Chapter 372 Researching the Opponents of the S-Game (Confirmed)
"So you think that this SKT, after the coaching change, could become one of our toughest opponents in the World Championship?"

Chu Yunxiu read the report about SKT changing coaches and looked at Yu Wenzhou with a little surprise.

Although SKT's coaching change caused a huge stir in South Korea's e-sports circle, it did not cause much splash in other regions.

After all, up to now, LCK is only a top four league in the world.

Changing a coach does not create as much of a stir as changing a player.

In China, only a few marketing accounts treated it as a normal piece of news and reposted it to the intranet without carefully investigating the process.

So in Chu Yunxiu's opinion, this was at most an ordinary personnel change in the outer competition area, nothing more.

But it was obvious that Yu Wenzhou didn't think so.

The tablet in his hand displayed a translated Korean web page, which contained a summary by SKT fans of the entire coaching change controversy.

Judging from the comments, SKT fans are naturally very satisfied with the result of the coaching change, but they do have some complaints about the choice of coach.

Former StarCraft player, eSports show host...

What a mess of titles.

No matter how you look at it, it’s unreliable.

But soon, with players such as Faker and Deft taking the lead on social media to welcome coach KkOma's joining, the players all stood up, and the fans had no reason to continue to pester him.

KkOma's position as coach has been temporarily stabilized.

Of course, this is only limited to before the World Championship.

For a coach who has no coaching and honor foundation at all, if his performance in the world game is even a little bit worse, he can be ready to pack up and leave.

But Yu Wenzhou didn't pay attention to these.

"Although during MSI, the major regions other than our LPL did show a certain gap in hard power."

"But after a few months, if we still use the past thinking to judge their strength, we will suffer."

Chu Yunxiu raised her eyebrows slightly and glanced at Yu Wenzhou. Seeing that he was not joking at all, she was a little surprised, and then put on an attitude of listening attentively.

There is naturally a division of labor within the Blue Rain team.

Since securing a spot in the summer finals, Blue Rain had to face a major problem:

Should we research our opponents for the World Championship in advance?
After all, if we count the points, Blue Rain, which was in the top three in the spring season and was fighting for second place in the summer season, has basically secured a spot in the world championship.

However, the summer finals that are about to begin must be taken seriously.

So Blue Rain’s management team gathered the captain and vice-captain for a long discussion and finally came to a decision: to move forward together.

Let Vice Captain Chu Yunxiu and Coach Fang Shijing supervise Blue Rain's training in preparation for the Summer Finals, and let Yu Wenzhou study the opponents for the World Championship once again like he did in the Spring Split.

But this time, this sentence will no longer be a joke.

For Chu Yunxiu, who is in charge of team training, she really doesn't have much idea about how far the regions outside of the LPL have grown.

It’s not that she is ignorant, it’s mainly because the fights among the teams since the summer season have been really bloody and the infighting has been intense enough.

When the news of Honor of Kings' server shutdown came out some time ago, the veteran players of Honor of Kings experienced an explosion of new players one after another, and their combat power and style needed to be re-evaluated.

With such a high work intensity, she really doesn't have much energy to pay attention to foreign news.

As for the LCK region, her understanding is still basically stuck on the performance during the MSi period.

The individual abilities of the two Cs in the middle and lower parts are remarkable, but the tactics are rather chaotic, the coordination between the players is uneven, and overall it is very rough.

This is also the first impression of LCK for most people in the circle.

"Although many people in China now laugh at the fact that South Korea's slogan of e-sports is untrue, because they are almost completely suppressed by us in today's mainstream e-sports events."

Yu Wenzhou flipped through the tablet and pulled out a chart to show Chu Yunxiu.

"But judging from the current situation, e-sports as a nation is definitely not just empty talk for that country."

Chu Yunxiu took it and looked at it, and soon her mouth opened slightly, also quite shocked.

What Yu Wenzhou showed was not the relevant data about their League of Legends. After all, there are only two international LOL competitions a year, and it is not possible to intuitively see their international level for the time being.

But in the next door StarCraft, basically every tour is a head-on showdown between a large number of top players from all over the world, which is much more intuitive in comparison.

"This data... is indeed a bit scary." Chu Yunxiu sighed.

StarCraft has only held about ten stops since the start of the tour, and there are no major competitions for the time being, but the data from these ten games alone can reveal clues.

At the beginning of the Shanghai leg, although there was an extremely strong player like Lu Bu to take the lead, overall, the proportion of Korean StarCraft players in the top 16 and top 32 was not very high.
It is higher than other countries, but also limited.

But as the games went on, although the entire country of South Korea still could not break through Xiao Shiqin's dominance in the top honors,

But quietly, more and more baseball players have been able to steadily secure a spot among the top 16 or 32.

Even at the latest stop, although the championship was still secured by Xiao Shiqin, the data of three Koreans in the semi-finals and nine in the round of 16 was truly terrifying.

Quietly, the situation of South Korea vs. the world has been formed in the interstellar space.

Oh, I almost forgot, there are two Chinese in the top 16, the other one is a certain Meng Huo.

