NA @ Worlds Preview: Team Liquid

Team Liquid is one of the oldest teams in the North American League of Legends scene. They were originally formed by LiQuiD112, Steve Arhancet, in 2010 under the name Team Curse. They have been competing competitively in the League scene since Season 1 have been in the NA LCS since its inception in Season 3. They did not find too much success early on as they finish 4th, 6th, 4th, and 4th in their first 4 splits. In 2015, they re-branded to Team Liquid but that didn't change their results as they still finished in the middle of the pack at 3rd, 3rd, 4th, and 5-6th in the next 5 splits. 2017 was their lowest point as they finished 9th and 10th and had to play in the promotional tournament each time to keep their LCS spot. The fall of 2017 saw the introduction of franchising and even though Team Liquid had never shown any results on the rift, they had always been a strong brand with a loyal fan base and lots of sponsors behind them. Even with the back to back relegation scares, Team Liquid were accepted as a franchise into the NA LCS.

Team Liquid knew that if they were going to compete as a franchise going forward that they would need to make a lot of changes going forward. They started by revamping their entire roster from top to bottom. Team Liquid's owner, Steve, has a background in finance and he seemed to be ahead of the curve on how franchising and player contracts would affect the entire league. A few teams that got denied franchising had to sell off their contracts to obtain the full reimbursement and Team Liquid bought the majority of these contracts including the entire Immortals line up which was signed for multiple years. This included veterans Xmithie. Pobelter, and Olleh, who had made a Worlds appearance in 2017. After Doublelift was released by Team SoloMid, Team Liquid instantly signed the North American star as their starting bottom laner. And to round out their roster, they signed the "million dollar man" Impact in the top lane. At one point in time, they had 10-15 under contract but eventually sold those unwanted players to other teams looking to fill out their rosters. Team Liquid had assembled a group of experienced veterans with their superstar Doublelift to lead the way.

Team Liquid had the most potential coming into 2018, but no one knew if they could actually come together and become champions. They had a mediocre regular season which saw them show glimpses of a dominant team but then they also played inconsistently to finish in a 4-way tie at 11-6 and after the tiebreaker matches, they were the 4th seed. The meme of Team Liquid only being able to finish 4th was still alive, but Spring 2018 was finally their time to show North America what they were made of. They easily took care of Cloud9 in a 3-0 sweep. Next came Echo Fox in the semifinals who many considered to be the strongest team, but even they proved to be no match as Team Liquid won 3-1. They had made it to the finals and were looking at one final series against 100 Thieves. Team Liquid were favourite, but they swept 100 Thieves as if they were nothing. Team Liquid had done it, they had become the 4th organization to win the North American League Championship Series. They followed this up with a 1st seed in the regular season of Summer Split, which meant they got to choose their semifinals opponent in 100 Thieves. They beat them 3-1 and secured their spot at Worlds 2018 by championship points, but this wasn't enough as they wanted to go back-to-back. Standing in their way was Cloud9, the hottest team in the 2nd half of the split. In a rather surprising series, Team Liquid swept the finals again 3-0 and took their 2nd title. Team Liquid earned themselves the 1st seed for North America and gave 100 Thieves the 2nd seed for Worlds 2018. They had conquered North America and were now ready to prove themselves at Worlds.