League of Legends: Team Liquid vs Clutch Gaming LCS semi-final preview
By Shay Coleman
Who is favored in the second semi-final of the 2019 LCS playoffs in this League of Legends version of David vs Goliath?
Team Liquid and Clutch Gaming had wildly different performances in this year’s League of Legends Championship Series Spring Split. Clutch finished the LCS Spring Split with a 9th place finish and 5 total wins out of 18, while Liquid won 14 regular-season games and went on to win the whole competition in a close 3-2 series victory over legacy franchise Team SoloMid.
Now, these two will meet in the Summer Split playoffs with a spot in the LCS finals and a shot at a guaranteed trip to Worlds on the line. It’s a David versus Goliath match, so does David stand any chance?
Team David
Yeehaw, it’s Texas Time! Clutch Gaming struggled to get their act together in time to make a playoff run in 2019 Spring, mixing up their roster to drop Damonte, role-swap Piglet to mid-lane and re-introduce Cody Sun to the LCS. While the logic was obvious with Clutch getting most of their wins while Piglet was playing Irelia in the bot lane. It wasn’t to be, and they stayed 9th until the end of the split.
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While Piglet’s LCS run sadly came to an end, Cody Sun’s re-introduction made all the difference for Clutch Gaming as they stormed to a 5th place finish on the last day of the LCS Summer Regular Split when they broke a tie between themselves and Golden Guardians.
Clutch then went and completely out-did themselves. In the first quarter-final of the Summer Split, Clutch went up against the aforementioned TSM. A thunderous display from Damonte and the invincible Cody Sun led Clutch to win the series 3-1 and enter an unexpected semi-final against Goliath, aka Team Liquid.
Team Goliath
The wrath of Team Liquid in North America over the past 2 years cannot be understated. They managed to build a team that could not be defeated by anybody in North America in 2018, employing LCS icon Doublelift, World Champion Impact, LCS champions Xmithie and Pobelter, and former Immortals support Olleh. This iteration of Team Liquid won both LCS splits in 2018. They crumbled on the international stage however and looked to improve for 2019.
Team Liquid showed the were not messing around in the 2019 pre-season. Now that Impact was an NA resident, they had another import slot available and used it brilliantly. They announced that World Champion CoreJJ and Worlds semi-finalist Jensen would be signing from Gen.G and Cloud9 respectively.
They stomped Spring Split 2019, losing only four games and reserve-sweeping TSM in the finals after they put up a surprisingly tough fight. They went to MSI and performed perhaps the biggest upset in international League of Legends history by upsetting the defending world champions Invictus Gaming by a thrashing scoreline of 3-0. They were swept in the finals by Europe’s top dogs G2 Esports in another 3-0 series.
They came to NA with a chip on their shoulder. They managed to fend off challengers Cloud9 and Counter-Logic Gaming to secure yet another 1st seed with a day to spare, and a chance to troll TSM by running an all Glacial style composition (a game that they won, actually).
They had the choice of either Clutch Gaming or CLG for their semi-final game, a privilege you receive for finishing 1st in the regular season. They picked the on-form Clutch and put us in this situation.