Team Liquid are in the playoffs?! After losing to G2, TL beat MCX to help secure a place in the Worlds 2020 playoffs. Now all they need is Suning to lose to G2, otherwise the spot will be claimed by China, and a rematch tiebreaker will be played for first.
This game was a complete stomp from start to finish. Liquid played with what felt like two junglers, as CoreJJ’s Pantheon disappeared from bot lane at level 2 after erasing Koala’s Bard. He went on to bully Gemini’s Lee Sin in his jungle before ganking mid lane and even helping his own secure enemy camps. Meanwhile, Tactical was sitting at a comfortable 10 CS lead in his 1v2 lane.
As ganks turned into dives, 3-0 became 5-0, and TL built a dominating 4k gold lead 8 minutes into the game. It was only after 11 minutes that Machi claimed their first kill through a gank on Impact that prevented the difference to reach 5k.
Or rather, delayed. Liquid put down the first brick at 13 minutes, brought up their advantage to 7 thousands, and started even taking kills in 1v2s, most American players being well into their second item while most of their counterparts are still struggling to complete their first.
The rest of the game simply followed the numbers, MCX needing a miracle to get back up from this disastrous state, and said miracle not happening. Biggest gold lead at 15 of the entire tournament, going up to 10k before even reaching 20 minutes, a near-Flame horizon in both the jungle and the mid lane, one fight broke out after the other, each one going to NA’s third seed.
After Machi’s base was broken open, the game slowed down without any kill or major objective happening for five minutes. And then, suddenly, Liquid knocked at the remaining door of their based, and slammed it straight onto MCX. Koala got solo killed by a minion wave, albeit with the potential help of a Syndra ultimate leaving him on double-digit hitpoints, the rest of his team died, and the Nexus was short to follow.
Two games are left today. The first one opposes G2 and Suning, and will decide of everything for this group. If G2 win, they secure the first place, and TL and Suning play a tiebreaker for the second Quarterfinal spot. If Suning take it, however, it puts Liquid out of the tournament, and Europe and China will play the tiebreaker match deciding which of them will be on top of the group.
Stay tuned for coverage of the remaining games of the day, and follow us on Twitter and Instagram if you want to get these news straight to your feed!
