Team Liquid: The Superteam Is Back On Track
After a dominant Week 1 LCS 2022 Summer Split performance, the North American superteam, Team Liquid, is back on track.
André González Rodríguez
23rd Jun 2022 01:35
Image via Team Liquid
Following their impressive and dominating Week 1 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) 2022 Summer Split performance, it’s safe to say that Team Liquid, North America’s latest superteam, is back on track. This comes after the team failed to meet expectations in the spring.
It’s not easy living up to the expectations placed upon you at the highest level of competition and there’s no team in the LCS that knows this more than them. Thanks to their 2022 offseason, which in many LCS viewers’ eyes was seen as the best amongst all of the organisations, the team had a substantial amount of pressure put on them from the jump.
Going into the LCS 2022 season, the team was stacked from top to bottom - literally. For starters in the solo lanes former LEC star, Gabriel "Bwipo" Rau, who returned to the top lane after a stint in the jungle that produced a modicum of success, and you have prolific mid-laner and North American great, Soren "Bjergsen" Bjerg who just left his long-time home of Team SoloMid. They are followed up by jungler Lucas "Santorin" Larsen that since his return to the LCS with FlyQuest in 2020 seemingly won’t stop improving. And rounded out by the bot lane duo of superstar LEC ADC Steven "Hans sama" Liv who is paired up with multiple-time MVP support Jo "CoreJJ" Yong-in.
In essence, barring imports from regions like Korea or China, an LCS, perhaps even a Western team in general, cannot get any better than that. This meant that they automatically were assumed to at least be in every single final throughout the year as well as qualify for the World Championship and beyond.
Team Liquid Starts The LCS 2022 On The Right Track But Get Off The Rails
To start the 2022 season they were just that and thanks to the LCS 2022 Lock In tournament, they showed why. The tournament allowed this new-look Team Liquid to get some reps in prior to the actual meaningful games and it allowed them to show that the names on the roster weren’t just names, they were the ones who will control the LCS for the foreseeable future. This led to a cruising LCS Lock In championship victory.
Knowing that, they were expected to ride on the coattails of that performance throughout the LCS 2022 Spring Split from start to finish, leaving zero doubt in anyone’s minds. However, that wasn’t the case as even though they had a solid regular season - a bare minimum for a team as stacked as this - they were overshadowed by a surprisingly dominant Cloud9 team that were looking like the clear Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) North American representatives early on.
Fortunately for them, their bare minimum was just enough to earn them a second seed going into the spring playoffs, granting them a bye and a solid position to win the whole in the process. However, in the end, it didn’t matter as although this Team Liquid team seemed to be firing on all cylinders as evidenced by their 3-2 victory over eventual champions, Evil Geniuses, and to some extent, their 3-2 loss to reigning champions, 100 Thieves, to start the tournament, the team was just missing one or two more things to get over the hump. This meant that they couldn’t win out the first split of the season.
The Superteam Is Back On Track
Reeling from the fact that they didn’t even make it to the spring finals, Team Liquid went into the Summer Split with even higher expectations. Fortunately for them, so far just in Week 1, they’ve proven once again why they had that placed upon them.
Not only they did showcase it, but they’ve come back with a vengeance. One that let them not only make a mockery out of Immortals with a historic perfect game to start the summer, but they also finished out the rest of the week in style, taking out both Dignitas and Cloud9 in the process.
Now this Team Liquid squad, fully energized and fully ready to take on the LCS, is not only ready to take home an LCS championship - the first one since 2019 - but also they look to go even further beyond that with Worlds.
About The Author
André González Rodríguez
André is a Freelance League of Legends Journalist at GGRecon. He has written about his state’s local esports teams such as the Florida Mayhem and the Florida Mutineers on the Valencia Voice (Valencia College’s online newspaper). André has been watching esports since 2013 spanning different titles such as Call of Duty, League of Legends, Overwatch, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Ultimate, as well as other FGC titles.
