Asian Games League of Legends: Remembering this bronze medal becomes the driving force for continued progress

I hope that this bow will forever be engraved in the history of Chinese League of Legends e-sports, becoming an important node, preferably the beginning of a new change.

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Text / Meng Qiao

Photo: Alvis Ray

On September 29, all three medals in e-sports (League of Legends event) at the Hangzhou Asian Games have been decided. In the final, South Korea defeated Chinese Taipei 2:0 on aggregate, and after losing to China at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, South Korea finally tied the "Asian Games China-Korea Showdown" to 1-1.

Source: Contemporary Sports

In the end, the South Korean team won the gold medal in the League of Legends event, while Chinese Taipei and Chinese teams won the silver and bronze medals respectively.

Source: Contemporary Sports

However, compared with the championship and runner-up match, the vast majority of Chinese viewers paid more attention to the third-place battle in the afternoon - China vs Vietnam.

Although in the end, the Chinese team gave up one to two and finally beat Vietnam 2-1 to end the Asian Games trip with a bronze medal, there are too many details worth paying attention to in the course of the competition.

Even if the pre-match was generally optimistic about the Chinese team's big victory, in fact, the bronze medal was far more difficult than expected - for well-known reasons, the psychological pressure of the Chinese team was much higher than that of the opponent.

If you use the situation of the professional arena in these years to evaluate the Vietnam League of Legends e-sports, it should be fierce and not meticulous enough. At the World Championships, they can usually cause some problems for the first-tier clubs, but as soon as they catch the fiercest waves, they will start to make mistakes.

With Vietnam being swept 2-0 by Chinese Taipei at the Asian Games, expectations for Vietnam in this game have dropped to freezing.

But the spectators seemed to have forgotten one person — Vietnam's head coach, SofM.

Source: Contemporary Sports

The Vietnamese player, who grew up in the LPL and made a name for himself, received the warmest cheers and applause from the Chinese audience on the stage of the Asian Games League of Legends e-sports. Perhaps, in the whole of Hangzhou during the Asian Games, you may not find a person who knows LPL and Zhu Kai better than Li Guangwei.

In 2016, Le Quang Wai (SofM) came to China as a player from Vietnam to join the then Snake team. And the one who coached the Snake team at that time was the current head coach of the Chinese team, Zhu Kai. At the Snakes, the two worked together for years.

During the Snake Troops, Zhu Kai's teachings to Li Guangwei were quite harsh.

In the relevant clip of the official documentary "Unlocked SofM" released by Riot Games, Zhu Kai once criticized Li Guangwei for "although he has played professionally for several years, he will only rely on operation and intuition to suppress opponents, and will never win matches through operation".

Presumably, Li Guangwei has completely digested this criticism.

There are two facts that can be used to confirm it: first, Li Guangwei became a well-known inventor player in the LPL, and he began to experiment with his new theory of League of Legends in the professional arena and achieved results; In addition, it was in today's match with the Chinese team that Li Guangwei, who has become the head coach, has opened up a lot of problems for Master Zhu.

Source: Contemporary Sports

In the first game of BP, Li Guangwei won Kasha and Xiao Cannon in the first two choices, showing the double AD system. On the Chinese team's side, Zhu Kai took the auxiliary titan and the wild Wukong, and dealt with it with the first-hand ability. For the rest of the lineup, the Vietnamese team chose tank fighting hero Mao Kai and auxiliary Setti.

The double AD system is a test of Li Guangwei's Chinese team, in order to find out a hole card: to cut off my double AD, how much BP resources are you willing to invest?

Obviously, in the first BP matchup, it was Lai Quang Wei who won.

Under the restrictions of Vietnam's Mao Kai and Seti, the Chinese team's midfield, field play and assist could not complete effective entry. To make matters worse, in order to understand the opponent's problem, the Chinese team even selected a three-way lineup that lacked line power.

