Royal Never Give Up extend miserable North American start to Worlds

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Royal Never Give Up continued their impressive growth over the course of the 2022 League of Legends World Championship with their third win in as many tries in the group stage, this time over still-winless 100 Theives.

With the loss, North America as a region has extended its worst start to a World Championship ever to nine defeats in a row. The only worse losing streak in a Worlds group stage for LCS teams was back in 2015, when Counter Logic Gaming, TSM, and Cloud9 combined to lose 11 straight games (including a tiebreaker loss) in an epic second round robin collapse.

Like many games in a frustrating start to Worlds 2022 for North American teams, the match started out with encouraging signs for the Thieves.

Even though a premeditated level one play from RNG saw a kill go over to AD carry GALA’s Kai’Sa thanks to support Ming’s Amumu’s Bandage Toss over the wall onto 100 Thieves top laner Ssumday’s Aatrox, the Theives held a 2,000-gold lead by the 14-minute mark and were making headway around the map, especially on the top side, thanks to perennial team MVP Closer in the jungle on Viego.

However, passive play before and during objective fights saw RNG absolutely shred the Thieves’ fragmented teamfighting, blowing open a game that had previously been close… until it wasn’t at all.

A kill score of 2-2 cascaded helplessly into a 17-4 one off the back of a five-for-zero ace after the Chinese team picked up maybe the easiest Mountain Soul you’ll ever see taken.

RNG’s 3-0 record means they’ve become the third team to clinch at least a tiebreaker for a spot in the quarterfinals with such a mark, along with European champions Rogue and LPL kings JD Gaming.

NA teams’ worst showing at Worlds was in 2019, when they went a combined 5-13. Recent history does say week two can be promising for LCS teams, but barring miracles, Worlds 2022 on home soil doesn’t look like it’s going to be one that’s remembered fondly for NA fans.

Both teams have almost a week off before the second round robin of the group stage. At 2pm CT on Sunday, Oct. 16, 100 Thieves look for their first win of Worlds when they face Taiwanese champions CTBC Flying Oyster, while RNG look to lock up a spot in the quarterfinals against the Thieves at 4pm on that same day.