When living in our own regional bubble, separated from the world, it’s hard to tell where we are internationally with any real accuracy. We can guess that we’re behind Korea and China but ahead of North America and the various other countries (although honestly, I’m not certain our best teams would beat NA’s at this moment), but ultimately we’re left hoping that Europe will step it up when international competition arrives. We’ve seen that in the past with both Gambit and Fnatic, but some of us remember when our teams were consistently good. Whether it’s the format of the LCS (which we’ll get to in another article) or a blasé attitude from the teams causing this, we’re not entirely sure. But let’s look back to Season 3’s Spring Split:

That particular split was ruled by three teams: Fnatic and Gambit were the kings, both scoring 21+ wins (with a 75% win rate) and they were consistently beating the teams weaker than them (barring Gambit’s struggles with EG and Giants). The third team was Copenhagen Wolves who, by the end of the season, were taking games left and right. These three teams all played brilliant League in the standard group phases – the interesting part is that Gambit and Fnatic played it the whole season long, even when they were completely safe. We believed that Gambit and Fnatic had a good chance internationally – we didn’t know for sure but they were impressive and the split was great to watch because of it. We don’t know what changed in the Summer split but since then it’s been a different story. If it weren’t for Fnatic’s, let’s be honest here, relative success at worlds we’re not sure anyone would hold any faith the EU LCS at all.

So let’s focus on now: I want you to really think about who is the best team in the EU LCS. Now the question is, are they actually good? Their jungler and their AD might be good. There’s a chance their support is good. Are their top and mid good? Are they playing really well, dominating? Are your team closing out games quickly? Are they still making mistakes?

Of course, there is more to league than individual skill, but the lack of stomps has scared us. The lack of runaway advantages being smartly driven home in 25-30 minutes is a big warning sign. People love to talk about how close the EU LCS is and how anyone can beat anyone, but it’s not because all the teams are really good, it’s because all the teams are as good as each other. Our current top three (Gambit, SK Gaming & Roccat) are a good few to look at. Gambit only look like themselves about half the time. They’re not consistent like they used to be in the days of IEM or even last Spring Split. I imagine when teams face Gambit instead of being scared, they just hope that that’s the game Gambit don’t show up. They have about a 45% chance of that apparently. For Roccat, we saw their early success thanks to smart play making up for their shortcomings (a weak early game). Our problem now is that they stopped improving and now their weak early game is a gaping hole for other teams to step through. We could point out these flaws for every team: Fnatic should be the best but individually they’ve been horrendous, Millennium have a weak jungler and mid (although Kerp has improved a lot), Alliance wait for their opponents to lose, SHC XD are too dependent on their laning phase while Wolves are too scared of making a mistake to act. We’d love to pick the teams apart in more detail but that won’t help us any.

We’d like to try and prove our point using SK Gaming. We really like SK Gaming. They were given little to no respect at the beginning of the season but they have slowly shown progression. They are the only team that improves each week without taking a step back. SK Gaming are a nice blend of intelligent yet aggressive. They’re one of the few teams that can drive home an advantage in the late game and their late game tower dives are ballsy to the extreme. Their lanes are all solid (but not outstanding) and Svenskeren is gaining recognition as one of the best junglers in Europe (we don’t want to start an argument, so we’ll call him top 3). But as a whole, right now, SK Gaming still aren’t a great team. They may well be playing the best in Europe at the moment, but they aren’t undeniably the best team in Europe. No offence to SK Gaming, we’re happy we have a team that’s playing well, but it’s almost disappointing that this is the best Europe has to offer right now. If SK keep playing and improving, they’ll win this split, they’re this season’s Lemondogs. But while SK have risen to the occasion, it’s only happened because everyone around them has crumbled. For every game a team does well, they play another where they don’t. For every game a good team plays badly, we weep the loss of what could have been.

To really drive this home, let’s take this to an individual level. The all-stars discussion gives us a good way to do this. There was a lot of talk about who the best players in each position were and it’s no surprise that no one agreed. This wasn’t solely down to fan bias, but honestly it’s because it’s a hard question to answer. Here’s our experiment, we’re not going to ask who the “best” player is, but instead:


Notice the wording. It isn’t “who could play at an international level” but “who is playing”. We could tell you our answers, but honestly nobody is more than a maybe and no one matches that well against their SKT counterparts. We can’t even think of a top or mid that we would even call maybes. We’re not decrying the EU LCS. We’re not trying to insult the teams (especially the new teams), but we need to say: we miss high-level European play and if it’s not being consistently delivered, then something needs to be done.

To do a week 9 preview before IEM would be quite the oversight, so we’ll save that for after IEM. As for IEM, we don’t hold out much hope for our teams, based on LCS performance, but due to the nature of the event, we could see a surge from Gambit or Fnatic – both teams have a history of looking completely different in standard tournaments. How far this gets them, we can’t really say. We wouldn’t be surprised to see all three European teams go out in the group stages. If Gambit or Fnatic suddenly turn it on, who knows?

Hopefully this event will be the slap in the face Europe needs.