With the first round of the Groups Stage already finished, it is hard to say what teams will qualify for the next phase of the 2020 League of Legends World Championship, especially in groups like Group C, where three teams have completely even scores right now.
In this group, we find representatives of the four biggest regions: LGD Gaming from the LPL, Gen.G from the LCK, Fnatic from the LEC, and Team SoloMid from the LCS.
After the first round of the Bo1 series, the group stands like this:
Only the North American representative has a “more clear” situation in this group (a bad situation though), while anything can happen between the other three… but there is one team here whose path through the Championship must be remarked: LGD Gaming.
The LPL fourth seed started from the Play-in Stage, where they got really bad results during the first Bo1 series, and finally managed to qualify for the Main Event with two insane Bo5 victories (both won 3-0).
Now, they are one of the strongest contenders of their group, and right after their last game of the first round, that ended with a new victory against TSM, we got an exclusive interview with one of the main characters here: LGD’s Support, Ling “Mark” Xu.
Interview with Mark:
Hello Mark, thank you for interviewing with VPEsports. You have just played against TSM, what are your feelings about this game?
My feelings are that we had fun in this game. It was a happy game.
You picked Nautilus, and your win rate with this champion is not the best, why did you pick it?
My teammates thought that my Nautilus was strong in the laning phase, so they wanted me to pick it, but personally, I would have picked Rakan, because I wanted to initiate the team fight.
In this meta, it looks like the support picks are being very determinant. Do you rather play comfort picks or meta champions?
For me, I definitely like to enjoy the game, so I usually prefer comfort picks because it feels fun to play them.
LGD qualified for the main event through the Play-In. Do you feel an actual increase in your opponent’s level?
There are many strong teams in the Group Stage because they are the strongest teams from each region. The teams in the Play-in are strong as well, but since we were not very familiar with the arena at the very beginning, we were not very used to it, so we had several defeats.
Do you think that you can end being more exhausted than your rivals due to your Play-in series and thus perform worse than you should?
Not really, because later we won two BO5s, so we were more confident in ourselves. Only that it was a pity to lose to Gen.G on the first day. We reflected on the problems of ourselves and the team as a whole, and we improved them, which should be able to make us win the following games.
What is the strongest region right now in your opinion?
In terms of the strongest region, it depends on who gets to laugh last. The region of whoever laughs last is the strongest region.
How are you dealing with the pressure of being at Worlds?
I don’t have much pressure actually. I just enjoyed the games. When I got killed, I just thought why I was so stupid in this fight, then I would just laugh a bit at being dumb.
Do you watch other teams play? Is there any support that surprised you?
I do watch other teams play. I think the support player from G2, DRX, and TES play very well.
What bold prediction would you do for LGD’s performance in the second round of Group Stage?
To be bold, hope we advance to the eighth-finals as the Top 1 of the Group, or the Top 2, as long as we qualify for the next stage.
Any words for your fans?
I want to say to fans that thank you for supporting us and giving us much confidence. It was not easy for you to accompany us all this way, just make sure to protect your heart.
Thank you again, Mark, for interviewing with us. Wish LGD perform better in the games next.
Thank you.
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