The first European team finished its World Cup without leaving the groups, but it allowed the North Americans of Cloud9 to move up the group to qualify instead of the favorites of China, FunPlus Phoenix.
Many scenarios were imagined by the experts when they arrived in the last match day of the first group of the World Championship, Group A. Considered the “group of death” ahead of the League of Legends tournament, the two favorites were clear: defending champions DAMWON KIA, who also won both LCK Splits this year, and FPX, which performed well despite the lack of titles.
NANTO attack
But things didn’t turn out the way many predicted. Yesterday, the Group A return matches were all played out to determine the two qualifying teams. DAMWON KIA Took it off without difficulty, with the overwhelming 6-0 score, but the other 3 teams finished the day in 2-4 after creating a surprise.
Indeed, FPX did not live up to expectations: she lost her 3 matches of the day, first against DK, and then against Cloud9 and Snape. This resulted in a final tiebreaker between Rogue and Cloud9. Despite a good early game, the North Americans quickly got back into the game with great teamfight executions with Fudge’s Wukong and Zven’s final devastating misses on his Miss Fortune.
Coming straight from Play-In and third seed in the LCS, Cloud9 was far from being expected as a team going to the play-offs. But yesterday, the players transcended themselves and gave their all despite a very long day of games. The mid-jungle duo of Perkz and Blaber proved their worth in the early parts, then the team turned to their teamfight strength in the latter.
Life of the Worlds
The players of Snape, on the other hand, were shot at the end of the day. Despite poor results in the first days of the groups, she was able to recover by beating FPX flat seam, but fell at the last moment. Despite good performances throughout the season, it ended on a bitter note. In particular because the team will not have been able to take a title, whether in the play-offs or a top 4 in the world. On another side, Cloud9 will now have everything to prove in the quarter-finals.
The group stage of LoL World Championship will continue today, from 1pm, with the final matches of Group B. It is made up of the overwhelming Chinese team Edward Gaming, koreans T1, North Americans 100thieves and Japanese from FocusMe Detonation.
