Team Liquid reach LoL Worlds 2020 groups after shock INTZ defeat

North American giants Team Liquid have sealed their place in the League of Legends Worlds 2020 group stages, but suffered a stunning defeat to INTZ in their fourth play-in match. 

Coming into Worlds 2020,  many predicted that Team Liquid’s first match of the tournament would determine how things would go for them, and the North American side seemed destined to qualify for the group stages comfortably after knocking off the LEC’s MAD Lions in their first match, and dominating Papara SuperMassive early on Monday, September 26.

With just one match standing between them and qualification, many predicted that TL would steamroll over Brazillian squad INTZ to secure their place in the tournaments main events, but fans across the globe were left stunned when the underdogs with a 0-3 record pulled off a surprising comeback to take their match, and forced Team Liquid to play a first-place decider in the process.

INTZ came out aggressive to start their match against the North American side, but Team Liquid were able to expand and set themselves up to dominate the midlane with an impressive 4,000 gold lead, and set up the 1-3-1 composition with an eye on wiping on INTZ and taking home the victory.

While Team Liquid did make some mistakes, it was INTZ’s ability to crack their 1-3-1 set up and take Impact out of the game that proved to be the turning point for the Brazilians, and their clean team fights were the catalyst that drove them into the Team Liquid base, taking down the inhibitors before entering into a final team fight to wipe out TL once and for all, and destroy their Nexus.

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Despite the stunning defeat, Mads ‘Broxah’ Brock-Pedersen quickly took to Twitter to admit that they had played a “bad game,” before turning his attention to their next game, saying that there was “nothing to do about it at this point,” and that they were going to “reset and prepare for the tiebreaker.”

Thankfully for LCS fans, Team Liquid did just that and put in a dominating performance in their 1st place tiebreaker against OCE’s Legacy Esports to secure their place in the group stages of Worlds 2020. It took just over 20 minutes for TL to destroy the enemy Nexus, with Broxah’s use of Graves causing Legacy problems time and time again as they picked up their second victory of the team at Worlds 2020.

“I’m feeling pretty relieved,” Nicolaj ‘Jensen’ Jensen said after the match. “I’m glad we don’t have to go into a Bo5, because I think some of the play-in teams look pretty strong at the moment. We picked really strong lanes this game. We’ve been trying to be more cohesive as a team, so I think that we’re better at snowballing the game with small leads. We’re just playing better, and the aggression kicks in naturally.”

Legacy’s run at Worlds 2020 isn’t over yet though, and they still have the opportunity to qualify on Wednesday, September 30 when they compete in a best-of-five showdown with either Rainbow7 or LGD Gaming, with the final group stage spot on the line.