Despite nearly going perfect in the group stage with a record of 9-1, the 2018 League of Legends World Champions Invictus Gaming quickly found themselves eliminated in the knockout stage of MSI 2019 at the hands of Team Liquid.
Team Liquid came out looking strong today in the best-of-5 series immediately taking Game 1 from IG after a series of hard-fought team battles. While many thought that this was perhaps just a flukey win from Team Liquid, who many analysts didn’t expect to win a single game in this series, TL quickly proved otherwise. Team Liquid arrived in Game 2 putting up another stellar performance and again winning to put IG down 0-2.
In Game 3, Invictus Gaming’s superstar mid laner Rookie came out and was determined to not yet go home just yet. Rookie carried IG to victory on the back of his stellar play of Leblanc, forcing another game. In the fourth game though, Team Liquid responded quickly and silenced any doubters that happened to think this series was in any way a fluke up until this point. Liquid largely demolished Invictus in Game 4 and in the process won the series and advanced.
To put some further context into this entire victory for Team Liquid, this is likely the biggest upset in the history of the League of Legends pro scene. And for a North American team, this is almost certainly the biggest accomplishment a team from the region has ever achieved, outdoing Cloud9’s advancement into Worlds semifinals last year. A North American team is now one series away from winning a major international tournament, which has never happened before.
As for what’s next, Europe’s G2 Esports is set to take on Korea’s SK Telecom T1 tomorrow, May 18, with the winner then advancing to face Team Liquid in the finals of MSI 2019. While the tournament has been rather predictable so far, Team Liquid has shown once again that anything and everything can and will happen at these international events.
The finals of MSI 2019 will then take place on Sunday, May 19 to see who leaves as the champion in the calendar year’s second-largest League of Legends competition.
The post Team Liquid Shockingly Takes Down Invictus Gaming in League of Legends MSI 2019 Semifinals by Logan Moore appeared first on DualShockers.