FunPlus Phoenix mid laner Doinb made the boldest prediction of the 2021 League of Legends World Championship so far and couldn’t have been further off.
In an interview with esports coverage site PentaQ published yesterday, the FPX mid laner boldly claimed that his team “won’t lose one single game” after improving their Worlds record to 1-1 with a win against Cloud9 on Tuesday, Oct. 12. After those comments were made, FPX went on to lose four of their next five games at Worlds. The team was subsequently eliminated from the tournament today by Rogue, the third seed out of the LEC.
Coming into the second round robin of the Worlds group stage, FPX were holding onto a 2-1 record and would have qualified for the knockout round of the event if they had continued to play at their initial pace and repeat their results from the first round robin. But on Group A’s final day of play, FPX lost all three of their regularly scheduled games, in addition to a qualifying tiebreaker game against Rogue.
Rogue went on to lose their winner-take-all tiebreaker game against Cloud9, a team that Doinb also missed the mark on when he called them out in a promotional video for Worlds prior to today’s games. “For Cloud9 I want to say: sorry, but you’ll be going home soon,” Doinb said. “At least you’ll have a vacation now.”
After winning Worlds in 2019, FPX missed the tournament altogether in 2020. Ahead of this year’s event, FPX were widely considered one of the best teams at the World Championship, considering all five of the team’s players had won the tournament before. But FPX’s lackluster results pinned them into last place in Group A. They became just the third LPL team in history to finish last in a group at Worlds (2015 Invictus Gaming, 2017 EDward Gaming).
FunPlus Phoenix will return to the LPL stage in 2022, though the league has not officially announced a start date for its regular season.
Make sure to follow us on YouTube for more esports news and analysis.
