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It’s not unreasonable to suggest every game at the League of Legends World Championship has a “must-win” feel to it. Teams only get six chances to chalk up victories in groups, so the earlier you fall behind, the quicker winning becomes mathematically mandatory.
But for T1 and Cloud9, who each dropped games on day two of the group stage, today’s head-to-head was a true must-win for each team as last place in Group A loomed—whether it be in the form of sole possession or a potential tie.
But by way of a 25-minute rout, T1 sent C9 into the cellar of Group A.
Related: Worlds 2022 group stage: Results, standings, schedule
Although the two legacy organizations rarely miss international events, their opportunities to play each other have been infrequent. Just six games (including today’s) have been played between T1 and C9 dating back to 2014, and T1 has thoroughly owned their head-to-head, winning all six of those contests.
The two teams are guaranteed to meet at least one more time on Thursday, Oct. 13, when Group A plays through its second round robin at Worlds.
What’s most striking about that distance between games played is Jensen and Faker, who have each spent substantial time with their current organizations, have faced each other in five of those six games. Today, it was Faker who got the better of Jensen. The “Demon King” posted a team-centric scoreline of 0/1/9.
Tonight’s game was the 100th of Faker’s career at the World Championship. If it wasn’t obvious, that’s the most out of all players in the history of the game. And while 100 games, regardless of result, is impressive on its own, the most incredible part of Faker’s legacy at Worlds may just be that he’s won 72 of those games.
At this year’s tournament, it feels like Faker’s entire champion pool is meta, too. Today, he picked Lissandra after selecting Akali twice to open the group stage. It’s likely only a matter of time until he picks up other meta champions at this tournament, including his also-well-traveled picks of Azir, LeBlanc, and Viktor, the former of which he’s played 113 times in his career, according to League stats site Games of Legends.
Group A has an off-day tomorrow, so T1, C9, Fnatic and EDG won’t head back to the Worlds stage until Oct. 13, when they’ll play all of their second round-robin games in a single day, as is tradition for Worlds.
C9 is the only winless team in the group. Everyone else sits with a record of 2-1.
Published: Oct 9, 2022 08:01 pm