FunPlus Phoenix became the first team to be eliminated from the 2021 League of Legends World Championship group stage following a 0-4 record Friday in the second round robin, and Rogue joined them shortly after as the second team finding elimination.
Coming into the day, FPX didn’t need to win too many games to advance to the knockout stage, with a guaranteed tiebreaker in all but one scenario. After their loss to Rogue, and Cloud9’s loss to DWG KIA, FPX found themselves at the bottom of a three-way tie with Rogue and Cloud9.
FPX came into Worlds 2021 as one of the favorites, but the Chinese team’s trip to Iceland was cut short. With their direct qualification to the group stage, the team only got six total games at the event. They qualified as the League of Legends Pro League No. 2 seed, after coming in second place in both spring and summer splits of the LPL.
Mid laner Kim “Doinb” Tae-sang had perhaps the best split of his whole career this summer, but was less impactful during this event with the fourth-lowest KDA (kills/deaths/assists) among mid laners at 2.0 throughout Worlds. He also had the second-worst creep score difference at 10 minutes and second-worst experience difference at 10 during groups. Likewise, jungler Gao “Tian” Tian-Liang struggled heavily with the meta changes, looking lost in many of their games and uncoordinated with the rest of his team. Top laner Jang “Nuguri” Ha-gwon also had a particularly rough second round-robin, with a 0.82 KDA on the day.
Rogue needed at least two wins to advance to the knockout stage in the second round-robin, but they only managed to snag one win in the regular group stage. It was a crucial win against FPX, however, which set up for the three-way tie-breaker scenario. Unfortunately for the European third seed, after defeating FPX for a second time, they fell to Cloud9 for the second time at the end of the day to cut their trip to Iceland short, with eight total games played in the tournament, with a final record of 3-5.
DWG KIA advanced to the quarterfinals after the first game of the day, which is what started FPX off on their loss streak. There, they’ll face a number two seed from one of the other groups, while Cloud9 faces the first seed of another group. Check out the rest of the schedule on the official LoL Esports website.
