On Monday, the League of Legends Champions Korea’s second seed Gen.G advanced to the 2021 League of Legends World Championship quarterfinals after beating MAD Lions in a tiebreaker. They’ll face off against Cloud9 on Monday, Oct. 25 at approximately 8 a.m. ET.
With the highly-rated MAD Lions and LNG Esports in their group, as well as a scrappy Team Liquid with the potential to shake things up, not everyone was confident in Gen.G’s on-paper chances to leave Group D. Before the tournament, LCK caster Maurits “Chronicler” Jan Meeusen proclaimed that Gen.G is not a team that should be taken lightly at the World Championship.
“People somehow got it in their heads that somehow Gen.G is the worst and they are going to bomb out of their group,” said Chronicler. “Every time people think that, Gen.G just crushes everyone’s hopes and dreams. For people thinking Gen.G won’t get out of groups…I think that is a very, very optimistic take.”
As the rookie of the squad, Noh “Burdol” Tae-yoon was recognized early on by regional experts as a player with the ability to become a major difference-maker for the team throughout the tournament, especially in the group stage. While his groups performances weren’t up to his own personal standards according to Burdol, his biggest chance to prove himself at Worlds 2021 will be this weekend.
Although he didn’t play the match, Burdol sat down with Upcomer after Gen.G’s victory over MAD to speak about his relationship with starting top laner Kim “Rascal” Kwang-hee, what he’s learned from playing on the European servers and his vision for how he’d like the story of his pro career to be remembered by.
He also weighed in on his expectations for the series.
“Compared to other teams, Cloud9 is relatively weaker,” Burdol said. “So I think we are having some good results in that regard.”
