7 Years in the Making

7 years.

No, not the song by Lukas Graham.

But rather the time it has taken Team Liquid's Doublelift to get out of the group stage at an international event. That said, if you asked him right now, I think he would say it was worth the wait. In what is deemed the most shocking upset in League of Legends international history, Team Liquid (TL) defeated Invictus Gaming (IG) 3-1 in this years 2019 MSI Semi-Finals.

What makes this win so astonishing is the fact that IG is coming off of a 2018 Worlds Championship, dominant 1st place in LPL's Spring Split and debatably more dominant 9-1 group stage performance at MSI 2019. Their roster houses big names like Rookie and TheShy. Who are widely agreed upon to be, respectively, the best mid and top laners in the world. In addition, each and every time this team won a match it was far from competitive... instead it was in commanding fashion.

On the contrary, it was just any other year for NA. Business as usual, where fans were widely prepared to be let down yet again. The casters, prior to the start of the match, said it would be a "huge success for NA" if TL were to take a single game off of IG. What happened instead was the second chapter to the book of success NA fans got a taste of when Cloud 9 made semi-finals at Worlds last year.  

In addition to this being such a monumental upset, the timing could not be any sweeter. In what has been a dominant 6 years span for the two major eastern regions of China and Korea, finally the west was breaking through on the backs of Europe. Fnatic had recently made Worlds finals before inevitably being swept by this monstrous IG lineup. Followed up by G2 Esports who have and still are competing like world class athletes. NA, on the other hand, was being left in the dust. The top 3 teams: IG (China), G2 (Europe), and SKT (Korea) were all in talks for teams who might have a real shot of winning MSI this year. NA was the first team left out of that discussion. 

To have an idea of how dominant China and, most notably, Korea have been in the past 6 years one must understand that there was a time when if any Korean team was pitting against any Western team they would have been favored to win. For context, a region sends 3 teams to Worlds each year. If the 3 seeded Korean team was facing the 1 seed in any region other than China it was fully expected for them to not only win, but to win in style. In fact this most recent 2018 Worlds was the very first time since 2012 Worlds that a Korean team lost a Best-of-5 series to anyone but another Korean team.

China. Korea. Europe.           North America. 

Everything seems to be scrambling together. Regardless of the result at the rest of this years MSI, international competition going forward will be less and less about which specific region a team is representing and more about the team itself. 

Finally, I'll leave you with this. Parity is good for sports. It makes competitions exciting to watch and hard to predict. Suddenly the four regions don't seem nearly as far apart as they have in years past and I for one am excited for more. Tune in to watch G2 Esports vs. SKT in the second MSI Semi-Finals tomorrow, May 18th, at 12am PST. Don't forget, winner plays Team Liquid. 

Here's to adding a few more chapters to NA and the rest of the worlds storyline. 

As always see you later,
Billy VA