JD Gaming and Gen.G are the first teams to qualify for the knockout stage at Worlds 2023, after beating LNG Esports and G2 Esports respectively. Several players from different teams spoke to the media after their matches, and shared their thoughts on the quarter-finals and the battle to get there.

LNG’s Chen “GALA” Wei and G2’s Martin “Yike” Sundelin fielded similar questions on their respective series. GALA cited the mid-game as a general point of vulnerability that his side is trying to improve on in order to stay in the competition.

Embrace the pain Yike | Credit: G2 League

Yike highlighted objective play as G2’s weakness:

“The way we want to play objectives… we’re improving on it and I think that’s what we’re focusing the most on… we will keep talking about the objectives set up and how we want to play them, especially in Nash..”

“We had some good early games and got some objectives we wanted and I think we had good comps that we wanted to play around, but I think Gen.G played very clean today. I think Gen.G played the mid and late-game much better than us today. I don’t think we were lost, but I think Gen.G was very in sync and it made it hard for us to play.”

Both players were also quizzed on who they would like to face next, interestingly providing contrasting answers despite each of their teams now being in the same position within the tournament.

GALA emphasized how LNG are currently “in a very critical moment” on the cusp of knockouts qualification, “so I really want to face the opponents who are not very strong.”

Credit: LoL Esports

In comparison, when asked by Esports.net, Yike revealed that “he doesn’t really want an easy matchup.”

“I don’t see anyone as hard or anyone as very easy, I guess some people can see EU/NA teams be easy. But [I want] something fun to play against. I think BLG would be very fun, I think T1 could be very, very fun. So yeah, we will see.”

The media also had the chance to question Yike’s jungle opponent Han “Peanut” Wang-ho, who was “really glad” to claim a 2-0 victory over G2. The Korean veteran spoke kindly of the LEC first seed, revealing his opinion that “they’re a lot better compared to the other Westen teams” as a result of their diverse champion pool and “awareness of how to win using those picks.”

Peanut’s Gen.G is largely thought of as one of the biggest favourites to win Worlds, arguably only behind JD Gaming, and Peanut is excited at the prospect of facing them and former-teammate Ruler in a potential finals matchup:

“It would be amazing to meet my former teammate at the finals. Aside from that, I feel like there are a lot of good teams that can probably make it to the finals. The ones that I consider that we could see in the finals would be Gen.G, T1, JDG, LNG, and also G2.”

Draws for the next set of duels will be done after all the action concludes on October 23rd.

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