In the end, BP's advantage translates into a winning victory in the arena. After losing a game first, Chinese coach Zhu Kai made adjustments.

Peng Lixun was ordered to replace wild player Zhao Lijie. After coming on the field, Peng Lixun's thinking was extremely clear, and he handed over all the support firepower to his teammate Zhuo Ding in the middle.

Source: Contemporary Sports

The final effect of this decision was that Peng Lixun and Zhuo Ding won 18 of the total 22 points of the Chinese team, and won the second game by a big score. Coach Zhu Kai's substitution was immediate, and the score was equalized.

In the tiebreaker, in the face of the excellent performance of playing wild Pang Lixun, the head coach of the Vietnamese team, Le Quang Vi, made a most extreme response: he used all five disabled positions to play wild heroes, and there was nothing he could do. This is not only absolute respect for Peng Lixun, but also a tough reply to Master Zhu Kai.

Source: Contemporary Sports

Of course, the final result is already known. "Five BAN Fight" did pay off, and Peng Lixun in the tiebreaker was obviously limited, and even knocked out by the opponent in the same way and in the same position twice in a row. However, the Chinese team still completed the turnaround with better team battle handling.

To be honest, in addition to the long-established veteran "Soldier Captain Levi" Du Weiqing is still struggling to support, the book strength of this Vietnamese team is far less than that of the Chinese team. But we also saw the actual situation, they are only a little away from standing on the podium.

So, why do we spend so much space talking about the game between Le Quang Wei and Zhu Kai, and talking about the Vietnamese team?

In fact, just to illustrate a problem: the results of the national team do not depend entirely on the strength of the professional league.

Li Guangwei grew up under the Chinese professional system and achieved personal best results under the Chinese professional system. At the same time, he brought the flame of League of Legends esports back to Vietnam and gave back to his homeland. But Le Quang Dui is just an isolated case, except for him and Levi, Vietnam has not produced a player of the same level.

Vietnam League of Legends esports is known as the "strongest wild card", it has been many years ago, their rise was interrupted by an epidemic, and they have not achieved better results in the League of Legends World Finals for almost five years.

In other words, if Vietnam League of Legends fails to make some new waves at this year's Asian Games and the upcoming S13 World Championship, it will disappear from the public eye again - just like Levi did before he let the world see the power of Vietnam League of Legends in 2017.

Asian Games esports is a new battlefield.

Source: Contemporary Sports

For Le Quang Wei and the Vietnamese team, they want to let Vietnam League of Legends esports start the revival on this new stage; For the South Korean team, that means getting back the 2018 Jakarta venue, as well as valuable exemptions from military service.

For South Korea's Kim Guanyu, 44, and Chinese Taipei's Xiang Yulin, also 44, who were in the Street Fighter V final yesterday, they may not have the opportunity to compete in the same level of esports in their lives. As they get older, their competitive level will only get worse and worse, and the Asian Games street fighter may be their best chance in this life.

For Asian Games e-sports, and even Olympic e-sports that may become a reality later, we need to look at it with a new mindset, because the e-sports events in such international multi-sports events are fundamentally different from the professional leagues we usually know. It has a denser format, a tighter schedule, and lower error tolerance. Many competitions take less than three days from the start of the competition to the gold medal. The pace of preparation for the national team is also significantly different from that of professional leagues.

Therefore, Asian Games esports is a completely new topic for all countries.

Many countries with the world's top professional sports leagues have relatively limited success in such comprehensive international competitions, such as English football.

Looking back at this bronze medal, it taught us at least one crucial lesson. From 2018 to 2023 and then to 2026, the Asian Games journey of esports will continue to be formalized and integrated with all traditional sports. We also need to constantly refine and adjust the cognition and methods of national team training to return to the forefront of Asia in time.

I hope that this bow will forever be engraved in the history of Chinese League of Legends e-sports, becoming an important node, preferably the beginning of a new change.

Source: Contemporary Sports

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