After both DAMWON Gaming and G2 Esports obliterated their respective opponents in the Worlds 2020 quarterfinals, their semifinals series was hotly debated about which team would show up better on the day to take the win. Most leaned towards the side of DWG, and while G2 stole away Game 2 to make it interesting, it was unable to find any other victories on the day, bringing the team's Worlds 2020 run to an end. 

After the series, G2 Esports spoke with the press about the games and Worlds 2020 as a whole. 

You can watch the press conference here, or read the transcript below.

GrabbZ, for today's semifinals with DAMWON Gaming, what was your expectation, and do you have anything to take away from your Worlds 2020 journey?

For expectations, it's hard to say but we had the hopes of a more competitive series. Ultimately, though, I think we can be pretty proud of how far we've come given the difference in meta read and how teams play.

When we came here to China to prepare, the scrim results were pretty dire, basically every best of five looked like this one, and we actually got to the semifinals so I'm happy about that. The only regret I have is I don't think we showed our level today, and I'm not saying it would've been enough, but at least we could've given fans a series to remember, but instead now we just go home with a pretty sour taste not playing to our standards. 

Caps, in Game 3, on Akali, you were hiding in the bush for about one minute. What was your thought on that play?

So the Krugs were up and they just did the Herald. So I thought Graves would go to the Krugs, and he did, but I mis-executed my kill on him, so I ended up not killing him. He also had no flash so I thought he could be a kill for me - maybe a way to bounce back in the game, but it ended up with me dying, so yeah it wasn't that great.

Mikyx, after Game 3, your team said on Twitter that if you ever feed this hard again they would trade you to the Turkish league, do you have any thoughts on this? 

Well thanks for the question, first of all. And yeah, I think I'll try to replicate my performance like that again, so maybe I'll have more success in the Turkish league.

Wunder, in this matchup you chose Omnistone a couple of times, but it is not a common keystone. So what is your understanding of it?

Well I can't really tell you guys too much, because I'm saving it for the next World Championship. So I can't really give you my thoughts on why Omnistone is good or not, but yeah you guys should for sure try it out in your soloqueue games.

Perkz, in Game 2 with Ezreal you failed a tower dive to kill Ashe, so what happened there?

Well Ashe was standing under turret with low HP and I thought I could dive her, but I guess I could not...*laughs* So I died instead.

Grabbz, what was the biggest reason that you guys fell to DAMWON Gaming today?

The biggest reason is that they're a better team and I think we can be sincere in saying that. They are a team that doesn't have many openings, they change up their style depending on draft. They don't have any patterns like traditional Korean teams have. So we knew it was going to be really hard, it's not just one big thing.

DAMWON's fundamentals are really good. And I think they're going to have a really good chance in the Finals, and hopefully they win because that feels better for us. But yeah there's no one big reason, they're just really, really good. Probably one of the best teams we've seen in the past years so...Okay I've made my point, I should probably stop talking, so I'll do that. 

Caps, this year's Worlds was packed with premiere mid laners, so what is your thought on your journey at this event?

Yeah, as GrabbZ mentioned earlier, going into the tournament, Europe was kind of behind, which also showed in the results of all the teams. I think we managed to catch up to the other teams a lot. But yeah I think today we didn't really show up, we were not strong enough to take on DAMWON.

I think ShowMaker played really well today and made very few mistakes. But yeah I'm not really sure. It will be fun to see how DAMWON will show up against either Suning or Top Esports in the Final since both Angel and knight are also really strong mid laners and we can see who will take the trophy this year.

Perkz, now that you have played against DAMWON Gaming at both Worlds 2019 and Worlds 2020, what makes this DWG team different when compared to last year?

I think the Worlds meta favors DAMWON Gaming much more than it did last year. Ever since this summer, Asian teams have been playing power-farming junglers that their teammates play around for objectives more than Western teams. DWG has been very good at what it does for a few months already, whereas we didn't start playing these picks until our Worlds 2020 bootcamp.

In this aspect, we were already three months behind other teams, so us having to play catch-up to the meta that became the Worlds 2020 meta gave DAMWON Gaming an edge. We weren't able to catch up to them — maybe if we 'broke' the meta or practiced this style earlier we would have been good enough to win today, but those are just things to dream about. *laughs*

Since we already lost, it's kind of useless to think about that stuff right now, but overall, DWG's last few months made them better prepared than we were for the meta.

Caps, there were a lot of bumps in the road for G2 this year but you still managed to lift the LEC trophy twice and finished top 4 at World 2020. What kind of year was this for you, and what was the most memorable moment?

This was definitely a weird year. We played most of the LEC online, so it was definitely sad to lose out in semifinals at Worlds this year because I was looking forward to playing in front of a crowd again. 

The most memorable part of this year was winning the spring split while playing AD carry. *laughs* It was kind of a crazy year, I guess, especially because we lost our first round of the 2020 LEC Spring Playoffs so it felt sort of like Worlds 2020 where we were a bit behind the meta in Europe.

However, we managed to catch up and be better than everyone in EU, but unfortunately, we didn't manage to do the same at Worlds. Maybe if there was a lower bracket...*laughs* I just hope we can show up strong next year, get another two trophies in Europe, and hopefully go all the way internationally, as well.

Perkz, what do you think the region needs to win the World Championship?

We need a Losers Bracket. Europe, or at least G2 Esports, needs double elimination. We won the playoffs twice this year, both through the losers side of the bracket. I'm pretty confident that with losers bracket we would have made it back to the Worlds final and won.

Jankos, did you feel under more pressure to perform at Worlds 2020 than other tournaments due to the meta focusing on carry jungle champions?

It's a team game, and while this meta centers around junglers, that's always the case in any meta. You prioritize ganking or farming depending on the meta, I suppose, so learning how to play a mostly farming style with the rest of my team playing around me was new to us on G2.

I did feel like I had to tryhard way more in scrims and review games more thoroughly to try and explain my perspective on the game to my team, but aside from that, you always have to perform. In this way, Worlds 2020 was not very different when compared to Worlds 2019.

Grabbz, the LEC was given four seeds heading into Worlds 2020 and Europe was widely considered to be the second strongest region on the planet. Now that the LEC has been eliminated from Worlds entirely, what are your thoughts on Europe's regional strength when compared to South Korea or China? Do you think the lack of the 2020 Mid-Season Invitational played a part in a regional strength disparity at Worlds 2020?

I'm going to answer the second part of the question first: I don't think MSI 2020 had a particular impact on Worlds 2020 because the meta really evolved after the summer split, not before. Overall, we've been saying the same for two years — G2 and Fnatic's performances at Worlds is not indicative of Europe's regional strength. Every single time we come to our pre-Worlds bootcamp we have to dig deep and sweat a lot to catch up. The meta was different this year, too.

I don't think the LEC is the strongest region, as much as I would love to say that. I do think that as a region we are trying to get there, but it will take some time and more work from the levels below. The regional leagues are a good start for new talent in Europe, but we're still a bit far away from calling ourselves the best region in the world.

All images via: Riot Games

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