Besides the World Championship, the Mid-Season Invitational is the most important event in the annual League of Legends calendar. With G2 Esports and the MAD Lions, two European teams still have a chance at the title.
Yesterday evening, the first stage of this year’s MSI came to an end: The Play-Ins Stage. A total of 12 teams, including the European representatives of G2 Esports, competed for one of the remaining three final round tickets.
As usual in international tournaments of this size, the Play-Ins-Stage was a gathering of all the big names in the scene. Four of them stood out: G2 Esports, the winners of the LEC Winter Split, Bilibili Gaming, the runners-up of the LPL Spring Split, Golden Guardians, also Spring Split runners-up, but in the American LCS and PSG Talon, the top team of the Taiwanese region.
@G2League and @MADLions_EN are bringing a dash of history with a whole serving of the future to MSI2023 pic.twitter.com/uHPT0W7AS8
– LoL Esports (@lolesports) April 29, 2023
These four teams also ultimately settled the three knockout stage tickets among themselves. Bilibili Gaming and G2 Esports went the straight and narrow. Two wins each in the upper bracket meant direct qualification for the next round.
The situation was different for PSG Talon and Golden Guardians. Both lost against one of the other “Top4″ and had to go to the Lower Bracket. After wins against Rainbow7 (Golden Guardians) and LOUD (PSG Talon), it came to the direct encounter in the decisive match for the last ticket – with the better end for the American team.
With a smooth 3:0 sweep, the Golden Guardians clearly defeated PSG Talon. Only the third game of the series was a match on about the same level.
In the upcoming bracket stage, the trio will now face the remaining five pre-qualified teams: Gen.G Esports, the MAD Lions, T1, Cloud9 and JD Gaming.
Your schedule for Round 1 of the MSI2023 Bracket Stage! pic.twitter.com/Q0g0jfm05t
– LoL Esports (@lolesports) May 7, 2023
MSI 2023: EU with title chances?
The kick-off is on Tuesday, May 09 at 14:00 with the game G2 against Gen.G. . Exactly 24 hours later the second EU representative, MAD Lions, will play their match against T1. The match will be played in best-of-five mode and analogous to the play-ins stage with upper and lower bracket.
For the two LEC teams certainly not easy, but certainly not impossible tasks. G2 seems to have rehabilitated quickly after the disappointing fourth place in the Spring Split. The sovereign qualification via the play-ins stage testifies to that. The LEC record champions are always capable of taking on any team in the world on a good day.
The MAD Lions also proved they are capable of anything with their title win last split, when they barely made it to the playoffs via tiebreaker with a negative record of 3-6 and ended up lifting the trophy there despite everything. Whether they can carry this over to the big stage of the Copper Box Arena in London remains to be seen.
With a little bit of luck, the European fanbase’s dream of winning their first international title since G2’s MSI triumph in 2019 is definitely possible.
