After one of the most lopsided series of the 2023 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational, Gen.G will be moving forward to the next round of the tournament’s lower bracket over Cloud9. This victory also represents the fall of the final Western representative in London, marking yet another disappointing performance from the LCS and LEC at an international event.
Across the entire month, both regions played a combined 20 games against the LCK and LPL, and they only managed to win three combined games. The first win for the West came during the play-in stage when Golden Guardians won a game against Bilibili Gaming in their 2-1 series loss. The two other instances came from G2 Esports, who won games against Gen.G and BLG in the bracket stage.
Today, Gen.G made short work of their opponents, stomping the LCS top seed in less than 80 minutes over three games. Surprisingly enough, this wasn’t the fastest series of the tournament so far, with the defending LEC champions losing to T1 in a blisteringly fast 73-minute three-game set. Even still, C9 were simply outclassed in almost every category, from macro play to teamfighting, as well as individual performances.
The only player that seemed to hold his own against his counterpart was the team’s superstar AD carry Kim “Berserker” Min-cheol, but his own individual strengths were no match for Gen.G’s superior team play and coordination. Starting from the first minute onward, the Korean representatives were relentless with their assault on the mid lane and bottom lane, throwing textbook ganks that would immediately set C9 on the backfoot for the rest of their games.
Overall, it was a horrendous showing from the West, who now have plenty of work to do if they wish to put up a fight at the 2023 World Championship. Many people have discussed how the gap between the regions could finally close, but worry is starting to ramp up again after LCS and LEC supporters watched their best teams struggle immensely against the competition this past month.
Worlds will be held in South Korea this year, which means that European and North American teams can bootcamp in one of the toughest and most competitive servers for a while until the tournament begins. Hopefully, this also means that their level of play will be able to match up against the powerhouses that they’ll be taking on this coming October.
