The LoL Worlds finale took place on Sunday. The team G2 Esports suffered a crushing defeat with 0:3 against FunPlus Phoenix, the new world champions of League of Legends 2019. G2 Esports seemed out of sorts. How do the losers, Perkz, Caps, and Jankos deal with this?
This is what the coach says: The German coach of the team, Fabian “GrabbZ” Lohmann, takes the defeat on himself – just like the coach of SKT1 took the defeat of his team a week earlier.
Lohmann is responsible as head coach for the lineup of his team and especially for the champion selection (the drafts). He says on Twitter:
“My boys did their best today to make the dream possible. FPX was the better team today, including the drafts. I disappointed my boys in preparation. So please celebrate my players now like the champions they are – even if it hurts.”
However, Lohmann says that they will not change. The team will continue to have fun, will remain somewhat cocky, and entertain the fans. G2 Esports will give their all and aim for the trophy again in 2020.
In the press conference (via Inven), Lohmann admits to mistakes in preparation: In retrospect, they should have set up camp in Asia to train against the top teams there.
Regarding the draft, Lohmann said: He already knew how FPX would play – but they underestimated how much pressure Doinb exerts in the midlane and how the jungler plays in. They wanted to counter this with Pyke or through scaling – but it didn’t work.
We had a plan – it didn’t work
This is what the star botlaner says: Perkz skipped the press conference and only commented briefly on Twitter:
“We gave our best. They were simply better from the preparation to the game. See you next year.”
This is what Caps says: The midlaner makes it clear that they have a strong team and that it will keep getting stronger. He believes that G2 Esports will recover and come back next year. They just need to change a few things and then they will be back.
Caps said he wanted to actually keep Doinb in the midlane, but that didn’t work out. As a result, Caps had to roam to the botlane and Doinb was able to take over the game. The plan didn’t work – but hopefully he will succeed next time.
This is what the jungler says: Jankos says the atmosphere remained good even in defeat. They joked and laughed, even when they were getting stomped.
It didn’t feel like anything had changed. They had a plan they followed – it just didn’t work.
Jankos said that in the end, they had to decide in each match which player to neglect: Either Jankos, Wunder, or Perkz. They would choose one of the three in each game, and each of the players was difficult to deal with.
For next year, they want to become even better and improve the early game around level 1. Jankos believes G2 Esports is strong after 10, 15 minutes – but sometimes they are already too far behind by then.
ocelote fought back tears
Who had the emotional reaction? Carlos “ocelote” Rodriguez is the founder and CEO of G2 Esports. The Spaniard was previously an eSports athlete, being a strong PvP player in WoW and later a midlaner in LoL.
He rallies behind his team. When he was interviewed after the defeat, it was clear that he was fighting back tears and trying to get through the interview without breaking down.
Eventually, he broke down and shouted out a loud “Fuck” – that shouldn’t be seen by anyone. The camera from Riot then cut to the audience when it threatened to get too emotional.
Even the neutral moderator was caught off guard
The woman who interviewed ocelote, the Belgian Eefje “Sjokz” Depoortere, was also caught in an emotional moment, although not live on stream. She held strong and didn’t show for whom her heart was beating. Although as the host of the LEC she naturally had sympathies for G2 Esports, she accompanied them all year.
Off-camera, she also mourned the great opportunity of G2 Esports for triumph. A photographer from the Chinese league LPL captured these images of the caster and posted them on Twitter. These moved international fans.
Sjokz, like many, was rooting for G2 Esports. It would have been a great victory for the LEC, the European LoL league.
Many small differences and situations made the match somewhat one-sided, although many experts regarded G2 Esports as the favorite:
