'%20x='0'%20y='0'%20height='100%25'%20width='100%25'%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20xlink%3Ahref='data:image/jpg;base64,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'%3E%3C/image%3E%3C/svg%3E)
As the 2021 season of League of Legends LCS continues to unfold, CLG finds itself at the bottom of the standings. What used to be a North American juggernaut is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
CLG's steady decline over the years
Counter Logic Gaming has been around the block for as long as League of Legends has supported professional play. Founded by George “HotShotGG” Georgallidis in 2010, the team quickly rose to high success by winning the 2010 WCG Grand Finals and the 2010 Newegg Winter Wanfest 2010.
The team's hot roster rolled on the backs of Michael “bigfatjiji” Tang’s insane ADC play on Urgot and Ashe, taking most of the credit in the 2010 Grand Finals win. With one of the best players in the world at the current time, CLG qualified for Season 1 Riot Championship, finishing 5th overall out of 8 teams.
HotShotGG pulled Nidalee out of his bag of tricks for CLG, earning quite some attention for his tank build. CLG's roster looked as solid as ever in the beginning years.
CLG's hot streak didn't end there. They went on to win the ESL Premier League Season 1 as well as the LAN tournament. Things sped up until 2013, when bigfatjiji decided to step down and eventually returned as a substitute.
Yilang “Doublelift” Peng came in for a couple of years to launch his career with CLG. He left in 2015 after CLG dominated the early Spring Split.
Perhaps one of the reasons CLG started to tank from here is the internal conflict between Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black and Doublelift. While the two may have been friends at some point, they grew apart and started to resent each other.
According to Aphromoo, Doubelift was a toxic teammate, and the comments made about CLG’s ADC started the fire that burned their chances. The former CLG support even went so far as to say that Stixxay would be a better ADC.
The 2015 Worlds weren't kind to CLG. They couldn't make it past the group stage after losing 4 of the 6 games. Doublelift then went on to play for TSM and TL after leaving a disappointed CLG team.
CLG bounced back when they won Spring Split 2016, beating TSM 3-0. They then stunned the world by beating MSI favorites SKT and RNG, advancing to the finals where SKT swept them in a rematch.
Worlds in 2016 ended the same way for CLG as in 2015, finishing third-place at 3-3 against ROX Tigers, G2, and Albus. Afterward, they found themselves hovering around fifth and seventh-place in the LCS 2017 Spring Split.
CLG didn't qualify for worlds in 2017 after losing multiple series to much weaker opponents like FlyQuest. Exchanging their long-time player, Jake Kevin “Xmithie” Puchero, for IMT's Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett set the team's downward spiral in motion after the new jungler caused too much conflict with the other members.
In hopes to send CLG into a rebuilding phase, they fired their head coach, Anthony “Zikz” GrIay, after four years with the program. Though the team found a good sense of life with the new jungler, Raymond “Wiggily” Griffin, they finished the 2018 Summer Split 7-11.
2019 Spring Split held a similar fate for CLG. They didn't perform well with a 7-11 record. They resurged in the Summer Split and won 12 of their 18 games before losing in the Regional Finals.
CLG hasn't been to the worlds or even won a Spring or Summer Split since 2016. They finished an awful 3-15 in last year's round-robin play during the regular season, putting them at the bottom for the first time in the team's history.
They also finished in 9th place in the 2021 Spring Split. As of now, they hold the eighth-place slot in the LCS, tied with FlyQuest at 9-22. Several key factors led to CLG's massive downfall, including almost all their god-tier players leaving or being traded. Dardoch's arrival and Xmithie's absence killed any life they had from 2017.
Nothing has seemed to work for CLG in recent years, and it hurts to see such a dominating team in League's early years fall to rock bottom.
Personality and player disputes between members have rocked CLG and disintegrated any sort of levelheadedness. They haven’t been close to the same as the team they were in 2012.
It's uncertain if CLG will ever rise to be one of the top contenders in the LCS again. If they do, something major needs to change and they need to find stability afterward.
