Europe has once again proven that it’s better than North America in League of Legends this year—for now, at least. Fnatic beat TSM in the final game of the Rift Rivals 2019 today to capture the championship for their region.
It was a tough tournament for North America as a whole. TSM, Cloud9, and Team Liquid only won four games throughout the three days of competition. In fact, Liquid were the only team that seemed to carry NA through Rift Rivals, capturing three of the region’s four wins.
TSM couldn’t find the same success, dropping their game against Fnatic. The European representatives broke out Veigar for Tim “Nemesis” Lipovšek in order to counter Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg’s Azir pick, and it was incredibly effective.
Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau also became an unstoppable killing machine on Aatrox after some big plays on the top side on the map. Meanwhile, TSM simply couldn’t make any proactive plays without getting caught and punished by Fnatic’s fast-moving composition with Yuumi and Sivir.
This was an expected ending to the tournament, especially with how the LEC teams have been performing as of late. With the absence of Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi on Cloud9 and TSM underperforming, North America stood no chance against the European onslaught.
The day has been seized by Europe today, but North America still has time to adapt and evolve before the World Championship begins after the 2019 Summer Split.
