Facing a team like Cloud9, T1 was of course rated higher. The LCK representative had already made preparations early on. No longer complacent like in their match against Team Liquid (also a name from LCS), but T1 certainly viewed the match against C9 as an opportunity to experiment with new options. In fact, Faker and his teammates had a rather relaxed match with many “uncommon” champions appearing, such as Bard in Keria’s hands or Faker using Sylas for the first time at this Worlds.
Not just a victory, but the match resembled T1’s players trying to experiment with the lineup and find the best possible mindset. Unyielding and unhurried, the match ended as T1 steadily widened the advantage while C9 could not find any way to fight back. In fact, C9 became the first team in Worlds 2023 not to secure a single kill against their opponents, despite the fact that they were the second seed of LCS.
Witnessing the performance of both teams, credit must be given to T1 even though they have many champions that need to engage the enemy like Sylas or Jarvan IV while still maintaining a perfect statistic. However, C9 must be criticized more when “Cửu Vân” showed no sign of being a Major team. In fact, one viewer remarked: “The moment you realize the LCS region has lost a representative before the tournament even started, one team is losing 0-2, another team isn’t even getting a single kill in a match. Only NRG is left, but they also lost one match already. Looking over to VCS to see, at least they managed to win against an LEC team in a BO3, while GAM got a few kills against Gen.G.”
There’s no denying that the T1 players played as cautiously as possible. But perhaps, C9 also “self-destructed” significantly as they performed incredibly weak. T1 simply did what they had to do and what their opponents brought to them.