The bracket stage of the 2020 World Championship is well underway and the world is nearly ready to crown another League of Legends world champion. With the quarterfinals now in the rear-view mirror, the attention of the professional scene as a whole will be shifting completely to the semifinals where the top four teams in the world will be duking it out for one final chance at the Summoner’s Cup.
If once is considered a fluke and twice is a coincidence, then the third time’s most definitely a trend. And for G2 Esports, three consecutive and convincing trips to the Worlds semifinals is a trend that the entirety of Europe can get behind. The team has most certainly established itself as an ever-present force on the international stage on a year-to-year basis. And now, with a genuine chance at winning the entire tournament, G2 are on pace to deliver the LEC to new heights.
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Three teams from the LCK walked into the quarterfinals, but just one advanced. Of course, the premise of having two Korean teams face off against one another in the opening round of the bracket stage made things a bit tricky for the region, but the point still stands: the talent gap among the LCK teams at this year’s World Championship is expansive.
When it comes to the conversation surrounding DAMWON Gaming, DRX, and Gen.G, it’s obvious that DWG take center stage. After the team beat up on DRX in three quick games, while also getting the chance to watch Gen.G get rolled over by G2 Esports later in the week, DWG undoubtedly established themselves as the strongest team to represent the LCK at Worlds in a matter of days.
With a little under a week to go until the final four teams at Worlds face off, the parallels between the 2020 semifinals and the 2019 semifinals are already stacking up. Although the teams present are vastly different, with only G2 making the final four in both instances, the regions being represented—and the number of teams they’re sending—are exactly the same.
To make things even more similar, two LPL teams will be facing off on one side of the bracket, while G2 will go head-to-head with an LCK team on the other for the second straight year. From one year to the next, FunPlus Phoenix and Invictus Gaming have been replaced by Top Esports and Suning. SKT, on the other hand, has been replaced by DWG, the team that G2 beat in last year’s quarterfinals to make last year’s top four.