On April 20th (Vietnam time), the Lower Bracket Semifinal match between Top Esports and Victory Five took place. After dropping to the lower bracket, V5, who was once a championship contender, surprisingly found themselves at a disadvantage. However, TES was also not a consistently strong team throughout this playoff stage. Therefore, many viewers still believed that Rookie and his teammates could secure a victory against TES to later face Royal Never Give Up in the finals.
But in the end, V5 could not win against TES. In fact, V5 even allowed TES to turn the game around after leading in game 1. On a day of poor performance, Rookie and Karsa had to face the end of their season after this matchup.
With Rookie’s remarkable resurgence in the LPL Spring this year, many believed that V5 would be one of the two teams to reach the finals. In fact, many LPL fans and the global League of Legends community were looking forward to a showdown between Rookie and Faker. Rookie could be considered one of Faker’s “nemeses” as “The Demon King” has not performed well in past encounters with the former Invictus Gaming star.
However, hopes for this classic matchup were dashed. The LCK community was particularly vocal in their criticism of Rookie. According to some opinions, Rookie was even deemed not yet qualified to face Faker in this Spring 2022.
But to be fair, Rookie had a very good Spring season, exceeding many people’s expectations. He was the driving force in transforming V5 from a mediocre team, even finishing last in Summer 2021, into a real powerhouse in Spring 2022. Even Faker himself acknowledged that Rookie is currently the number one Mid Laner in the LPL.
Moreover, in V5’s recent defeat, it stemmed from the unexpected decline of Rich and Karsa, as well as the duo Photic – Ppgod. Notably, in game 4, Rich fed 10 kills without securing a single elimination. Furthermore, League of Legends is a team game. And certainly, Rookie alone could not “make spring happen” against a high-performing TES squad in the recent encounter.