Sitting here now, plenty of people will tell you that they saw this outcome on the horizon, but as the analyst desk noted afterwards, this was hands-down the greatest international playoffs upset in competitive League of Legends.
In only four games, Team Liquid managed to very handily dominate Invictus Gaming, who were the heavy favorites heading into this head-to-head. This is an Invictus Gaming that absolutely crushed at the League of Legends World Championship last fall, and ended this years MSI Group Stage only having lost a single match at 9W-1L on their record.
Through all three wins against IG on Friday, Team Liquid was absolutely the best team on that stage. Game 1 took a bit of back-and-forth between the two teams in order to finally fall in TL’s favor, but every other game was almost in full control of the team that won.
After going up 2-0 on IG, Liquid would drop Game 3 and all fans of Doublelift and company would collectively hold their breath. Notorious for choking in important situations on international stages, Team Liquid bucked the trend that has been alive since competitive League of Legends began.
“At no moment did we choke,” said Riot Kobe, LCS Analyst. “The region that has never won a tie-breaker, kept up the pressure even after dropping the one game, they were able to finish it so cleanly in the final one.”
With the victory, most people’s MSI 2019 brackets have been busted. If you didn’t have Invictus Gaming winning MSI, or at least playing in the finals, then you were very bold in your predictions.
Now, the world waits to see the result of tomorrow’s (Saturday) Semifinal matchup between SK Telecom T1 and G2 Esports.
“G2 plays a lot like IG, so we’d love to play them,” said Team Liquid’s mid-laner Jensen in a post-game interview.
The MSI 2019 finals will be held on Sunday, May 19th, 2019 and will have a North American team participating for the first time since 2016.
Will it be Europe’s G2 Esports going up against Team Liquid in the finals? Or will Faker’s SK Telecom T1 overcome a shaky Group Stage to punch their ticket to championship Sunday?
