In League of Legends the first 3 matches in the main round of Worlds 2023 have been played and the first teams are eliminated. The US team “Team Liquid” has already been affected. Fans are now looking for a scapegoat and find the South Korean Pyosik, who was the world champion in LoL as a jungler in 2022, but is now allegedly disappointing.
How is it going for the US teams at Worlds? Mixed.
- The Golden Guardians were eliminated in the 1st match of the Worlds, having lost their deciding match against the European team BDS 0-3.
- Cloud 9 (1-2) and NRG (2-1) are still fighting for their place in the Worlds.
- The highly decorated Team Liquid has just been eliminated from the Worlds with a 0-3 defeat. Team Liquid lost to the overpowering T1. Also against NRG and – embarrassment – against GAM Esports, a team from Vietnam, they suffered losses.
How did they lose? Team Liquid lost 1-2 against GAM Esports. The jungler Levi was a decisive factor for the Vietnamese with 6-1-11. On Team Liquid, top laner Summit played a 0-5-1, Pyosik ended rather mediocre with 2-4-1.
After the defeat, there were nasty comments on reddit : Team Liquid would field a purely Vietnamese roster in 2024. The team is accused of constantly changing its strategy: sometimes betting on Europeans, sometimes on Koreans: The team is currently also called “TLCK” because they rely on so many players from South Korea or with South Korean roots.
US team bought 2 stars from South Korea, including a newly crowned world champion
How was Team Liquid set up? Team Liquid had only one core player from previous seasons, the South Korean supporter CoreJJ (29), who has been playing for their team since 2018.
The rest of the team joined Team Liquid fresh: the Americans APA and Yoaon. They also brought in two South Korean import players, Summit (top lane) and Pyosik (jungler).
Summit already had experience in the USA, Pyosik had just become the world champion in 2022 and arrived fresh in the country.
Why do the best foreign players fail as soon as they are in the USA?
This is how the mood among fans is right now: Especially the defeats against the team from Vietnam seem to frustrate US fans immensely. Because with that, Team Liquid is eliminated against a team from a “small region” – that shouldn’t happen.
In a reddit thread, US fans are now discussing why the foreign players, who are bought for a lot of money and brought to North America, never succeed.
Pyosik, Huni, Perkz, Piglet, Swordart, Maple all cost a lot of money and were bought with the expectation of winning championships. But only CoreJJ truly plays well.
“If other regions are so much better than we are, why do some of their best players fail when they come to North America?” they question.
“The USA is like Saudi Arabia in football”
These are the responses: The responses on reddit are mixed:
- The “bad” view is: The LCS is like Saudi Arabia in football. People actually only come to the USA to cash their paycheck and take it easy.
- But another disagrees: If one looks at how downcast Pyosik has been, one cannot say that. The boy is incredibly sad. The reasons for the poor performance of the stars lie in the environment, where good training is not possible. There is also a lack of meaningful routines.
What’s behind it: One cannot say that overseas players always disappoint in the USA. One must consider the individual case.
Team Liquid has bought Pyosik: He is a 23-year-old jungler who was considered the “worst pro jungler of the LCK” in South Korea before unexpectedly becoming world champion with DRX in 2022.
They bought him at the peak of his success, when he had actually crowned his career. Then they let him play against much weaker competition in the US league for a year and then threw him back into the Worlds.
One can hardly blame him for not leading Team Liquid to the championship.
There are certainly examples where players let their fame earned in other regions “fade”: These are mainly players who have already achieved a lot in their region of origin.
But some young players, like Bjergsen or Jensen, moved to the USA after just a few years in Europe to pursue their careers there. They are now considered some of the most important players in the LCS.
In LoL you can’t buy success – players are extremely inconsistent
The problem in League of Legends is that the game does not work like football. Rather, LoL is fast-paced and changes from patch to patch: There is hardly any consistency in performance.
A world championship title in one year counts for little in the next year:
- FunPlus Phoenix with Doinb and Tian became world champions in 2019, regarded as an absolute exception team, the players were seen as geniuses. In the 4 years thereafter, neither players nor team achieved anything significant.
- DAMWON KIA with Showmaker and Canyon were considered the outstanding team in the world in 2020. It was thought they would dominate LoL for years. However, they too have disappointed in the years after their Worlds title in 2020 and vice-world championship in 2021 and are again facing early elimination at the Worlds.
- In Europe, G2 was long the big power, but also there the core squad declined from 2020 and the players have not been able to convince at their new clubs after leaving G2.
The time when Faker and T1 were the clear power in LoL and no one could shake their dominance is now already 6 years ago.
However, there are a handful of exceptional players who contradict this thesis. This includes Impact, who is a “model case” for a legionnaire from South Korea, who found the league there too harsh and dominated in the USA for years:
26-year-old has been a pro for 10 years: ‘LoL is my life. I’m really afraid to stop’
