Riot Games has come up with something new in League of Legends: On October 9th, the fourth-placed teams from Europe and the USA will fight each other in an all-important match to see who gets the last free seat for Worlds 2023. But things are looking worse and worse for the LEC representatives. In addition to unfair competitive disadvantages, one of the EU candidates is now plagued by serious injury concerns. Only miracles can help.
What kind of game is this?
But now it looks more and more like the US has an unfair advantage.
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USA has 2 months to prepare – In Europe the team is not even certain
Why is Europe getting worse and worse?
One problem is that the leagues play different schedules:
The US league LCS has been over for a few weeks: The Golden Guardians finished fourth and have had time to prepare for the final encounter since August 13th. You have almost 2 months already in South Korea to train, relax, prepare for the decisive match. The move to South Korea should be easy for the team: after all, 3 of the 5 players are from South Korea.
In Europe, on the other hand, the “season finals” only started on August 19. and will be until 10.9. last. At the moment it’s not even clear who will compete for the final Worlds spot for Europe. That will not be decided until September 2nd. The winner will then only have about half the time instead of 2 months to prepare for the duel with the Golden Guardians.
Who can still qualify for the Worlds from Europe? On September 2, it boils down to a duel between Schalke successor BDS and the highly decorated and crisis-ridden Fnatic:
Fnatic top laner out injured – hand op
What makes the situation even more difficult? Fnatic top laner Oscar “Oscarin” Jiménez (20) has injured his hand and will surely miss the deciding match for LEC third place.
He had already played with significant restrictions in the last series against XL, which went into the 5th match. But now he has to undergo an operation and will miss the match against BDS.
So if Fnatic lost the match without their starting top laner on September 2nd, Europe would be fielding a team that started with a battered top laner and had a month less preparation time than their opponents.
Fnatic needs a miracle now
The absurd thing is that he should be replaced by the top laner “Wunder” (24), who was actually already sorted out because he didn’t seem to be in the mood for “the loser team Fnatic” anymore. Wunder’s contract would expire on September 26, so he wouldn’t even be on the team for the decisive match against the Golden Guardians.
Should Fnatic win, Europe would send a team into the match that cannot even defeat a weakened Fnatic replacement – that would also be a difficult starting point.
1 month of preparation, 1 flight to South Korea, 1 match and straight back home?
Why is the match so brutal? The match in October is discussed very critically on reddit anyway: 2 teams would fly to the Worlds in South Korea to decide in a single match, a best-of-5 series, who can play the World Cup and who can play again flies home.
This is generally seen as brutal and logistically nonsensical.
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