Over the offseason, Team Liquid bolstered their superstar roster by signing the beloved Danish jungler, Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen from Fnatic. Broxah was amongst the top junglers during the 2019 season in Europe and has played a vital role in Fnatic success over the last few years, winning back-to-back titles in 2018, and reaching the 2018 World Championship finals where they ultimately lost to Invictus Gaming, in a horrific clean sweep, 3-0.
Team Liquid had the dream offseason as they acquired one of the best junglers Europe has to offer and re-signed their remaining members (excluding Jake “Xmithie” Kevin Puchero), who were all top two in their roles during the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) seasons in 2019. The addition of Broxah sets the four-time champions up to win both the spring and summer split consecutively for the third year in the row but unfortunately, Broxah has been unable to fly to North America due to work visa issues, which has presented Team Liquid with a troublesome start to the 2020 LCS spring split season.
Standing in for Broxah whilst Team Liquid continued working towards getting their new European jungler to compete in the LCS was their Academy jungler, Shern “Shernfire” Cherng Tai. Team Liquid’s record with Shernfire in the jungle is two wins and two losses, beating out FlyQuest and Team Solo Mid, but losing to Dignitas and current first place, Cloud 9. Whilst Shernfire has performed to a good standard, the inexperience from Shernfire and lack of practice with the team prior to the LCS beginning has resulted in Team Liquid losing two of their opening games.
Broxah and Team Liquid have now officially confirmed that his visa has been approved and he will be flying from Europe to North America to join his teammates and start competing in the LCS, a huge relief for not only Team Liquid fans, but Broxah and the Team Liquid organization as a whole.
Visa update, today is a great day. pic.twitter.com/7tSLsyWM9E
— Broxah (@BroxahLoL) February 6, 2020
Team Liquid faces 100 Thieves on February 8 and Golden Guardians on February 10, but it is still uncertain as to whether Broxah will be in the starting lineup as of yet. One thing is for sure, once Broxah is comfortable and settled in at Team Liquid, their roster will return to winning ways, but with Cloud9 starting the season with a bang, Team Liquid will have much tougher opponents to get through to complete the three-time back-to-back titles.
