Winless no more: C9 secure NA’s first group stage victory at Worlds 2022

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The latest LCS champions got their first victory of the 2022 League of Legends World Championship today against longtime rivals Fnatic.

Cloud9 kicked off the first day of the second half of the group stage by delivering their region’s first win in the competition’s main event. Fnatic drop down to 2-2 in their group now and are the only other team aside from C9 with more than one loss at this time. 

NA fans have been starving for a week, but C9 served a world-class game on their plate today. The LCS champions controlled the game from its beginning by collecting first blood in the bot lane thanks to a counter gank from Blaber.

That kill started the steady growth of C9 throughout the game. Every time Razork tried to gank a lane and collect advantages for his team, Blaber was there to turn the result around, thus giving more kills to his allies. The early lead for the NA team just kept on growing with every fight, and their jungler made sure that his carries got all the resources they needed to become an unstoppable force—even from afar.

Fifteen minutes into the game, C9 got their first turret. Combined with getting the first two drakes and the CS advantages they had in all lanes, they were 4,000 gold ahead of Fnatic. But they didn’t stop there. Three minutes later, Fnatic were left without a single tier-one turret as their opponents moved to take the first tier-two turret for the NA region in the group stage of Worlds 2022. 

Poor teamfight coordination and movements in which Fnatic overstepped just allowed C9 to widen their lead even more. The European team were behind more than 10,000 in gold and 10 kills on the board in only 25 minutes. And with a swift final move after having conquered their second Baron of the game, C9 closed out the match, securing the first win for their region in this stage of the competition. 

C9 still have a chance to make it to the knockout stage, but they’ll have to win every single game remaining on their schedule today plus a tiebreaker at the end. Next, the LCS champions will have to face EDG, while Fnatic remain on stage to fight against T1.