"I specifically checked a lot of forums and posts from the Korean country, and what I can confirm is that a lot of the things that allowed them to rule in the old interstellar era have actually been lost over the years."

"For example, tactics, training system, and the talent selection system they are so proud of have all been neglected because of Honor, a game that doesn't quite fit the modern e-sports system."

Yu Wenzhou recalled the information he had collected these days.

Well, the modern e-sports system is a term that has only recently emerged. It is an experimental definition of e-sports, but it has been recognized by many people in the industry.

The most significant feature is that Honor of Kings was expelled from the modern e-sports community due to its serious lack of fairness and being mostly a performance-based format.

This has added fuel to the fire for the old players who were already anxious about the suspension of the Honor of Kings service.

"However, in less than half a year, they have rebuilt these things bit by bit, and now, we can say that they have achieved initial results."

Although they are opponents in terms of stance, Yu Wenzhou's eyes are still filled with amazement when talking about these things.

After MSI was beaten up by Fanhua, except for LJL, which originally had a very low affinity with LOL, the other regions chose to lie down and wait for the release of Street Fighter.
Basically, any region that has some aspirations will start to carry out reforms when they return, striving to regain their glory in the S-League.

But unlike most regions that started copying LPL's current achievements after returning, LCK went back and directly rebuilt the system they had followed in the past.

Moreover, the effect is outstanding.

What impressed him most was the high school league selection system developed by the Koreans.

The e-sports league has been popularized to high schools, talents are selected through the high school league, and it has also received widespread support from society?
It really sounds like a science fiction movie.

In China, let alone forming a league, e-sports will never be allowed into high schools in your lifetime.

But in South Korea, people have actually managed to make e-sports a regular part of high school life.

Regardless of whether this system is good or bad, at least in the field of e-sports, they have maximized the discovery of e-sports talents.
In addition, the reconstruction of the coaching system, the re-standardization of competition and training, and the high-intensity intervention of capital...

The growth rate of LCK is terrifying.

"The reason why our LPL is currently able to take the lead in the world is largely because we are close to the water and have the advantage of being close to the water. Tencent Esports has built a fairly complete e-sports system for us."

"But the LCK system is not much worse than ours, and in some aspects, it even has unique advantages."

Yu Wenzhou's tone was serious.

"If you underestimate them, you will suffer."

Looking through the provincial version of the information Yu Wenzhou gave her, although she was still unwilling to believe that the Koreans next door had such power, Chu Yunxiu still agreed with Yu Wenzhou's statement.

E-sports high school league or something like that sounds scary.

However, she was curious about another thing:
"If that's the case, then why do you care so much about SKT? They didn't even make it to the finals, did they?" Chu Yunxiu asked.

From Yu Wenzhou's perspective, he doesn't seem like the type of person who would look up to SKT just because of their MSI performance?
"Well, this is one of the biggest problems of LCK so far." Yu Wenzhou smiled. "Any more problems?" Chu Yunxiu was curious.

Hearing Yu Wenzhou praising LCK so highly, she felt that the current LCK was almost perfect.

"Of course." Yu Wenzhou pushed his glasses.

LCK is not a god, there are definitely problems, and they are quite a lot.

The reason why I praised their strengths before was mainly to make Chu Yunxiu take them seriously and get rid of some unnecessary arrogance as soon as possible.

"I don't know if it's because their idol industry is too developed, which has affected the operational thinking of their top management, or if there are other considerations."

Yu Wenzhou suddenly remembered something, and his expression became a little strange: "In short, the idolization of players in their region is quite serious."

When Chu Yunxiu heard the word "idolization", she was stunned, and then her expression suddenly began to become unnatural.

She recalled some bad memories.

In the Glory League of that year, in terms of player idolization, she and her team Yanyu were definitely in the top three. Only Su Mucheng and Zhou Zekai before he won the championship could compare with them.

She is the one who has the most say on how torturous this thing is.

When she thought of that hopeless past, she felt sick all over.

"They also let their own contestants take on advertisements to make money?" Chu Yunxiu's voice rose a little, obviously she had PTSD.

"It's even worse than this." Yu Wenzhou shook his head. "They even use the game itself to build a glorious image for the players. The team with the most serious problem is SKT."

"So crazy?" Chu Yunxiu frowned even more tightly.

These Chinese people know how to have fun, they can even give up the game itself?

"Their training team will tamper with the lineup and strategic weights to artificially create more highlights for their mid laner Faker."

"Like, riding alone to save the Lord or something."

Yu Wenzhou pulled up some videos of SKT.

Flash and push four, single cut and kill C position, key team fight...

The number of times Faker saved his team from danger is far higher than normal. Of course, don't ask where this danger came from.

After reading it, Yu Wenzhou looked at Chu Yunxiu who was deep in thought: "What do you think?"

"...This mid laner is quite strong. If I had been that strong, I might have won the championship long ago." Chu Yunxiu thought for a long time and finally said this.

She was a little jealous of the mid laner named Faker.

