jL helped Team Vitality to a 2-0 win over his former club and into the PGL Masters Bucharest 2026 quarter-finals on Tuesday. Afterwards, the stand-in told PGL’s broadcast that there was nothing to get back at NAVI for, that he has not signed anywhere for next year, and that a buyout made the timing of his break from NAVI costly.
jL joined the PGL desk on video shortly after Team Vitality had beaten NAVI 13-2 on Inferno and 13-9 on Dust2. It was his first meeting with the team he won the 2024 Copenhagen Major with, and the host opened by asking whether he had wanted to remind them that he was still around. The Lithuanian shut the idea down.
Remind them? No. Revenge also no. I mean, it’s fun to play against your old friends. You know how they play, you know what they expect. So it was fun in that regard, but revenge or get them back, there’s nothing to get them back for.
Team Vitality2-0
NAVIStatsInferno 13-2, Dust2 13-9
jL
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His plus eight was his best kill-death difference from four series in Bucharest. It came in a match where NAVI led 9-3 at half-time on Dust2 before Vitality took all ten rounds after the switch. Going into the series, he had 84 kills and 94 deaths over seven maps.
A buyout nobody wanted to pay
jL arrived at NAVI in the summer of 2023 and was named MVP in Copenhagen nine months later. In July 2025 he stepped away from the active lineup, spent April and May of this year on loan at MOUZ, and left NAVI as a free agent on 1 July. The host recalled the Copenhagen run, the clutches and the Ronaldo celebration, and asked whether he regretted stepping away.
Regret is probably not the word. I don’t regret much, but yes, the timing of it wasn’t the best. I could have just waited out the contract and just go into another team because I’d be free.
He said he felt ready to return four to six months after leaving the lineup, but that “nobody wants to buy out players anymore”, and that he did not see himself among the very few stars teams pay for. “A logical decision would be to wait out the contract,” he said, while repeating that he did not regret the break.
Asked what standing in for the best team in the world had done to his appetite, he said he had been hungry since the start of the year and that some things had not worked out for him. He would “much rather not have it work out than to pursue opportunities that don’t satisfy my hunger to win.”
A flash instead of another closer
jL is in Bucharest because apEX is at home for the birth of his child. At BLAST Open Porto he stood in for mezii and reached the semi-finals; this time mezii does the calling, and jL plays in the in-game leader’s place. He described a job built around what the other four are missing rather than his own numbers: “Sometimes the team doesn’t need another star player or another closer.”
So I’m trying to have a balance between my own playstyle and what they need and what they lack, because me coming in as jL, they would miss a piece of apEX, his utility, his calling, his comms. So I try to fill a little bit of that void when he’s not here.
That also means holding back. He said he has to “tame myself a little bit” and skip plays that are not needed, and that although the team adapts when he calls something, “it’s not in my power to kind of structurize the team more towards me.”
The panel pointed out that he has now been a stand-in for Team Liquid, MOUZ and Vitality, and asked what the period had taught him about himself.
I realized I’m a better late-round player than I am an early one. It’s crazy, I didn’t realize that a few years ago, but you always have space to learn something.
He compared it to the chess games he plays with Vitality’s manager. They are about the same level, he said, but he wins the endgames, while the manager has the edge early on when a lot is happening.
Prep with an expiry date
The arrangement ends with this event. With apEX expected back for PGL Major Singapore, jL was asked whether Vitality were going all in on a lineup built for one tournament. He said they were not.
Some prep they’re going to keep for later, but a lot of the prep that they’re doing with me, they’ll probably just scrap it, because it’s different. I have a different role. I’m not playing one-to-one apEX roles, and mezii’s not playing one-to-one his roles.
Some of it will carry over: he felt his time in Porto had helped Vitality improve their Anubis.
He will still leave a mark on the Singapore paperwork. Valve’s Regional Standings only list players who have appeared in at least five of a team’s last ten matches, and the NAVI series was his fourth in Bucharest. The quarter-final will be his fifth, which we explained before the event would put him in apEX’s place on the roster Vitality are invited with.
Offers expected around Singapore
The last question came from the Twitch chat: had he signed anything for next year, or was he close? “No, no, I haven’t signed anything next year,” jL said. He expects most offers to come just before the Singapore Major, from teams that want their 2027 lineup settled, or during or after it.
Earlier, he had rejected the idea that Bucharest is an audition. He said he came to do a job, to take Vitality as far as possible in the tournament, and that he does not see it as having to perform so that another team picks him up.
I gave my word to Vitality to be the best, I mean, the best version of myself, and that’s what I’m doing.
The short stay still has a cost for him. A player on a permanent roster has several months to grow into a role before he is benched, he said, while he feels rusty at the start of events and could be “much better in like two, three months” in this one. “I just cannot show my best game here,” he said, unless Vitality win the tournament.
They have the squad for it, in his view. “When you have four players like that, there is no doubt in our minds that we can win the tournament, but it’s just a question of how,” he said, before correcting himself that “they” were missing an important piece in apEX. In August, he told Pley that he had dreamed of playing with s1mple, ZywOo and ropz. Vitality’s quarter-final is on 29 or 30 October, and the opponent is decided after Wednesday’s last Swiss round.
