In the nerve wreaking group stages, we have seen sixteen teams battle it out and only eight emerged to the Knockout stage of the 2021 League of Legends Worlds Championship!
- Royal Never Give Up
- EDward Gaming
- Gen.G Esports
- Cloud9
- T1
- Hanwha Life Esports
- DAMWON Gaming
- MAD Lions
Out of the eight remaining top teams, only one representative teams are left from North America region and Europe. Cloud9 is representing North America and MAD Lions is representing Europe. The remaining teams are largely dominated from Korea and China. This meant that hopeful 100 Thieves and Team Liquid, which were first and second seeds from the LCS were sent home despite putting in all they have got.
The #Worlds2021 Quarterfinals! pic.twitter.com/GyambE83sT
— LoL Esports (@lolesports) October 18, 2021
In both Group A and B, there top teams DAMWON Gaming and T1 cruised to the next phase easily with swift victories against their opponents. Cloud9 and EDward Gaming also followed suit placing second in their respective groups. Cloud9 had intense tiebreaker with Rogue and FunPlus Phoenix with all three teams at 2-4. In the tiebreaker rounds, Cloud9 emerged winner after defeating Rogue in a 54 minute fight with the dominant picks Wukong, Lee Sin, Leblanc, Miss Fortune and Alistar.
Group C on the other hand have seen Royal Never Give Up and Hanwha Life Esports tie at 4-2 beating potential PSG Talon and Fnatic, which didnt manage secure sufficient wins.
The most exciting part of the Group Stages was at Group D where all four teams ended up in the tiebreaker! All of them were evenly par and reached 3-3. This enabled a two-way tiebreaker through the single elimination bracket. In the beginning, Gen.G Esports and LNG Esports seems like they were going to top the group with 2-1. However, Team Liquid and MAD Lions fought back hard on 18 October and forced the tiebreaker. MAD Lions had previously repeated the feat back in the LEC Summer split where they managed to clutch back to a win.
Same for the tiebreaker, MAD Lions pick themselves up against LNG Esports and dominated the match. They faced Gen.G Esports which swiftly capitalised early on Team Liquid’s mistakes within 36 minutes. The Grand Finals of Group D was a scintillating encounter between Gen.G Esports and MAD Lions. Aggresive play by MAD Lions caused them early mistakes eventually losing runes and gave Gen.G the lead with a few good kills. Gen.G were very decisive and their good communication allowed them to have a huge gold advantage of over 4,000 by mid-game. MAD Lions subsequently could not keep up despite a shaky start and eventually lost to Gen.G 13:23.
Knockout Stage
The real battle begins with the best-of-five elimination bracket in the Knockout Stage. This time, we will be able to witness the all-LPL battle between Royal Never Give Up and EDward Gaming on 23 October 2021 8pm SGT. The battle between T1 and Hanwha Life Esports will begin first on 22 October 2021 8pm SGT. DAMWON Gaming will battle out MAD Lions on 24 October 2021 8pm SGT followed by Gen.G Esports and Cloud9 on 24 October 2021 8pm SGT.