Team WE have done it again. The LPL's most unlikely playoff story added another chapter on Monday with a clean 3-0 sweep of Anyone's Legend, dispatching a side that had looked firmly entrenched in the league's top four for most of the split. Jungler Wang "Monki" Meng-Qi picked up the series MVP, his third in as many BO5s (best-of-fives) of WE's Split 2 run after also being named player of the series against LNG Esports at Knight's Rivals and in the stunning upset of Bilibili Gaming on Saturday.
The win sets up a June 7 clash with Top Esports for a place in both the LPL Split 2 grand final and the MSI. For a team that finished 1-13 in the regular season and was a Knight Rivals' game loss away from relegation, the prospect of competing on the international stage in Daejeon would cap one of the most improbable runs in LPL history. It would also end a nine-year drought, with WE's last international appearance dating all the way back to Worlds 2017.
Speaking after the series, head coach Jin "JinJin" Guang-Hua pointed to a mantra the team had built during the regular season's darkest stretch. "We kept losing, but we weren't just playing matches — every loss, we'd draw a conclusion: where we were falling short, what we needed to prepare," he said.
By the time we reached Knight's Rivals, we'd started saying it more and more: 'we can beat anyone'. And once the whole team shared that belief, we actually started beating anyone.
He also credited the locker room's refusal to fold. "Even when results were bad, neither the players nor the management slipped into a bad mentality. That's what I'm proudest of at this club."
Support Shi "Erha" Xu-Ye singled out the role of assistant coach Xiang "Condi" Renjie, whose presence behind the scenes proved decisive during the worst of the slump. "During the regular season I broke down mentally a few times. I even started thinking about not playing anymore," Erha admitted. "Condi was there in the background to reassure me, to encourage me. He helped me a lot on the game side too. I really want to thank him."
JinJin reserved his highest praise for Monki, whose decision-making has anchored every step of WE's gauntlet run. "Monki's macro is probably the best I've ever seen from a jungler," the head coach said, before describing the jungle-support synergy in even bigger terms:
"When Erha is serving Monki, the team just doesn't make mistakes. That's our identity."
The collateral damage on the other side of the bracket keeps piling up. JD Gaming, Bilibili Gaming, and Anyone's Legend now all sit in the lower bracket, meaning only one of the three can still claim a place in the grand final and at MSI — a remarkable culling of the league's heavyweights, with WE the unlikely architect.
