“No expectations”: Chronicle on his VCT 2026 run with Team Vitality

Over the last five years, Timofey ‘Chronicle’ Khromov has established himself as one of the most accomplished VALORANT athletes in the history of the esports title.

However, after three successful years of competing for Fnatic, he decided to follow the footsteps of his former teammate, Nikita ‘Derke’ Sirmitev, and make the switch to EMEA rival Team Vitality. 

While many within the VALORANT community have set their eyes on this new ‘superteam’, Chronicle’s expectations for the 2026 VCT season remain the same as always.

“There is a thing that I always say in any interview, to any teammate at any time: ‘No expectations’. For me, the most important thing in the game is having fun, and after that, everything comes with it,” Chronicle told Esports Insider in an exclusive interview after his first series win at VCT EMEA Kickoff.

“Like, if you don’t have fun, you will never enjoy it. And even if you win, again, without fun, of course, it will not be enjoyable. So what’s the point in even playing the game at that point? Even with the losses, you can sometimes enjoy what you did,” continued the player. 

“And if this will be another year of me losing a Champs, maybe last place or maybe again in second, it doesn’t matter. If we win, we win all the same.”

Chronicle won his first global trophy (Masters Berlin 2021) when he competed for Gambit Esports alongside VALORANT esports icons such as Ayaz ‘nAts’ Akhmetshin and Igor ‘Redgar’ Vlasov. 

Like all members from this legendary roster, Chronicle was part of orgless team M3 Champions in early 2022. In the 2023 season, he joined Fnatic, one of the partner teams for Riot Games’ semi-franchised VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT). 

It was on Fnatic, where the Russian player first competed alongside Derke, who had joined the UK-based organisation a year prior. Together, the two players helped Fnatic become a historic name in competitive VALORANT, claiming two international titles (2023 LOCK//IN São Paulo and Masters Tokyo 2023) in one season.

However, for the 2025 VCT season, Derke and Chronicle played on different teams for the first time in two years. While Derke joined Team Vitality’s first attempt at a superteam, Chronicle had another successful year with Fnatic, reaching second place at both Masters Toronto and Champions Paris. Following Chronicle’s move to Team Vitality, the two are reunited again for the 2026 VCT campaign.

“Yeah, it feels good because I’ve known him as a person for a long time and also as a player,” shared Chronicle. 

“I know which things he’s pretty strong at, and even in this match [against ULF Esports], he showed them all, all those qualities that he has as a person. So I’m pretty happy for him. And I’m also happy to play alongside him and support him whenever I can.”

On Fnatic, Chronicle also spent three years under the leadership of one of VALORANT’s most experienced in-game leaders (IGLs), Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett.

Meanwhile, Team Vitality recently signed Elias ‘Jamppi’ Olkkonen as its new IGL for the 2026 VCT season. Jamppi has been competing in tier-one for almost five years, but only took over the role of IGL when playing for BBL Esports in the 2025 season. Still, Chronicle believes in the unique leadership style of his new IGL. 

According to the former Fnatic player, there are two main differences between Boaster’s and Jamppi’s approach to the role: “The key things I will say between both of them is that Boaster loves to have very clean, properly polished defaults and set rounds. I think it’s his style of always being fully prepared, while Jamppi is more able to go into adaptations and improvising.

“I think another one is kind of a mentality, and also his energy, the way he gives it. […] He has that aggressive energy in him, and maybe some of the people who watched this match saw how much energy he gives, for example, after the rounds when we’re winning the rounds. 

“While it still does the same job, it gives other teammates enough energy to continue playing and be focused on the same level.”

He continued: “Like Boaster is more entertaining, and Jamppi is more focused on the team itself and keeping everyone in the same boat.”

Team Vitality’s first match of the season was an incredibly clean 2-0 sweep against one of the two EMEA Ascension 2025 teams, ULF Esports. 

“I don’t think ULF in particular played really badly. I think it was maybe some stress from their team members. Maybe because it was the literal first match in VCT for all five of them. Like it is really tough to play like that,” commented Chronicle after the series.

The match against ULF also saw Team Vitality pick Breeze for the very first time since the map received its major rework and returned to VALORANT’s competitive map pool ahead of VCT Kickoff. For this occasion, Chronicle frequently purchased the Odin to help lock down sites on Breeze’s defence.

When asked whether it was him or Team Vitality’s coaching staff that encouraged his Odin usage, Chronicle replied: “It was a bit of both, to be honest. I previously was a pretty good Odin player before, especially when I played on recon initiator roles like back, for example, in the days when I played for Gambit. I was consistently doing Odin plays. Maybe some old [viewers] really remember I was doing some insane clutches on Ascent all the time with the Odin.”

Chronicle further explained why he considers the Odin so strong in the current meta, particularly on Breeze.

“I think Odin on this map is pretty good because it lets not only, for example, recon players, but also even smokers actually fully destroy many execs for the team,” he said.

“A lot of spammable walls, also very straight chokes, very neat to spam. You have some easy lines to spam. And I mean, on Odin, it’s pretty easy to play there. As an anchor or as an initiator, I think that might be the meta for the next few months,” emphasised the 23-year old player.

Whilst Team Vitality’s debut at VCT EMEA Kickoff was a success all around, the superteam is still missing one of its key star players. Ștefan ‘Sayonara’ Mîtcu is meant to be Vitality’s new duelist prodigy, but cannot compete in VCT until his 18th birthday in March. 

Therefore, the team will rely on stand-in Bartosz ‘UNFAKE’ Bernacki for the whole of Kickoff and potentially Masters Santiago, the first global event of the year. The Polish player had a short stint with Team Vitality last season and has now returned to fill the gaps on the 2026 roster.

“Even without Sayonara, we really want to go to Chile. It’s obviously kind of our main goal going into Kickoff. And without Sayonara or with him, it wouldn’t really matter for us,” assured Chronicle. 

Moreover, Chronicle is confident in UNFAKE’s capability to adapt to different roles as needed by the team.

“I think it’s also very important to mention UNFAKE’s abilities because he really surprised everyone on the team,” shared Chronicle. 

He added: “On some other maps, we obviously had to test some stuff. And on some of the maps, we’ll probably have him on not just Sova or Fade, and that’s already kind of a challenge. I think he did it really well, at least in scrims. We’ll find out in officials how it will go.”

Team Vitality will be back on the VCT EMEA stage later today, facing off against Team Liquid in the upper bracket. The match will be broadcast via the league’s official Twitch and YouTube channels.