Recently, during the latest livestream, EDward Gaming’s manager – Aaron, shared some noteworthy information regarding the personnel issues of LPL teams at Worlds 2021. Accordingly, Riot China has approved a short-term regulation allowing participating teams to “borrow players” from other teams to supplement their 6-man roster heading to Europe, in case some personnel face entry issues and cannot attend Worlds.
This regulation arises from Riot Games’ decision to move the venue for Worlds 2021 from China to Europe at the “last minute”, leading to difficulties for LPL players in obtaining visas to travel to Europe.
To prevent a “depleted roster,” LPL teams will be allowed to register substitutes for those who cannot acquire a visa by borrowing players from other teams. Of course, this regulation comes with extremely complex requirements to avoid any “loophole” issues.
According to Aaron, the borrowing regulation can be understood as follows:
– The 4 participating teams (EDG, FPX, RNG, LNG) must submit a preliminary roster of 6 (or 7) players for Worlds 2021. If any of these players encounter visa or health issues and cannot attend Worlds, that team is then allowed to find a replacement.
– Players cannot be borrowed from the top 6 LPL teams. This means that the aforementioned 4 teams cannot… borrow from each other, or borrow players from Rare Atom or WE.
Based on these rules, the 2 teams being “eyed” for borrowing players by the 4 teams attending Worlds are Top Esports and Suning, along with JD Gaming. These teams are outside the top 6 but have many quality stars. In fact, according to some reports from China, several players like Bin, Zoom, Kanavi, Karsa, SofM, Angel, Knight, JackeyLove, Huanfeng… have been targeted and requested visas to travel to Europe since the venue change was announced. The goal is to ensure that if any issues arise, these stars will be ready to step in.
Some rumors even suggest that RNG has already “reserved” Knight for the mid-lane position, while EDG is eyeing SofM as a suitable choice for the jungle role.
Speaking about the “borrowing” situation, perhaps no one knows this better than PSG Talon, who from Worlds 2020 to MSI 2021 had to borrow 3 players from other teams in the region due to their personnel being frequently absent due to quarantine and health issues. Even now, as they prepare for Worlds 2021, their AD carry Unified is facing visa issues and may miss out.
The EDG manager also added that borrowing players has not been a previously forbidden issue, but since such situations are rare in the LPL and most other regions, Riot China and Tencent had to implement a complete regulation to support this “borrowing” process.
After receiving this information, some Chinese players even jokingly suggested that the weak links of the 4 teams attending Worlds should voluntarily… pretend to have visa issues to help their team bolster their roster. However, this “initiative” was immediately shot down, as this visa application process is entirely handled by Tencent, under the supervision of Riot.
Aaron also noted that the borrowing regulation mentioned above is merely a “contingency plan,” and unless there are health issues, the visa applications for all 4 LPL teams are almost guaranteed to succeed.
It can be seen that although there isn’t much hope, with the revelation from the owner of EDG, a “miraculous” scenario is still possible, where SofM, Knight, Bin, Karsa, or even Huanfeng, still have a chance to participate in Worlds 2021 as “borrowed players” for the teams competing in this tournament.