MVK Esports, considered the weakest team on paper coming into the play-ins, confidently swept FURIA 3-0 in their Worlds debut. The main star of the series was the team's jungler Lương "Gury" Hải Long, who earned MVP honors and secured an impressive quadrakill on Lee Sin.
Despite their underdog status, the team was confident in their abilities even before the match. FURIA immediately identified Gury as the main threat, spending four bans on him in the first game. The esports player admitted he was surprised by such attention and joked that playing at Worlds gave him a "passive boost" compared to games in his home LCP league. He followed his quadrakill with an ironic reference to opposing jungler Tatu, stating that "CR7 is greater than R9."
A key tactical decision for MVK in games two and three was their aggressive early invades into the enemy jungle. According to Gury, the team developed this plan themselves to isolate FURIA's jungler and prevent him from helping his bot lane.
An important role in the team's preparation belongs to their mentor — the legendary SofM. He is a demanding coach who pushes the players to practice champions ahead of the meta. SofM pays special attention to Gury, as they share the same role, and passes his tremendous experience down to him.
Gury considers overcoming the psychological pressure of the stage to be the most important achievement following this victory. Besides him, the MVK roster features four rookies who just had their first experience playing at such a massive international tournament.
MVK's next opponent will be KC. Gury named them as one of the top contenders and expressed surprise that such a strong team entered the tournament only as a third seed. Ahead of the match, he carefully analyzed all five of KC's games against C9 and is preparing for a tough individual matchup against their jungler Yike.
An interesting detail of the upcoming match is the connection between the teams' mid laners: KC's player kyeahoo previously mentioned that he sees MVK's mid laner Chika as a little brother from their time together at DRX Academy. However, according to Gury, Chika himself has never mentioned this to the team.
Summing up his expectations for the upcoming series, Gury addressed the opponents and Western fans with a bold statement: "I hope we’re going to have a legendary battle that lasts until game five."
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