LGD Gaming qualified for the 2020 League of Legends World Championship after taking down Invictus Gaming in the LPL’s 2020 Regional Finals. It was the last chance for either team to go to Worlds, and LGD took it.
LGD had a strong performance throughout the match, with powerful early games successfully set up by former SKT T1 jungler Han “Peanut” Wang-ho. While they had trouble wrapping up the third game that IG won, they learned from their mistake and rolled through the last game, forcing aggressive engages and finishing the game before the 30-minute mark.
LGD mid laner Su “xiye” Han-Wei had an impressive performance on Ekko, Orianna, and Kassadin, proving that he and his teammates are worthy of the most prestigious League tournament in the world.
IG, on the other hand, were in the worst situation possible after barely pulling ahead of defending world champions FunPlus Phoenix in round one of the Regional Finals. They also had already lost their last matchup against LGD 3-0 in the LPL Summer Playoffs quarterfinals.
They weren’t able to get their revenge, however, after their 2020 season officially ended with this loss. Despite a strong performance from their solo laners Kang “TheShy” Seung-lok and Song “Rookie” Eui-jin, they failed to take control of the games.
LGD fans and long-time League of Legends esports viewers will likely be excited to see legendary South Korean jungler Peanut getting a new shot at becoming a world champion. He ended Worlds 2017 in second place with LCK team SKT T1 and lost in the 2016 semifinals with the same team.
Both former world champions from the LPL, IG and FPX, won’t go to Worlds this year, making way for a new generation of organizations and players. LGD is the only qualified LPL team this year who already played on the Worlds stage.
While the three other teams earned a spot in the Worlds main event, LGD will have to battle it out in the Play-In stage against other last seeds of the major leagues and wildcard teams.
It’s going to be disappointing to see LGD miss the Main Event if they get upset by other wildcard teams. Peanut however performed really well on the domestic stage against the best junglers in the World so his experience should most likely be enough to carry at least to the group stages. In the groups stage however the entire team will need to pop off to get out of groups and advance to the knockout stage.
