MSI 2021 Rumble Stage
19 MAY 2021 — by League Analyst
The rumbling from the second stage at MSI 2021 has come to an end. With only four teams remaining, we are entering the final phase of the tournament; the Knockout Stage. But before that, we’ll take a look at how the Rumble Stage played out and say our farewells to the teams that unfortunately has to leave us.
Rumble Stage
The five day long Rumble Stage has left us with four teams advancing to the semifinals. At the top of the standings we find the two pre-tournament favorites, DWG KIA and Royale Never Give Up. The top dogs breezed past the 2nd stage with DK ending highest in the standings, only loosing two games against RNG.
RNG themselves dropped games somewhat randomly. Despite being able to overcome DK twice, Royal suffered multiple defeats against the other teams, showing their mortality after a dominant group stage.
Following the top two, PSG Talon and MAD Lions rounds out our top four in the Rumble Stage. Both teams fell against DK two times, but against the rest of the opposition both MAD and PSG managed to find enough victories to advance to the next stage.
This also means that Pentanet and Cloud9 unfortunately has to leave MSI. For Pentanet, this was very much an expected outcome as they were heavily outclassed in this stage of the tournament. Their victory against Cloud9 was a big accomplishment for the LCO and Pentanet can most certainly go home with their heads held high.
Cloud9 on the other hand was undoubtedly expecting a lot more from MSI as one of the teams representing a major region. Despite finding form against both RNG and MAD, resulting in a couple of victories for the team, it wasn’t enough to reach the top four and C9 will have to return to North America.
Semifinals
Since DWG KIA finished first in the Rumble Stage, they got to pick their semifinal opponent. MAD Lions was the team selected and is now forced to go up against the Korean giants, meaning that RNG will face of against PSG on the other side of the bracket.
DWG KIA and Royal Never Give Up enter this stage as the clear favorites, just like they did in round one and two respectively. But the opposition is no joke and with RNG dropping games in the Rumble Stage, it wouldn’t be implausible to say that PSG could challenge them for the spot in the finals.
DWG on the other hand has looked sturdy despite showing small cracks in their armor. Even with individual players struggling to find form, DWG has held strong and won both encounters with MAD in the Rumble Stage. The LEC representative will have to exceed their past performances to surpass the LCK representative. It’s not impossible, but it won’t be an easy task.
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