The League of Legends S15 World Championship is now on day four. In the last match day, the two LPL teams holding 2-0 records, AL and TES, competed in qualification matches. AL fought a hard-fought three-game series against CFO and won 2-1, successfully moving on to the knockout rounds. They have already beaten two major LCK championship favorites and remained unbeaten in the Swiss format, making AL’s international performance this year notably outstanding.

In contrast, TES’s qualification match wasn’t as smooth as AL’s. When facing KT, widely regarded as the weakest LCK team, TES was swept 2-0. While their laning phase was relatively stable, they fell apart in team fights, playing disjointedly without coordination. Meanwhile, KT executed their strategies methodically. Judging by this BO3 series, the two teams' raw strength clearly belongs to different tiers.

After this loss, TES’s record against LCK teams this year has dropped to 0-3 in series and 0-7 in individual games. Across two BO3s and one BO5, they have failed to win a single game. Compared to other teams from the same region who have competed internationally, TES’s international performance is undoubtedly the weakest. This team struggles not only with team fight coordination but also with discipline, as teammates often get caught out separately in different parts of the map.

Following this BO3 defeat, TES’s chances of advancing to the knockout stage have sharply declined. The upcoming 2-1 group will be filled with “top-tier” teams: either GEN or T1 will secure a 2-1 record, HLE is expected to beat 100T, BLG facing G2 should maintain their form to win, and FLY playing against the Vietnamese team should have no trouble. Thus, all teams in the 2-1 group will be elite contenders.

CFO, GEN\T1, HLE, BLG, and FLY — no matter who TES faces among these five teams, it looks very challenging. If they can’t even defeat KT, the other three LCK teams are even less winnable. TES might have some chance against BLG in an intra-region match, but BLG is currently in good form. CFO is also very strong now, so TES might struggle there as well. Possibly, FLY is the team TES has the best shot at beating.

If TES still fails to win in the 2-1 group matches, then the 2-2 scenario will become a do-or-die battle. They will again face strong opponents because the loser between T1 and GEN is almost guaranteed to come back from a 1-2 deficit. Also, if TES doesn’t draw the losing team from the 2-1 group in the second round, they will likely meet them in the third round. Therefore, after losing to KT, TES’s upcoming matches will become increasingly difficult, and facing consecutive LCK teams might even prevent them from advancing.

So what TES needs to do now is urgently review their games, first fixing their team fight coordination issues and then improving discipline. Kanavi deserves a direct critique for being too easily tilted and giving away opportunities. Take the first game’s Jarvan for example: at 14 minutes, after a triple kill bot lane and catching the enemy mid, TES had a huge advantage with kills and tower damage. Yet Kanavi went to invade the enemy jungle to steal blue buff without any vision of the enemy jungler’s position.

This jungle death caused TES’s mid lane to be unattended, resulting in their turret being destroyed and the Rift Herald taken by the enemy. TES’s strong early lead quickly slipped away due to the jungler’s mistake. In the second game, in a similar situation, Kanavi was low on health and tried to poke with WQE on the enemy jungle support but ended up dying again. These avoidable small errors are TES’s biggest current problem that urgently needs fixing.

Conclusion:

TES actually had decent luck in the 2-0 group draw, since playing CFO or an intra-region match against AL would have lower winning chances than facing KT. Yet despite that, TES was still swept 0-2. Perhaps winning two consecutive matches against European and American teams earlier made TES overconfident. KT’s heavy blow should bring them back to reality.

So, what do you think — can TES still win in the 2-1 group?

Feel free to leave your thoughts and discuss!