Sources: Team Vitality sign Haru, Bo

Team Vitality are signing two junglers for their League of Legends European Championship team, sources told Upcomer. Jungler Kang “Haru” Min-seung, who already signed with the team, will be the starter for the LEC summer split. During that time Zhou “Bo” Yang-Bo will develop as a substitute while acquiring his visa and learning English. The plan is for Bo to start in 2023, if not earlier.

This information follows Vitality’s benching of Oskar “Selfmade” Boderek, who’s still under contract with the organization. The decision to bench Selfmade was a request by the whole Vitality player roster and coaching staff made to the management. The reason for that request is not due to any difference outside of the game but due to different visions in how to play the mid-to-late game on the rift.

Selfmade’s contract was initially extended to 2024 in order to align it with the other players on the roster. That was an attempt to put Selfmade in the best conditions possible in order to succeed with the team.

Alongside Haru, Vitality considered Duncan “Skeanz” Marquet from their own Vitality.Bee team. This followed a good performance at the European Masters of spring 2022. At the tournament, Vitality.Bee and Skeanz reached semifinals before losing to Karmine Corp with a score of 3-2. Karmine Corp later won the tournament. Overall, the LFL team remains a good project where Skeanz will remain as he found his feet there as a player.

This led to Vitality deciding to acquire Haru from X7 Esports. X7 qualified for EU Masters by winning the Northern League of Legends Championship final against Bifrost with a score of 3-0. At the tournament, X7 reached quarterfinals where they lost against LDLC. Despite that, Haru really made a splash into ERLs this year.

Haru is known for his time with Samsung Galaxy, where he won the League of Legends World Championship in 2017. While being a substitute to jungler Kang “Ambition” Chan-yong at the time, he did see some play time. He was often seen as the more mechanical-type of jungler on Samsung Galaxy.

For Bo, despite being highly rated by players like Kim “Doinb” Tae-sang, he has a hard time finding a home in China due to a match fixing issue that got him banned for four months in 2021. Since then, Bo was a substitute for FunPlus Phoenix — but will now be sold to Vitality.

While Haru will be the starter, Bo will be in development this year for the future of the LEC team, as he is rated as a player with very high potential by the organization.