Fnatic will advance to the quarter-final stage of the 2019 League of Legends World Championship after a perfect 3-0 day that included wins against Clutch Gaming (CG), SK Telecom T1 (SKT), and Royal Never Give Up (RNG).
The LEC representative entered the final day of the group stage ranked behind a then-undefeated SKT and an impressive RNG team. With just one win over CG and defeats to SKT and RNG already, the task of winning all three games appeared to be an extremely challenging quest.
Although Fnatic got started with a win against CG, the game proved to be far more difficult for them than expected.
Fnatic’s hopes of advancing to the quarter-final stage appeared to worsen after the team struggled in a back-and-forth 48-minute game with CG. In the end, CG’s bizarre decision to call for an outmatched base race proved too costly and Fnatic rolled through the nexus in mere seconds to punish them.
That game was baffling at the time and later became even more so after Fnatic crushed both SKT and RNG, two of the higher-skilled teams in the entire competition.
THE GREATEST DAY IN WORLDS GROUPSTAGE HISTORY.
WE HAVE DONE IT. WE NEEDED TO 3-0. WE WENT 3-0.
SIEMPRE LO SUPIMOS. NOS VEMOS PRONTO, MADRID.#ALWAYSFNATIC #WORLDS2019 pic.twitter.com/hMB5IsIlra
— FNATIC (@FNATIC) October 19, 2019
Speaking to Ashley Kang of Korizon Esports, Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen, explained that the five-man team came into the final day of the group stage wanting to play more aggressively – and it certainly paid off.
“I think we had a bunch of mistakes in the first week; some in strategy, some in our approach to the game, and some in our mindset,” Broxah said.
“We had a lot of discussions about how we want to approach week two and just make sure that we come in with a bit of a different fashion in terms of strategy. Like we played AD carry’s today, for example, we wanted to try that out.
“We came in today with nothing to lose. We wanted to play aggressive. Rather than wanting to stall the game, we wanted to have a chance to play early game.”
“So for us, it was mostly about getting a mental reset and just try to reset and then come into the day today with like no regrets. We have nothing to lose anymore, just go play our game and then hopefully we can actually make it to the next stage. Now we are all really confident that we can actually go far.”
Now, Fnatic can look forward to the next stage of the 2019 League of Legends World Championship, where the team is set to face Funplus Phoenix in a best-of-five series.
The #Worlds2019 Quarterfinal bracket: pic.twitter.com/JO6j0C7233
— LoL Esports (@lolesports) October 20, 2019
“I am really, really happy that we made it to quarter-finals,” Broxah said.
“Finally, we managed to take down RNG. This is my third tournament playing against them. They were always the ones knocking us out, and this time we actually made it through.”
