After eight months of regular season play, playoff games and one international tournament surprise at the Mid-Season Invitational, we've finally made it to the best part of the League of Legends Championship Series season. We're down to four teams in the summer split of the LCS, and a little under a month, we will crown a domestic champion and know which three teams will be representing the North American region at the World Championships this coming October in Europe.
At least two of the teams in the final four of the summer split will be making their way to Berlin to compete for the game's top prize in the Summoner's Cup, but all four have reason to believe they could be the ones best equipped to represent NA on the international stage.
>Heading into semifinal weekend, here are the arguments from each team why they should earn the moniker of America's Team as they board their flight to worlds.
Why Team Liquid is North America's Team
Does Team Liquid even have to argue why they are the team best suited to wave the flag of the LCS at worlds? They've won back-to-back-to-back domestic titles and are heavy favorites to complete a never before done four-peat in the North American region. The last international tournament they entered was earlier this calendar year at MSI where they got off to a frigid start in the group stage but battled back and completed the greatest upset in League of Legends history when they ousted the reigning world champion Invictus Gaming in the semifinals by a 3-1 scoreline.
They're the most talented team that NA has ever assembled. They have the experience of playing the best teams in the world and have even defeated one of them in a best-of-five. Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng wasn't happy following his team's one-sided defeat to Europe's G2 Esports in the MSI final and pledged his team would learn from their loss. While making it back to another final, this time at worlds, seems like a stretch, Liquid has the talent and experience to make it back to the semifinals with a better group stage performance going into the knockout rounds.
Why Team Liquid isn't North America's Team
Team Liquid isn't the most adaptable team in the world, and they're probably not as adaptable as two other teams in the LCS semifinals. At MSI, we saw Liquid attempt to conform to a more fast-paced meta and play like the iGs and G2s of the world, and the North American champions themselves admitted they couldn't play like those teams. Instead, they did what they're best at and kept at what has made them such a challenge to beat in the LCS, and that is what brought them international success. So although Team Liquid's way of playing might get them to a quarterfinal or semifinal, it might not be enough to push the defending NA champions into the highest tier of teams capable of winning the Summoner's Cup.
Why Cloud9 is North America's Team
While Liquid might have the best international result of any North American team in this lineup, and Team SoloMid might be the best domestically, Cloud9, without argument, is the best NA team when it comes to showing up on the international stage overall. Since 2013, C9 has made it to the top eight of every world championship except one, 2015, when the team lost in a do-or-die tiebreaker to keep them out of the knockout stage.
Come hell or high water, C9 knows how to navigate through the rigors of the opening rounds of the world championship and get into the best-of-five matches. Until 2018, those adventures into the quarters only ended in heartbreak, but last year was the first time C9 or any North American team broke into the semifinals since the inaugural world championship in 2011 when countries like South Korea and China weren't included.
Unlike Liquid, C9 is a team that has little issues adapting. They're piloted by head coach and former top lane legend Bok "Reapered" Han-gyu, who has shown time and time again as the lead man at C9 to not be afraid to mix things up in terms of drafting or in the starting lineup itself.
Why Cloud9 isn't North America's Team
A lot of C9's success at the world championship came from having Nicolaj "Jensen" Jensen as the centerpiece in the mid lane. Well, Jensen is no longer on C9 and is starring on Team Liquid nowadays. As it always seems to be with C9, they've had an up-and-down year, looking at times like the best team in the region with more depth than any team could ever hope to have and then the next week play as if they have no idea what they're doing.
It's hard to trust any iteration of C9 going into worlds. They haven't won a domestic title since 2014, so every world championship feels like a leap of faith, not knowing if you'll be made a fool for believing in them just for the team to combust. C9 made it to the semifinals in 2018 but that was only after almost getting eliminated in the play-in rounds by Gambit Gaming in a five-game thriller.
Why Counter Logic Gaming is North America's Team
On the surface, CLG doesn't come off as a team that NA would have much hope for at worlds. Before a resurgence this summer split, the organization was in some kind of purgatory for mediocre squads, never being good enough to do anything of note but not being terrible enough to blow up the entire roster to begin a rebuild.
