Best Of 1's Suck: This Is The Reason NA Struggles Internationally
NA aka “Near Airport” is known as the fastest region to arrive at the airport. Since they gave up on winning LANs, they are investing in Speedruns. In particular, they are current world record holders in Airport Any% and Airport no wins.
North America has a bad history when it comes to international events. They managed to come in second at the MSI 2019 with Team Liquid, and they were fourth at the 2018 Worlds Championship with Cloud9. That's basically it when it comes to the international success. Many theories have been going around why North America might just not be as good at League of Legends as the other major regions and even pro players have spoken out.
“NA Players are good, but the format makes the region underperform internationally”
The new jungler for the American Organisation Team Liquid, UmTi has recently joined the LCS after playing in the LCK for his entire career. They started the season with a 5-4 score. UmTi has gone on multiple interviews so far and has always said that the NA players are actually not that bad.
In an interview with Ashley Kang he mentioned that he is very confused that they only play Bo1's. He specifically said that rookies don't get enough experience and then get beat up at international events. Players like Contractz and Inspired are good players, but they don't get to play enough to be able to compete with the top of the world.
He also blames the quality of solo queue for the bad performance. Coming from Korea where everybody wants to become the next Faker, solo queue ranked is very competitive and has a better quality than the North American Server. UmTi claims that North American solo queue is a little bit more on the “4Fun” side.
He also explains that the solo queue behavior is a cultural issue that cannot be fixed and that the LCS should be playing Bo3's instead.
UmTi joined TL because he wanted to have a shot at Worlds. If he stayed in the LCK he would have been in a top 8 team and the move to NA at least gives him the opportunity to play at worlds if he wins the play-offs.
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