Fnatic is going to Worlds 2020, but what happened to Rogue?

Fnatic took down first-seed Rogue convincingly in the 2020 LEC Summer Split playoffs upper bracket. 

The summer split has been rough for Fnatic, struggling to find consistency in its most important matches. Fnatic finally woke up when it really mattered, as they met Rogue in the upper bracket. Not only did Fnatic win, they also did it in a convincing 3-0 fashion, something that even Fnatic fans did not expect. 

The win from Fnatic  secures the team a spot at the 2020 World Championship, where they will be joined by G2 Esports and Rogue from the LEC. 

Fnatic has been underperforming all split and was recently left fighting for the last spots in the playoffs, with a chance of not even making it in. Fnatic secured themselves the fourth seed in the final week of the regular split, but only with a modest 9-9 record. 

In the match against Rogue, it looked like a completely new Fnatic squad who had finally found the correct formula. Players such as Oskar “Selfmade” Borek and Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau proved again why they have previously been considered some of the best players in their roles. 

Selfmade especially dominated in the jungle, playing Evelynn in two out of three games. The early game presence he had on Evelynn was pure class, securing his team some decisive leads. 

Rogue on the other hand struggled to find the control that we have seen from them in the regular split, where they won many games through superior macro and team fighting. 

Have LEC teams figured out Rogue?

Rogue underperformed a lot considering their great regular split. Rogue qualified to the playoffs as the first seed, securing themselves a spot at Worlds before even playing a best-of-five series.

Even though Rogue took the first seed, many critics have been skeptical about them because of their transparent play style, and we now see why. It was clear that Fnatic knew how Rogue would approach the game, and Fnatic was able to punish that approach hard. 

Fnatic knew that Rogue wanted to play a slow and controlled style, but they instantly countered that by picking aggressive champions in the jungle through which Selfmade could establish a lead. Meanwhile, the Fnatic bot lane showed dominance by shutting down Steven “Hans Sama” Liv, and that was more than enough to control the pace of the games. 

Rogue still has a shot at the LEC title through the lower bracket but will have to improve their play drastically. It’s also starting to become clear that Rogue needs more depth in their stylistic approach to keep up with the best teams in a best-of-five. 

Rogue will play the winner of MAD Lions and Schalke 04 on Saturday, August 30.