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League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) Historic Moments Part 2
Historic Moments - Part 2
Europe’s Best International Representation
The European region has always found itself in a sort of limbo, they were never close to being the worst region at international events but never solid enough to be considered the best. There have been a couple of exceptions, the first one was in Season 1 World Championship where Europe’s Fnatic managed to win the whole tournament, but that happened when the League of Legends competitive scene was in its early stages and didn’t have all of the regions competing yet, so a lot of experts almost dismiss it and don’t count it as an actual world championship. The other exception was during the 2019 MSI held in Taipei, where one European super-team was ready to destroy the competition and took the whole world by surprise, and that team was G2 Esports, a team known in the esports gambling circles as a must-watch team, especially for live betting.
Europe had a good performance at the world championship in the prior year, when Fnatic managed to go through the playoffs all the way into the final where they faced Invictus Gaming but ended dropping 3 games in a row resulting in an overwhelming defeat for the region as a whole. But G2 was different, they managed to build the superteam Europe needed to have their best shot at the international stage. They did the unthinkable, they did a genius roster swap, Perkz moved from mid into the ADC position and signed Caps as their mid laner, this meant that G2 had the two best players of the region in one team. And it looked promising, G2 managed to dominate their domestic league in such a way that they didn’t drop a single game in the 2019 LEC Spring Playoffs, this was it, this was the team ready to take the international competition by storm.
During the event’s group stage, G2 was not as good as everybody expected, this made a lot of people doubt the actual potential of the roster, maybe it wasn’t as great as everybody was thinking. They dropped both games against Invictus Gaming, the world champions at that time, and also dropped two games to Phong Vũ Buffalo, the weakest team in the tournament. But G2 managed to win twice over the legendary SKT T1 roster and this was the main point that made people believe in the European superteam, and after 10 games, G2 made it out of the group stage in 3rd place with an overall record of 5-5. Now they had to face one of the two teams that were considered the best in the world by league of legends betting experts.
The series started in favor of the Korean team after closing out the first game before the 25-minute mark, making everyone believe that this was going to be a clean sweep, but G2 had other plans. The series went on to be a real back-and-forth encounter where G2 managed to take down SKT in the same fashion SKT did in game 1, game 3 was another stomp coming from SKT and this kept everybody on the edge of their seats, G2 did their own thing to win game 4 which was absolute chaos, but then game 5 happened. G2 pulled out their pocket picks, Wunder on Pyke and Perkz on Syndra in the bot lane took SKT by surprise and G2 had taken control over the game in the early stage, then the game got to a point where both teams could secure the victory, but after a risky baron play by SKT, G2 managed to obliterate them in one team fight that allowed them to win the series over SKT.
But the tournament wasn’t over yet, they still had to beat Team Liquid, who managed to beat the world champion Invictus Gaming 3 to 1 on the other side of the bracket. This was the first time that North America would face Europe in the grand finals of an international stage, and everybody was expecting a great series, but sadly for the fans, that’s not what happened. G2 Esports simply rolled over Team Liquid in every single game, maybe the pressure got to TL’s players, maybe they were having a bad day, we will never know, but what we do know is that G2 managed to take down the legendary SKT T1 roster, the team that defeated them at the 2017 MSI finals, and they did it in a way no one expected, bringing home the trophy that Europe was looking for after many years throughout the history of competitive League of Legends and esports betting.
The North American Miracle
It would be considered lying if we said that North American teams are known for their international success when it’s quite the opposite to the point of becoming a meme, but there have been a few times where the NA region did show up in the international stage and those times were at the Mid-Season Invitational. We will have to go back to 2016, when the MSI was held in Shanghai, China, and as usual, everybody was expecting the eastern teams to simply stomp their opponents, but there was one team ready to take the tournament by storm.
In the 2016 MSI, SK Telecom T1, the legendary Korean squad was considered the best team by far because they were the world champions at that time, and the Chinese team Royal Never Give Up was the one coming right behind them. But there was one team coming from the North American region, a team that had no expectations at all and was often considered one of the weakest in its own region. That team was Counter Logic Gaming, who after winning summer and spring split back to back, was ready to take down the eastern overlords against the lol odds.
MSI’s format this year was a double round-robin between all of the teams and CLG had a cold start, dropping their first game against RNG, as expected, and no one thought much of it. But CLG was not going to give up that easily, in the next few days they started to roll over the competition and even managed to take down SKT, the two-time world champions, they also took Europe’s G2 squad down twice and their victories were so convincing that hope started to grow, that’s when everybody started to believe that NA could make it to the finals, and the believers were right.
“And the faithful shall be rewarded” is an iconic quote that follows CLG since the first time they won domestically and accompanied them throughout the 2016 MSI. CLG managed to secure 2nd place, right below RNG, which meant they were going to face LMS’ Flash Wolves who were not an easy team to beat at all. CLG started winning the series in a one-sided game then dropped the next one, this was only the fuel CLG needed to roll over the Flash Wolves and ended up taking the series 3 to 1. Now they had to face SKT, the team considered to be the best of all time, sadly for CLG they didn’t find a way to beat the Korean overlords but still gave us an exciting series, and most importantly, they gave hope to North American fans. Stay tuned for more of our esports picks and game predictions as we get closer to this year’s MSI.
