Worlds Wrapped - The West Crumbles

With Rogue's crushing defeat to JDG in the quarter-finals, there are no Western teams left in the tournament. It's been 3 long years since a Western team made a meaningful run into an international knockout stage, and the gap between Eastern and Western League has never felt more vast.

The Eastern vs Western Gap

It's been a difficult couple of years for LEC and LCS fans when it comes to international competitions. Since G2's run to the Worlds finals in 2019, the West has been unable to produce a team capable of making it past the quarter-finals.

This year has been a particularly rough year for the West, with only two teams earning the chance to face Eastern teams in a best-of 5. Rogue and G2 were crushed by JDG and T1, with neither team managing to take a game off their opponents.

There are a plethora of reasons why the gap exists, ranging from playerbase size, money and cultural differences, and pros have provided some further insight. Rekkles suggested the East have superior drafts and fewer misplays, while Closer believes Western teams imitate Eastern teams but are unable to best them at their own game.

Rethinking History

The discussion surrounding the gap's true size has been reignited over the last few years. This is partly due to how well the West had performed between 2018-2020; the 2019 MSI finals was a Western battle between TL and G2, and the LEC made back-to-back Worlds finals in 2018 and 2019.

After year of Eastern dominance, these tournaments felt like a turning point for competitive League when we dared to hope that the West was finally catching up. However, did we just get caught up in the hype and overvalue a few excellent outliers from the West?

Many look to FNC and G2 – Worlds finalists in 2018 and 2019 – as the pioneers for the West. But perhaps these rosters were just a case of a couple of players coming together and creating true magic, instead of solid proof the West was catching up with the East.

Summary

Whether the LCS and LEC will be able to catch up with the LCK and LPL remains to be seen. However, with rumours circulating of huge format changes coming to next year, perhaps this is the first meaningful step to the gap finally shrinking and more competitive clashes at international tournaments.