But, if you dig into the roster, CLG has an intriguing lineup that has had big moments internationally. Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage played in one of the most famous best-of-fives at the world championship when Misfits were a hair short of upsetting the previous year's world champion in SK Telecom T1. The team's newest addition, top laner Kim "Ruin" Hyeong-min, carried his Turkish team alongside Thomas "Kirei" Yuen to MSI this year and even finished the tournament with a positive win-loss record. Vincent "Biofrost" Wang was on the three-peating TSM squad that entered the 2016 and 2017 world championships as legitimate favorites to make it deep into the tournament.
Maybe most importantly of all, CLG's AD carry, Trevor "Stixxay" Hayes, had the tournament of a lifetime as a rookie at MSI in China back in 2016. He was the main carry for a team that made it to the MSI finals and arguably had the best individual performance of any NA player at any international tournament in League of Legends history. He was that good for those two weeks in China. At MSI and worlds that year, Stixxay and CLG took games from the ROX Tigers, SK Telecom T1, G2 Esports, Flash Wolves and Royal Never Give Up.
If Stixxay could somehow find that swagger and whatever "zone" he inhabited during MSI all those years ago, sign me up on the CLG bandwagon.
Why CLG isn't North America's Team
The one player I didn't mention in my rundown of internationally experienced players is starting jungler Raymond "Wiggily" Griffin. This isn't to say Wiggily is the weak link of the team -- far from it -- but at the world championship against the best junglers in the world as a rookie is a hard ask for anyone. On top of that, CLG didn't end the regular season in the best shape, dropping a game to non-playoff side 100 Thieves before losing a top-two tiebreaker against C9. They did bounce back with a quick and decisive sweep over Optic Gaming in the quarterfinals, though I don't know if that said more about Optic's lack of prospects at worlds than CLG being a team NA can rally behind.
Why Clutch Gaming is North America's Team
"Why not us?"
That is the slogan Clutch will have to live by if they want any chance of doing anything beyond making a cute run in the summer split playoffs. Team Liquid, C9, and especially CLG aren't perfect when it comes to legacies, but they at least have legacies. All three have won at least two domestic titles. CLG and TL both made MSI finals while C9 has repeatedly done well at worlds.
What has Clutch accomplished outside of being the worst nightmare of every TSM fan in existence? Not a lot.
A few weeks ago, this team was headed for the gutter and for a possible mammoth-sized rebuild in the summer, with Clutch officially being rebranded as Dignitas following their final game in 2019. Yet, right as they were about to put their jerseys on clearance and move on with what pieces they wanted to keep from an underperforming roster, CG came alive, the team's fast-paced nature finally gelling with the team's talented individuals. Now, two best-of-five wins from a domestic title and a No. 1 seed at worlds, Heo "Huni" Seung-hoon remembered he was a starting top laner for a world championship finalist team, Nam "Lira" Tae-yoo is back to being an elite jungler, and the team's homegrown young talent is peaking at the right time.
They have mechanical talent. They have experience. They have youthful energy. They have flexibility.
Why not Clutch Gaming?
Why Clutch Gaming isn't North America's Team
So, really, here's why not Clutch Gaming.
Huni has been inconsistent and can be focused on by upcoming opponents. Lira, similar to Huni, has had glimmers of his old self before but has never been able to keep it up for longer than a few weeks at a time. Cody "Cody Sun" Sun is the second-best AD carry in North America right now and is playing the best League of Legends of his life, but he's playing the best AD carry in NA and a player he's always lost to, Doublelift, in the semifinals. Tanner "Damonte" Damonte has a high ceiling and the potential to become the best American mid laner in history, but along with that high ceiling comes a low floor where he sometimes finds himself on his more adventurous champion selections. Philippe "Vulcan" Laflamme is a good, solid support but hasn't done anything to establish himself as one of the elite alongside the other three supports in the LCS semifinals.
Still, even with everything going against them, Clutch, the oddball of the final four teams, are the ones who interest me the most.
Seriously, why not Clutch Gaming?