The German Twitch streamer Frederik “NoWay” Hinteregger (32) is an expert on League of Legends. In LoL, Europe has just disappointed at the World Championship in its own region. All teams have already been eliminated in the main round. Most recently, G2, the strongest team, disappointed in Match 5 of the main round against the Chinese champion. NoWay’s analysis of why G2 could not convince seems to have also hit the team, as they are apparently trading and replacing exactly the two players that NoWay identified as weaknesses.
This was the performance at the Worlds: All three European teams were eliminated in the main round. Even before it went to the knockout games in Paris and London, the European teams had already been eliminated in Berlin.
Although the Spaniards from MAD Lions KOI were able to impress in the play-ins, they lost every game in the main round, even against teams from smaller regions like PSG Talon or GAM Esports.
Fnatic was unlucky with the draws, facing Korea twice and China once, and clearly lost the matches against the favorites. They managed to win one game against GAM Esports.
G2 secured a mandatory victory against the hopeless Brazilians paiN Gaming and at least achieved a respectable result against Weibo Gaming, one of the weakest teams from Asia, but then it was also over for G2. Against the struggling tournament favorites Bilibili Gaming, G2 made too many mistakes in the deciding match and got eliminated. Against the two top Korean teams Hanwha Life and T1, they had not even seen a chance beforehand.
NoWay: European professionals do not take LoL seriously, prefer to party and enjoy the money
This is NoWay’s analysis of Europe: In a stream, NoWay says that the European league LEC has developed similar to the North American league LCS. At least many believe so:
The players do not take LoL seriously enough, prefer to enjoy their lives and indulge in the money.
In the off-season, players do not even deal with LoL and even skip solo queue to party instead. They only play “for fun and money.”
The players have a “very poor work ethic and training ethic.”
There is only one top team, G2, and if they are not challenged by more European top teams, they cannot improve.
The weakness at G2 is clearly the support Mikyx
This is how he sees G2: Here, NoWay also expresses dedicated views. For him, midlaner Caps and top laner BrokenBlade are top players for whom there are no “upgrades.” Both have also played “insane” during the tournament. BrokenBlade has been one of the best top laners of the tournament.
NoWay does not see a big alternative for ADC Hans Sama in Europe either.
But he sees jungler YIke (23) as a rather weak position at G2. Here, there is an alternative with RazorK, who is better, but not necessarily so much better that he represents a clear upgrade. In NoWay’s view, it would be best if G2 could snag Inspired, the jungler from FlyQuest – but that is surely difficult.
NoWay clearly sees the support Mikyx as the team’s weak point, who had a terrible Worlds and lost several series single-handedly. In Europe, NoWay sees an alternative: the South Korean Jun (24) from Fnatic. If he did not have to play with Noah, he would be a top man.
Basically, NoWay advises G2 to plunder the second-best European team Fnatic and poach the two key players from there.
- When G2 did this in 2019 and acquired midlaner Caps from Fnatic, a team was formed that almost became world champions in 2019.
- When they later acquired the then best player from Fnatic, Rekkles, it turned out to be a flop, which they quickly corrected.
G2 is apparently letting Yikes and Mikyx go
Is NoWay right with his analysis of G2? At least it seems that G2 agrees with him. According to reports from Sheep Esports, G2 will apparently let players Yike and Mikyx go. Both, the site reports, have the opportunity to look for new teams. They also don’t want to spend any money on them.
If NoWay is right with his further analysis, G2 might now extend feelers towards Inspired and Jun. But even with these expensive upgrades, it is likely to remain very difficult for the next few years to compete in the league against teams like Gen G., which are staffed with world-class players in all positions and compete against other world-class teams throughout the year.
The actual ray of hope for G2 has been the “Topfather” BrokenBlade. He seems to be developing alongside Caps into the outstanding player of the European region. But whether this will really be enough to turn from the “One-Man Region” to the “Two-Men Region” seems questionable, as Koreans and Chinese can put at least 15 players at that level: LoL: The only German player at the Worlds ambushes a top team and saves Europe’s honor
