It's time for the grand finale, the League of Legends 2019 World Championship will reach its climax on Sunday as 20,000 fans cram into the AccorHotels Arena in Paris to witness history in the making.
For the second year in a row, the LoL Worlds final will be between a Chinese and European team as G2 Esports will battle FunPlus Phoenix on home soil as a new world champion will be crowned.
Related: G2 vs FPX odds suggest LoL fans set for a fitting finale
G2 vs FPX - a battle like no other
Those two teams are among the most unique to ever step foot on Summoner's Rift which is going to make for a fascinating series full of twists and turns during picks and bans. FPX are difficult to face with Kim "Doinb" Tae-sang utilising tanks and bruisers in the mid-lane to devastating effect as he oppresses and neutralizes enemy solo-laners.
Meanwhile, G2 Esports are extremely creative and flexible with huge champion pools across all five players with Luka "Perkz" Perković being particularly effective with his ability to play mid-laners down bot.
The Gragas and Yasuo pairing has been popular at this tournament and is a strategy that G2 were one of the first to utilise it and are able to use it as either a bot-lane or jungle and mid-lane combination.
It will likely be an extremely tight series with G2 the slight favourites at odds of 1.81 to FPX's 1.90. The only big difference in lane match-ups you can perhaps decifer is in the bot-lane as Perkz has been the best ADC at the tournament while Liu "Crisp" Qing-Song has been the strongest support so even still - it's hard to call who will come out on top in the bot-lane too.
Make-or-break mid match-up
The mid match-up will, of course, be crucial as Doinb is the lifeblood of the LPL team. Rasmus "Caps" Winther performed phenomenally against SK Telecom T1 in the semi-finals. His split-pushing and decision making were outstanding as he made all of SKT's map pressure irrelevant.
Lee "Faker" Sang-kyeok couldn't impact the map as Caps is fantastic at knowing when to roam and finding opportunities, his decision to leave the final team fight in game four and instead teleport into SKT's base was a genius move.
The Dane will need a similar calibre of performance in Paris as Doinb is also a master and roaming and creating opportunities. Invictus Gaming's Song "Rookie" Eui-jin proved last year that he is the best mid-laner in the world but against FPX he struggled to play the game with constant layers of crowd control coming out from Doinb.
All eyes on Jankos
FPX were able to outperform last year's world champions in team fights thanks to Doinb's excellent positioning and target selection hence why he and jungler Gao "Tian" Tian-Liang have the second and third most assists in the tournament with their support Crisp leading the way.
Speaking of Tian, his match-up against Jankos will be another pivotal point of the series. Given free roam, Jankos is fantastic at controlling the early game as we saw in G2's final game against Damwon Gaming in the quarter-finals.
Together with Caps, Jankos completely shut DWG's star player Jang "Nuguri" Ha-gwon out of the game with repeated ganks and successful tower dives in the top-lane. However, against the Polish star was reasonably anonymous as Kim "Clid" Tae-min performed admirably and ensured SKT had full control over major objectives. In fact, G2 only took Baron once in the entire four-game series.
Tian is an extremely aggressive jungler, in fact his more kills (62) than any other player in his position at the tournament. The jungle match-up will likely be a very active battle in the early game and interestingly the two players share the same level of participation in first blood kills (47%).
Expect something special
FPX are exceptional team-fighters while G2 have proven they can meet various win conditions. The Europeans took down Damwon through sheer map play while against SKT, they conceded map control before winning out in fights.
This best-of-five will likely come down to individual performances as both teams will undoubtedly pull unique strategies and champion combinations so all of the players will have to adapt and evolve on the fly.
On any day, this series would be a spectacular war to witness but the fact that is the Worlds final with everything on the line will only make it more special. These are two incredible teams but only one will be immortalised forever.
When is the LoL Worlds 2019 final?
The LoL Worlds 2019 final - G2 vs FPX - will start at 12pm GMT / 1pm CET / 7am ET / 4am PT on Sunday, November 10th.
Pictures: LoL Esports / Flickr
