With only three days left until the 2025 League of Legends World Championship begins, the T1 team, which must participate in the play-in stage, recently announced their departure to China. Before leaving, T1’s bottom lane AD carry, Little Lü Bu, gave an exclusive interview to Korean media, where he commented on IG: they are a team with a high ceiling, but he is absolutely confident in the bottom lane. Battles over map resources will ultimately decide the match outcome.

When asked about Chovy wanting to face IG, Little Lü Bu said: of course he can think that way, but unfortunately, it seems he won’t get to play against IG. It’s clear that Little Lü Bu is very confident. On the same day, IG, who also trained in the LCK, finished their training and returned home. Some fans spotted the entire IG team at the airport and shared group photos (Gazi wasn’t in the pictures because he went to buy food for his teammates).

The effectiveness of IG’s training is still unknown, but their overseas training sparked quite a controversy. Former LPL coach Zhu Kai recently lashed out during a livestream, angrily criticizing coach Daeny for his admiration of foreign teams. Zhu Kai questioned: what does training in Korea mean? Is it because domestic teams aren’t good enough? This coach always does this—training abroad risks leaking strategies, doesn’t it?

Zhu Kai then said: if IG loses to T1, I will expose Daeny and reveal everything about him. Zhu Kai’s remarks are not entirely unreasonable; if the team training with IG leaks tactical picks and hero priorities to T1, it would indeed impact IG significantly. However, this is unlikely because scrims are confidential, and leaks are strictly forbidden.

Regarding Zhu Kai’s claim that domestic teams are weak, honestly, after watching the Asian Invitational, I feel that except for WBG, others really aren’t strong. JD Gaming even lost to GAM. Training with them won’t improve anyone but might mislead teams into thinking they are stronger than they are. NIP is even worse—they only managed to win against the Vietnamese team by disconnecting, and in two BO3 matches against LCK, they were swept 0-2.

Compared to LPL teams, LCK teams face T1 regularly and thus understand their playstyle better. Especially teams like DK—learning from them could indeed help IG. Zhu Kai is a typical sour-grapes type; he has publicly mocked Daeny more than once, so people should just take his words as a joke and for entertainment.

After WBG reached the knockout stage of the Invitational, insider Hongcha revealed that the all-Chinese WBG roster received invitations to scrim for the S15 World Championship. The players did not refuse, but the final outcome will be known only after the Invitational ends. Although WBG wasn’t named directly, Hongcha’s photo included the three teams participating in the Invitational, among which only WBG is all-Chinese, so Xiaohu might also join the scrims.

WBG joining the scrims would definitely increase the intensity, but this has nothing to do with IG because the scrim team will only assemble officially on the 15th, while IG must play the play-in on the 14th. If IG beats T1 and advances to the main event, the scrim team can help IG train. But if IG defeats T1, scrims might not matter much to them. Hopefully, IG’s current training camp yields some positive results.

Conclusion:

Zhu Kai has really lost it chasing attention. Whenever someone trains abroad, he accuses them of worshipping foreign teams. So by his logic, any scrim against foreign teams is leaking intel. This means that at this year’s Worlds, teams like Top Esports, BLG, and AL can only stick to their own practice squads. Otherwise, training with European or American teams would also be considered leaking information according to Zhu Kai.

What do you think about Zhu Kai’s comments?

Feel free to leave your thoughts and join the discussion!