Western League of Legends and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
While it’s today (Oct. 31) that’s traditionally the night of scares and spooks, for both the LEC and LCS, October 30th will likely go down in history as the most frightful day in western competitive League of Legend history.
Two eliminations from Worlds 2026, of both Team Liquid, and G2 Esports, saw the highest echelons of both European and North American regions depleted down to just a trio of representatives between them. And far from valiant last-stands against top flight opponents, both games will be remembered as muted whimpers from teams drowning in the proverbial three-inches of water in the bathtub.
Team Liquid and G2 Esports eliminated from Worlds 2026
First on the chopping block were Team Liquid, who became the second LCS team to find themselves outed from the tournament by CBLoL opponents. Echoing the Play-in humbling of Cloud9 by FURIA, Team Liquid found themselves only able to muster a single win against the stacked Brazilian LOS team.
The final game, perhaps the biggest stamp of disapproval on Team Liquid, saw LOS feeling confident to ban five junglers against Team Liquidi, in a move we’re sure had Brandon "Josedeodo" Villegas questioning his life choices. After all, how could he have found himself the only worthwhile player on NA’s number one seed team. That’s to say nothing of the Tristana top pick which saw Park "Morgan" Ru-han’s Gnar bullied remorselessly by Kim "Zest" Dong-min.
Remember this: The LCS who less than a year ago were celebrating their liberation from the LTA, have now twice been defeated by the same teams (and in some cases same players) they felt it was not fair for them to be lumped in together with.
Not content with just being the day a Brazilian team put the breaks on yet another NA teams aspirations, Oct. 30 also saw G2 crash out of the tournament in what was expected to be either a hard fought victory, or at worst, a pyrrhic last stand.
Instead, G2 were thoroughly outplayed by an international team they’ve played before within the last four months. This coming after the bizarre switchup at the coaching position that saw Dylan Falco ousted from the coaching position and instead Luka "Perkz" Perković step in the the coaching role.
In hindsight, firing your seven-time Finals-winning coach and the man behind G2’s and indeed Europe’s highest ever international finishes, in favor of a former player and fan favorite hired to seemingly ‘increase the vibes’ for the incumbent players, appears to be a bad idea. But it was a bad idea on paper when it first happened. However, the rigors of the scientific method demand lab time, and this experiment has blown up in G2’s faces.
Rasmus "Caps" Winther looked bewildered on the international stage, for perhaps the first time in his career, against Kim "Zeka" Geon-woo, the fourth or fifth best Korean midlaner at this tournament. And while social media will be making jokes about washed players, it’s really the decision to allow and seemingly endorse his coaches’ firing and friend and former teammate’s hiring as the new coach that’s the biggest transgression from the early Hall of Legends inductee.
Worlds 2026 Swiss Stage concludes today, and we’re guaranteed at least one Western team in the final stage. Even so, this is a disaster for both regions, one that will hopefully, this time, not be forgotten.
