldn’t be able to face, in order to come back stronger in 2024 no matter Fnatic’s result at the tournament.
Other than playing solo queue “until 3:00 AM” to get time in against strong top laners, he’s also making the most of scrims.
“Yeah, of course we are playing against [Eastern teams], and they are pretty insane. Like, it’s super fun to play against the best in the world, just laning against Bin, TheShy, Zeus, anyone. It’s just crazy. You can feel a huge difference between those top laners and the ones I play against in Europe.”
What’s more, Oscarinin’s scrim results had him smiling. Clearly, Fnatic’s been doing well in practice even if those results haven’t quite translated to the stage. Although, even after their loss to BLG, Oscarinin was in high spirits and prepared to fight for his tournament life in their next match.
“They are Chinese and Korean teams. They are supposed to be better than European teams, but I feel like they are not that good, honestly. I think we can for sure play against them. Obviously, LNG and BLG beat us, but I didn’t feel like they were really superior or anything.”
Oscarinin felt as if their close loss to BLG was a result of a number of things; BLG perhaps having a stronger draft, “trolling” the last fight, as he put it, Fnatic not pushing their lead as well as they could have. He had a lot of thoughts on their loss, but one big takeaway:
“I feel like we can beat anything, honestly.”