Everyone agrees: either Cloud9 or Team Liquid should be the best team in the LCS in 2021. (If you can find someone who ranks another team ahead of those two, you should ping me on Twitter or the Oracle’s Elixir Discord, because I’d be fascinated to hear a cogent set of arguments to back up that opinion!)
I officially power ranked Cloud9 number 1 in December, but Team Liquid is a very worthy selection for that honour, and it didn’t take me much effort to come up with this list of arguments for why I could, or maybe even should, have put them in the top spot, instead.
Time to see whether I can convince any of you, and maybe even myself, to move Team Liquid up a spot in 2021 expectations.
Three teams remain in the battle for the LCS Summer 2020 title. On Saturday, TSM and Team Liquid will play for a spot in the Final against FlyQuest on Sunday.
Since the schedule is so tight for the last two matches, I’m going to do something a little different with this preview and cover everything in one piece. First I’ll break down my expectations for TSM vs. TL, and then I’ll spend some time discussing FlyQuest and how they’ll need to prepare and play against either opponent.
Team Liquid and FlyQuest have similar profiles: both have well-distributed talent across their roster, primary carries in the Mid lane, control-oriented Junglers, playmaking Supports, and a preference for winning through mid-game team fights and objective control. During the regular season, the teams split their games 1-1. In last week’s matches, Liquid took our Golden Guardians 3-0 while FlyQuest dispatched Cloud9 3-1. With so much similarity, from recent form to play style to head-to-head, it’s almost tempting to make a 3-2 series prediction with a coin flip to pick the winner and say we’re just hoping for some high-quality games…
Okay not really. Well, yes, I’m hoping for high-quality games, but I actually think there’s a decent favourite here.
