What a journey it has been for the European team, Team Liquid in The International 7. After losing to China’s Invictus Gaming in the first round of the upper bracket, Liquid was pushed to the lower bracket. While most of us knew Team Liquid would perform somewhat decently, nobody could have predicted that they’d make it all the way to the finals, what more win it.
If you manage to stay in the upper bracket, the road to the finals is a short one, needing only to win three matches to make it to the finals. If you get pushed to the lower bracket as early as Team Liquid, the journey to the finals is a grueling one. Team Liquid needed to play FIVE matches to make it to the finals, two of those matches were against Chinese teams LGD Gaming and LGD Forever Young. But Liquid, the clear underdog, prevailed. They disposed of LGD Gaming easily, with a 2-0 victory. When Team Liquid lost the first game against LGD FY, most predicted it to be the end of Team Liquid’s valiant journey. It would be a China Vs China finals. However, Team Liquid fought back hard and actually managed to win the best-of-three match, 2-1. Holy sh*t! Did Liquid just eliminate two Chinese teams back to back?
Liquid was not done yet, though. In the grand finals of The International 7, Liquid faced off against another team from China, Team Newbee, in a best-of-five match. Would they be able to bring down the Great Wall of China once and for all? YES! Not only did Team Liquid defeat Team Newbee, they did so with relative ease. The final score read 3-0 and this writer is very, very happy.
While the likes of Fnatic got destroyed very early in the tournament, Malaysians still can be happy about one thing: LGD FY placed third in this tournament and Ah Fu, a Malaysian, plays for this team. 3rd place LGD FY will take home 10.5% (2.5 Mil USD) out of the 24.6 Mil USD prize pool.
Assuming that the organization does not take a chunk of the winnings, Ah Fu would take home approximately 500 000 USD.
We at The Hyped Geek would like to congratulate Ah Fu on his accomplishments in this tournament. You’ve made our country proud!
