emi on GODSENT: "The team had some other options and they wanted to evaluate them"

The 27-year-old shared his thoughts on his stand-in appearance with GODSENT and what he is looking for next in his career.

After parting ways with c0ntact in October following two months on the bench, Luka "⁠emi⁠" Vuković was in search of a new home. The Serbian was eventually brought in on trial by GODSENT to fill the gap left by Kevin "⁠kRYSTAL⁠" Amend's benching in two tournaments.

The team bounced back from a poor showing in BLAST Premier Fall Showdown and put in a convincing performance in DreamHack Masters Winter, in which they managed to reach the semi-finals after a surprising run that saw them push aside the likes of Astralis, Heroic and North.

"What I can say about my time in GODSENT is that I actually enjoyed playing and leading again, which is something I hadn't tasted for the most of 2020, so it was a pleasing experience to compete once again against the best teams in the world," emi told HLTV.org.

"I believe that, in the end, everyone was happy with the way things worked out for us, we almost went to the final of DH Masters. I mean, we showed some pretty solid CS throughout the tournament, even though we practised for like three weeks tops before the events."

emi believes that with more time with the squad, they could have gone on to become a "scary team" with suitable practice and time to fix mistakes, but valued his time with his brief teammates nonetheless.

"I can say I enjoyed playing with these players, each and every one of them is amazing at their roles," he said. "What surprised me the most is the level of communication they have, something that wasn’t on a high level in my past teams."

The four-player GODSENT roster has been heavily linked with FunPlus Phoenix and is expected to sign with the Chinese organisation soon, with individual player contracts the last hurdle in the way. When asked about the possibility of joining alongside the rest of the European squad, emi revealed it was briefly discussed but that he never entered advanced talks.

"The team had some other options and they wanted to evaluate them, which was perfectly fine for me because they gave me a chance to compete against the best teams after I had kind of disappeared a bit from the CS map. Nothing but respect and big thanks to every one of them!"

Looking towards the future, emi, who is a free agent, revealed his desires for his next team and the pieces he would need to create an environment catered towards bringing out his best in-game leading abilities: "I don’t have a preferred destination at the moment, everything is still unknown for me, my dream is to join a stable team with a good environment and support because I think those are the factors I need to show my full value and potential as an IGL."

"I’m not really willing to join any team just so I can play," he said when asked about where he'll end up next. "I’m not that young anymore and I don’t think it would be good for me to start from the bottom and grind my way to some solid level.

"I honestly believe that if I have a good project and good players around, I can lead them and make them shine because I’m pretty systematic and have a good understanding and vision of how to play this game."