League of Legends Worlds 2019: five early candidates for the Dade Award

We look at the five League of Legends players at Worlds most at risk of being the Dade Award winner.

At the League of Legends World Championship, the Dade Award is given to “the player who failed to deliver upon broadcast, community, regional or personal hype or expectations at that year’s World Championship more than any other that year.” In short, it’s an award for the player who most underperforms relative to expectations at Worlds.

5. Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in (Team Liquid)

If I could go off the top 20 list to include honorable mentions, CoreJJ would likely be bumped off. I think Core is absolutely a solid player and the best player NA is sending to Worlds. There’s not much of a risk of him caving under pressure, I mean the guy is a former World Champion in his own right.

Instead, my concern is simply that NA as a whole is an incredibly weak region and CoreJJ is the great white hope for the LCS as a whole. Considering that TL has drawn into the “Group of Life” in Group D and he’ll be facing both an incredibly weak bot lane duo from AHQ and an inconsistent duo from Invictus, expectations will be that TL will get out of groups by carrying through bot lane. If TL flames out in groups, Core will be a prime target for hate.

4. Yu “JackeyLove” Wen-Bo (Invictus Gaming)

Speaking of Group D, one of CoreJJ’s biggest threats to keep him out of the knockout round is also a threat for the Dade Award. Another former World Champion, JackeyLove had a pretty disappointing summer with Invictus Gaming. He did step his game up during the playoffs, but it remains to be seen if he has turned his play around permanently or if he’ll regress once again at Worlds. Given the unease a lot of people have about Invictus and the fact that few are mentioning JackeyLove as a possible issue, his underperformance would be a shock and a topic for scrutiny.

3. Zdravets “Hylissang” Iliev Galabov (Fnatic)

Considering I had Hylissang as my 10th-best support at Worlds, it’s no surprise that I don’t have a lot of confidence that he will perform very well at Worlds. He also has the misfortune of getting drawn into Group C, aka “the Group of Death.”

He and Rekkles will be facing the bot lane duos from RNG (Uzi/Ming) and SKT (Teddy/Effort), which will be a very difficult task. While I do think that Hyli is, individually, a better support than Effort, I think Ming will crush Fnatic’s support. In addition, since I had Teddy rated higher than Rekkles, the onus in Fnatic’s matchup with SKT will largely be on Hyli to win the bot lane. I just don’t think he’ll be up to that task.

2. Song “Rookie” Eui-jin (Invictus Gaming)

Again, there is a lot of suspicion of Invictus underperforming at Worlds and Rookie could be a focal point of that concern. He looked very shaky during the LPL regular season and playoffs, which is why the guy who last year was considered to be one of the best mid laners in the world. In fact, it’s that low ranking on this list that saves him from being the number one contender for the Dade Award going into Worlds…

Next. Can Splyce win Worlds?. dark

1. Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok (SKT)

His legacy as the greatest League of Legends player ever is set in stone, but Faker being ranked the number one player in the world following his uneven performance for SKT during the Summer Split is questionable, to put it kindly. This isn’t to say that I think Faker will perform terribly during Worlds, but if you’re asking whether I think he’ll perform at the level of the best player in the world, based on his performance during the regular season, I don’t think that’s likely.

The League of Legends World Championship kicks off Wednesday, October 2 at 7:00 EST / 13:00 CEST.

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