MaRin

{quoted}

Nupe, I'm referring entirely to EU on this one. For some weird reason, NA has gotten smarter over the past year or so, instead deciding to take either rookies (dardoch/matt), proven challenger players (ninja/seraph/shrimp), or proven korean players (huni/reignover). For most of EU (origen being a big one that isn't), it seems as though they're willing to overpay for unproven/terrible koreans because apparently that's better than growing regional talent.

Are you really freaking serious? Dude, let's look at the Koreans import in EU LCS history

Season 3 and Season 4 no KR

Season 5: the first Koreans arrive in EU LCS.

In Spring Split FNC that has to totally rebuild the roster after everyone but Yellowstar left after S4 Worlds, pick up Huni, a rookie discovered when bootcamping for S4 Worlds in the Samsung Red roster (the all Korean team Samsung wanted to send in Eu copying LMQ situation that forced Riot to introduce residency rule),and ReignOver that was a jungler playing in bottom tier LCK teams (IM 1 and IM2) and was considered wasched up since he was known for throwing games after getting early game advantages - hence the nickname GameOver -. Meanwhile Millennium that had failed to keep their LCS spot in the Spring Promotion with their old roster that had finished among the last in EU LCS, bring in two KR for the Expansion tournament. Millennium fails again, but the KR are picked up in other teams. Ryu is picked by H2K that was losing Febiven to FNC...and do I have to remind how people believed how he was completely falling down from being the former number 2 mid in the world after losing the famous Zed vs Zed Game 5 vs Faker and then when he got moved to jungler and KT Bullets had a terrible LCK Summer Splt with Ryu ending up being released previous to S4 Korean Regional Finals? The other one is H0R0 that was never considered a top player in KR as SKT Telecom S was performing far worse than the sister SKT K team (the one that won S3 Worlds) and never achieved much success, and after leaving Millennium was picked in that shady situation that was SHC-> MYM and all the incident involving Selfie (known as Kori at the time)

No other KR arrive in Summer, heck H0R0 doesn't even play in Summer except as short term emergency substitute replacing Kikis that left UOL shortly before Summer Playoffs and Regional Finals

Season 6

Spring Split: FNC replace Huni and Reignover gone to Immortals that paid them A TON of money, and replace them with Spirit (I said the only big KR import ever paid a ton by when coming in EU), which requested to have his friend Gamsu with him. Gamsu was in a mediocre Dignitas team , and was decent but not great in his DIG stint, it is not like FNC bring him as a top player or spent huge amounts for him, but they did because they desperately wanted Spirit G2 gets finally promoted to LCS, and brings Trick and Emperor to their roster . Trick was a young sub in CJ Entus for Ambition (that was not playing good in that period) that played few games in 2015 Summer and was not used in playoffs and regionals, leaving the team as FA, but wasn't a well known player even in KR. Emperor was coming from his experience in BR first, and then the unlucky situation in TDK with the visa issue where he was good in the second half of the season but was not enough to same them from relegation...not exactly a top FA

No other KR joins EU until in the last 2 weeks of the split Giants which is in the last position in EU LCS and has to face the Summer Promotion Tournament next do changes to the team to avoid the relegation and call for help Wisdom and S0NSTAR (they also change their top laner as well). Wisdom was coming from a split where he was teamless, after being the alternate/sub jungler for Koo Tigers that he left after he had not seen playing time at Worlds behind Hojin (that was retiring) and a not convincing performance in the KeSPA Cup after Worlds, with Tigers releasing him picking up Peanut after that tournament. He also left the team just after the promotion team to join CS team Misfits S0NSTAR was teamless too after last playing for a bottom tier LCK IM team that performed badly at KeSPA cup too and was released when IM became Longzhu

Summer Split: G2 picks up Expect, a fairly unknown top laner that was a sub in a LSPL roster. Giants pick up NighT that was a young and upcoming talent in a mid tier team in Korean Challenger. ROCCAT picks up Parang and Raise which, like NighT, were young and upcoming talent playing for a mid tier team in Korean Challenger Vitality picks up Mightybear which was a young and upcoming talent playing for a good LSPL team that failed to be promoted and Police that was coming from Apex Gaming that had just being promoted in NALCS after being in Esc Ever, but was not playing in the KeSPA and IEM tournaments that made Ever famous UOL got Move that had been teamless in Spring after leaving Gravity in NA and Veritas that was teamless in Spring after leaving Vortex that was a bad NA CS team disbanded, and previously was coming from Oceanic region

EU LCS teams have never overpaid massive amount of money on KR players, the ones that have come to EU were seen either as declining players, were coming from previous bad/mediocre situations, were teamless for quite some time or were just very young and unproven players (if you exclude again the Spirit signing by FNC, and even him was coming from a bad split even though people were giving him the benefit of the doubt because of the whole Team WE situation)

This is nothing like what happened in NA with the signings of well known estabilished players like Huni, ReignOver, Piglet, GBM, Impact, Lustboy, Helios, partially ohq and then the EU players like Bjergsen, Svenskeren, Alex Ich, Froggen, Yellowstar, Freeze, dexter, even jensen as he was not playing in LCS only because he was banned...and I'm probably forgetting someone