History is repeating itself in
LEC, the
League of Legends EMEA championship. Winners of the Winter and Spring Splits,
G2 Esports won the Summer Split on Sunday, beating
Fnatic 3-0. The Samurai are still in the running to have the perfect year on the Old Continent. To come full circle, they will have to win the Season Finals in Munich (Germany) in a month's time. With this victory, G2 have
also secured their qualification for the Worlds. Rasmus "Caps" Winther's team is the second to get their ticket for the competition, after South Korea's Gen.G, who won the MSI.
For Fnatic, this is the seventh final they have lost since 2018, including
six against the Samurai. This one is probably one of the worst, as the Orange and Black literally sabotaged themselves. In the three BO5 matches, Fnatic had built up a sizeable golds advantage in the early game: +4700 at 17 minutes in game 1, +5700 at 21 minutes in game 2 and even +8343 at 22 minutes in game 3. But each time, Fnatic totally collapsed in the midgame, with a succession of poor decisions on the map and individual failures. The debacle was a collective one, but it was Oh ‘Noah’ Hyeon-taek's mistakes that seemed to be the most damaging, particularly on his Ezreal in the third game.
In any case, Europe looked very weak in this final. Although G2 showed resilience and a capacity for a comeback, the Samurai's early games were worrying. Against big Asian teams, such a gap could be irreversible. For Fnatic, it's hard to keep believing.
Despite a win over G2 earlier in the playoffs, the team seems incapable of finishing the job and being there when it counts most. The British outfit will have a chance to bounce back at the Season Finals, but the total disappointment of this final is likely to leave its mark.
