The 2025 EMEA Masters ended on Sunday night with Los Ratones accomplishing the biggest feat of League of Legends: getting a competitive championship title for Simon “Baus” Hofverberg – alongside Veljko” Velja” Camdzic, Tim “Nemesis” Lipovsek, Jus “Crownie” Marusic, who got their first ever EMEA Masters Championship, and Carl “Rekkles” Martin Erik Larsson, who got his second.
The team of Marc “Caedrel” Lamont has defeated the second seed of the French LFL, Ici Japon Corp. in the Grand Finals of the EM 2025 Winter, leaving no room for Daniel “Sertuss” Gamani and co. to breathe. With this victory, Los Ratones is well on the path of making it big – potentially joining the LEC down the line.
Los Ratones Win EMEA 2025 Winter – But It Wasn’t Always Easy
While the most hyped team of the Winter ERL splits has managed to dominate their own league, the NLC, they didn’t have a perfect run in the EMEA Masters. They managed to make short work of the Slovakian squad of Nightbirds, defeating them 2-0. However, they couldn’t qualify for the Knockout stage right away, as the LFL’s first seed, Karmine Corp Blue dealt two devastating blows to the Rats. Ismail “ISMA” Boualem was on the top of his game both matches, but the rest of KCB was stellar as well.
All was not lost for Los Ratones however, as they still had the Loser’s Bracket qualification match in Group D, where they faced the Prime League’s second seed, E WIE EINFACH Esports. While Felix “RockIho” Bao Duy Ho tried to be cheeky by picking Sion into the Baus himself, the Rats managed to 2-0 their third opponents as well.
They then proceeded to the Knockout Stage, where they had to fight the toughest battle the EMEA Masters Winter event could present them: Irfan “Armut” Berk Tükek and Papara SuperMassive, the Turkish TCL’s representative team. The squads went the full length of the Fearless Draft Best of Five, banning 50 champions in total before Los Ratones could tip the series in their favor. There were a plethora of unique picks from a Garen toplane from Baus to a Zilean mid from Nemesis, while Armut tried to spice things up by scaling with Gwen into the lategame.
However, they could not beat LR, who then went on to face Team Phantasma of the Hellenic Legends League – who made a surprising run themselves by making it to the Semifinals while qualifying from one of the smallest ERL’s. While the Greek team could beat the likes of Los Heretics and BIG, they were no match for Crownie and his teammates, getting knocked out 0-3 – but still making the best run any Greek team ever had in an EMEA Masters tournament.
The final boss of Los Ratones became Ici Japon Corp., the second seed of the LFL. The organization had a great run in 2025 so far: they made it out of the LFL Division 2 after spending their first competitive year there, then went on to play in the finals of the French tournament versus KCB. Sertuss and his teammates were the absolute winners of Group B in the first half of the winter EM, defeating Team Phantasma and German first seed BIG. Then, they bested Geekay Esports and their eternal rivals Karmine Corp Blue to face Los Ratones, and prove once and for all that they were the supreme ERL team of the first third of 2025.
Except that Los Ratones beat them 3-0. While it was not a blowout, as all of the matches lasted well over 30 minutes – and the first one was basically lost by Ici Japon Corp. instead of won by Los Ratones. Still, the second and third matches basically went exactly how LR wanted to, with Baus always getting his champions, while the rest of the team had stellar performances as well. While he had some rough games before the final match, Velja was the MVP of the last bout of the 2025 EMEA Masters.
With that high, Nemesis made a comment in an interview that if Los Ratones would ever make it to the LEC, he would follow the team in a heartbeat – while it’s not sure if Caedrel can make it back into the highest competition of EMEA League of Legends in 2026, Los Ratones well proved that they were capable of beating some of the best squads in the region.