In a sense, Chu Yunxiu's situation during the Glory period was actually quite similar to that of Faker in LCK.

The management is not enterprising, and there are huge problems with the lineup and tactics. At critical moments, the team can only rely on the core players to stand up and make heroic appearances to win.

Due to various reasons, Chu Yunxiu's ability to bear heavy pressure and save the entire team was relatively weak back then.

Therefore, the impression that the audience of Glory has of Yan Yu and Chu Yun Xiu is always that “they were just one step away from each other at the critical moment.”

But Lee Sang-hyuk is different. The pressure on his shoulders is even heavier than Chu Yunxiu's. After all, Chu Yunxiu still has fans who use "after all, she is a female contestant" to make up for her.

But he managed to withstand the pressure and became the hero of SKT time and time again.

Just based on this point, Chu Yunxiu had to admit that she was even a little jealous of Li Xianghe.

"This is exactly what I wanted to say." Yu Wenzhou clapped his hands.

"SKT is a rare team in LCK that did not make significant progress after MSSi, but instead regressed."

"The reason is that there is something wrong with the thinking of their coaching staff," Yu Wenzhou commented.

The SKT team is truly amazing. While other teams were innovating tactics and studying versions, they were the only ones concentrating on figuring out how to make Lee Sang-hyuk a god.

Apart from giving Lee Sang-hyeok a lot of meaningless highlights in the summer regular season, the improvement to the team can be described as negative.

"But even with such a coaching staff that is lagging behind and tactics that are seriously behind the times, SKT was able to rush to the first place in the LCK regular season."

"Even after the absence of their ace player Faker, they were able to reach the final game against their other strong team Samsung."

"And now, they have finally replaced the original coaching staff, and judging from the current trends, they are already on the right track."

“Perhaps, they will be a more formidable opponent than the two champion and runner-up teams of LCK.”

Rarely, Chu Yunxiu saw a strong look of fear in Yu Wenzhou's eyes, which were always calm.

The last time he saw such a fearful look was during the defeat in the spring season. Yu Wenzhou lost his composure when facing the changing formation of Fanhua.

"This SKT is not easy to mess with." She secretly raised the importance of SKT by half a level in her heart.

But Chu Yunxiu didn't know that Yu Wenzhou's fear was not actually fear of SKT as a whole.

Although the performance of the remaining SKT team was also remarkable, it was not enough to make Yu Wenzhou so cautious.

The only thing that really made him rank SKT as the top enemy in the world competition was the mid laner, Lee Sang-hyuk, who looked like a mere carrier for god-making.

Since MSi, he has been ranked at the top in Yu Wenzhou's little notebook.

And now, he has surpassed many well-known foreign players such as LEC's hat-trick king and has become Yu Wenzhou's number one enemy of the non-LPL in the World Championship.

Superb operation, cool head, high morale, big heart and courage in desperate situation...

He possesses almost all the qualities that a top player should have.

After going through many ups and downs in the summer season, watching Lee Sang-hyuk speaking on stage at the SKT press conference with a bandage on his head,

Yu Wenzhou could read a lot from his eyes.

This kid is also transforming.

And now, when this former lone hero of SKT has a group of reliable teammates and has dealt with the troublesome training group, he has successfully gained the right to speak within SKT.

Yu Wenzhou couldn't guess how powerful Faker would be without any shackles.

But for some reason, looking at the performance of this seventeen-year-old child, he actually saw the shadow of an old friend in him.

The guy who is still fighting hard in the loser's bracket finals, fighting for a chance to face Blue Rain in the finals, the most legendary mid laner in LPL——

Ye Xiu.

Yu Wenzhou shook his head violently, trying to get rid of these random thoughts.

Faker has only been playing for a short time, why are you comparing him to Ye Xiu?
"I hope... this is just a little misjudgment and illusion on my part..."

Noticing that Yu Wenzhou was not in a good state, Chu Yunxiu simply ended the topic: "Let's not talk about this for now. The defeat match is about to begin. Let's see what kind of opponent we will face in the final."

Tonight is the day when the final battle between Fanhua and Xingxin officially begins.

Of course, Blue Rain would not miss such a game.

Judging from the time, except for the two of them, the rest of Blue Rain’s team should have gathered in the conference room, ready to sit back and watch the fight.

This is probably the margin of victory.

Sure enough, when Chu Yunxiu and Yu Wenzhou arrived at the meeting room one after another, Huang Shaotian immediately came forward to greet them:
"You guys are finally here. They are about to start the game and are about to start trash talking. But the commentator is so slow. He reads the sponsor's advertisement for a long time and then says a lot of nonsense. It's really annoying..."

"Stop." Yu Wenzhou interrupted Huang Shaotian's chattering skillfully. "More ads are a good thing. This way everyone can make money. It's better not to miss the main film."

He found a random seat and sat down, as if to completely put an end to his previous chaotic thoughts, and his eyes suddenly became extremely serious.

Although the situation in LCK is very complicated, there is still some time before the World Championship, so there is no need to rush.

First, get this championship that is right in front of you!

　The first update has 5,000 words, and there will be another update later.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)