Team Liquid annihilates opponents in Day 4 of The International 9
More teams have left TI9 this morning, after competing against powerful opponents the most notable of which were Team Liquid, who alone ousted two of the world’s top teams in two consecutive games to the semi-finals of the lower bracket
Yesterday we talked about the two anticipated matches of the day: Royal Never Give up vs Team Liquid and Infamous vs Team Secret, where Evil Geniuses sat waiting for the winner of the first game after a loss from OG, with Vici Gaming still waiting to prove itself against the winner from Inf vs Secret.
Starting with the latter, the beloved team Secret managed to overcome the black horse of the championship Infamous, which came from South America to challenge the most prominent names in the game world with a marvelous run that unfortunately came to end in front of Secret’s doorstep with a 2-0 defeat, mainly due to the ban Secret had on Wraith King to paralyze Antonio “K1” Rodriguez who was one of the best players in the tournament, which in the long run has shaken the confidence of Peruvian players who could not withstand the successive Secret strikes until their loss.
Although the result was somewhat predictable, the main game that everyone looked forward to was inevitably RNG vs Team Liquid, and for a few hours afterwards, the huge confrontation between Evil Geniuses and the winner of that match, which was eventually Team Liquid thanks to the horror triangle “W33”, “Miracle-” and “GH-” as well as KuroKy’s extraordinary performance that led the team to a 2-0 win against the RNG, maintaining the perfect Liquid run in the lower brackets without losing a single round.
With both RNG and Infamous out, the attention turned to EG vs Liquid which proved the North American team’s superb ability to play at the same level, if not even better, a few hours after their first match, against the shattered EG after losing to OG in the upper brackets.
Indeed, thanks to a dominant performance by Amer al-Barqawi with Faceless Void and Aliwi Omar with Tinker, the two Arab players were able to fight the famous EG champions Artour “Arteezy” Babaev and Syed “SumaiL” Hassan in the lanes. Although the battle was often close and the two sides exchanged punches, EG almost settled the first game after a huge Roshan battle that almost flipped things in their favor. However, SumaiL’s Kunkka was not enough to stop the resurgent Liquid which, thanks to two perfect Chronospheres from Miracle completely erase his opponent.
The second game was when Liquid settled the competition in its favor, with an almost unilateral challenge with total dominance thanks to the wonderful draft by KuroKy, who gave some of his best tournament performances with his teammates while EG could only watch their captain Tal “ Fly ”Aizik crushed thirteen times in 30 minutes.
With the revenge for last year’s loss to EG excuted, Liquid will steadily advance towards its goal of repeating TI7 win again in the biggest tournament in the history of esports, while EG returns home in fifth place with nearly $1 million.
As the OG legendary match against PSG.LGD approaches in a few hours, Team Liquid will be waiting for their next rival among Team Secret vs Vici Gaming in lower brackets’ quarter-final.
