Three Overreactions From Week 1 of the LEC
The best western league finally returned to air this weekend, and the race to see who will be Europe’s representative at the Mid-Season Invitational has kicked off in full swing. Week 1 of the League of Legends European Championship gave us a clear look at which teams did their homework during the offseason, and which teams are lagging behind.
While two games alone isn’t enough to give teams a fair grade on how they’ll do for the rest of the season, it’s a sample size just large enough for fans to pick their LEC allegiances before it’s too late to hop on the bandwagon. Here are three overreactions from the first week of the 2020 LEC Spring Split.
1. Origen will win Worlds
From slow and steady to cool and calculated, this new Origen iteration got everyone talking right out the gate after a clean 2-0 weekend against Fnatic and Schalke 04. The addition of Andrei “Xerxe” Dragomir and Mitchell “Destiny” Shaw in the offseason left people on the fence about how what this lineup could actually accomplish as a team, but their confident play in and out of lane shut everyone up quickly.
Comparatively to their rivals G2 Esports, their play this weekend was for the most part deliberate and crisp. They still have to go through the first round-robin and test their mettle against every team in the league, but from what they showed us, they definitely have a good read on the meta and have the potential to be the closest to contending G2 for a title in Spring.
2. G2 are still G2
Speaking of G2, they played two exciting matches this weekend to usher in former mid laner Rasmus “Caps” Winther’s debut in the bot lane. And, well, it went about as well as anyone could expect from such a chaotic team.
Against the rookie MAD Lions roster on Friday, G2 spent the first half of the game on the backfoot. Objectives, kills, map pressure; everything was going in the way of MAD until G2 snapped their fingers and decided to simply win the game. The game was as sloppy and scrappy as we’ve come to expect from this team, and they even made up for it by demolishing SK Gaming the next day.
G2 is still riding high in the player skill department, and the lane swap between Luka “Perkz” Perković won’t be an issue. Especially with Origen’s disciplined debut, however, fans are wondering if they’ll be able to get away with doing whatever they want for much longer.
3. Misfits…
2019 was a complete wash for Misfits; each split ended in total failure. Since then, they’ve completely overhauled their roster and packed it full with well-known national league talent.
They fell 0-2 to both Rogue and Fnatic this weekend, but it’s not really clear what people should be expecting out of a roster that, from the outside looking in, seems to be piecemealed and tacked together. Misfits could be looking to book their tickets to watch the spring finals from the stands if they don’t find their groove against the weaker teams on their schedule.
Image via LOLEsports | Flickr
