The LoL Worlds, the World Championships in League of Legends are currently underway and the teams are fighting for a place in the quarterfinals until October 29th. The best EU team, G2 Esports, suffered a bitter defeat shortly before the finish. Even the last round didn’t go well: for the first time since 2014 there was no EU team in the final rounds.
Note: This article originally appeared while the match against Bilibili was underway and was updated around 12:30.
These were the matches: On October 28th, NA team NRG Esports and EU team G2 Esports played for a place in the quarterfinals of Worlds. G2 was considered the clear favorite, especially since the team had recently achieved a highly unlikely victory.
The match was played in the penultimate stage of the Swiss phase. This means: The winner moves into the quarter-finals, the loser has to play one more round for a chance of reaching the final.
Although G2 showed strong early on as the best team in Europe, the players around mid laner Caps couldn’t really gain a foothold. Even before the 20th minute in the first round, G2 was extremely far behind and ultimately lost with a crushing score of 2-0.
The following match against BLG also didn’t go well for G2 Esports with a score of 1:2. With two defeats in a row, the last EU team is now eliminated from Worlds – something fans haven’t seen in 9 years. The commentators say: the G2 magic was missing.
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NRG wears down G2 with aggressive gameplay, Europe finds no answer
This was G2’s problem: Early in the game, NRG repeatedly takes the lead, getting picks in the bot lane, important dragons and ultimately leading by a few thousand gold. After about 15 minutes, NRG jungler Contractz (cover photo) finally turns everything around.
The strong ganks from his Vi give the team two towers. From here on, G2 simply can’t find any reaction to the Americans’ aggressive style of play. The European team keeps getting caught in bad positions.
Meanwhile, NRG uses the momentum and builds on every little mistake, exploits it and pushes all lanes little by little. The decision is finally made directly in the base of G2, while most of the towers are still there.
The US team is already leading with 18 kills to 3 and over 10,000 gold at minute 29. With coordinated attacks, NRG pulls the cohesion of G2 apart, gradually picking off individual champs and finally ending up in the top lane without any further deaths.
G2 seems intimidated and cannot find any leverage for a comeback
This is how it ended: The second round is almost identical to the first. After it briefly looked as if G2 had caught themselves again, NRG came back with their super-aggressive style of play and picked the Europeans apart again and again.
After less than 28 minutes and 30 seconds the game is over, the last fight on the top lane finally gives G2 the rest and gives NRG the victory. With only one of their own dead, the NA team levels all the towers above and eventually the Nexus.
G2 then had to compete against Bilibili Gaming (BLG), a team from China. After a defeat in the first of three games, the EU team was able to fight back to a 1-1 draw. In the third game it looked similar to that against NRG.
Bilibili’s aggressive ganks and coordination eventually broke G2’s cohesion. Even if there was an equalizer, BLG could get another pick somewhere on the map.
G2 was ultimately visibly intimidated. Instead of at least trying to extract important skills from the opponents, they were more often simply stared at. With the 2-1 win, G2 Esports was finally eliminated.
This is the first time since 2014 that no European team is in the LoL Worlds final. Many fans can’t remember anything like that. At that time, Allaince, FNatic and SK Gaming were all eliminated from the tournament in the group phase.
The US favorite Team Liquid had a similar problem this year. But here fans quickly blamed one person:
LoL: US team embarrassingly ejected from Worlds – fans blame expensive star purchase