In the history of worlds, NA has always struggled during the "second week". The reason I say "second week" because this year the group stage is going non-stop so there isn't a second week. This year, the first part of the tournament they have been playing through the teams rotating each group. The second part of the tournament, each group gets 1 day to play every team. Today there are 0 NA teams, but yesterday was C9's last chance to make a statement on the world's stage.

As of the first stage, C9 finished in a 3-way tie for second. If I remember correctly they beat Vitality and then dropped a game to Gen.G and lost to Royal Never Give Up. I was cautiously optimistic going into the second round for C9 as they usually perform the best in Worlds. I wasn't holding my breath though after watching Svenskeren feed his butt off last year at worlds with TSM.

SPOILERS

I started watching after most if not all the games had been played and started watching RNG and C9. To my surprise, after I fast forwarded to when the game had started, C9 was 2 and 2 meaning they had won the first game of the day meaning they had beat Gen. G. Excited that C9 actually had a chance to make it out of worlds I was cautiously optimistic about the RNG game. C9 was holding their own throughout the game and seemed pretty dominant through the entire game and were able to pull off a victory against the ranked 1 team. I was happy to see Sven seemed to be holding his own and C9 was looking very confident.

Now down to Vitality to see if C9 would be in a playoff for second/third or first/second. Once again, C9 looked dominant through most of the game with Jensen turning it on finally in worlds play and held the lead all the way to the end securing a spot in the quarterfinals.

Finally came the tiebreaker with RNG to see who would be 1st and 2nd seed for Group B. I was pretty indifferent if C9 won this game, but was hopeful for a 1st seed finish for an easier matchup in quarters. C9 was once again looking confident and in the lead through most of the game. A loss fight in the Baron pit that could have gone either way is what finally lost C9 the lead and the game.

Honestly, if we can see Sneaky and Svenskeren step up their games a bit, this would be a very dominant team for the rest of worlds. Licorice is playing to his potential and Jensen has stepped up to his top tier. Zeyzal, when they get him on comfortable champions from what I've seen, is playing awesome as well. If Svenskeren and Sneaky can cut out the few mistakes they've been making and turn it up maybe 10% I think they have a great chance at making it to Semis.

What, if any team are you rooting for in Worlds 2018?