FNC is 3-0 so far

18 June: FNC 2-1 FPX
26 June: FNC 3-0 FPX
14 July: FNC 2-0 FPX

They also met in May in Challengers stage 2 group stage where FNC also won 2-1.

Last Time FPX won was in the winner's final of Challengers Stage 1 where FPX won 2-0.

This next matchup will be the fourth time these teams have played each other in 5 weeks. I think at this point even THEY are probably tired of matching up together....

edit 1: misread the dates. they have only played each other 4 times.

edit 2: apparently misspelled "forth" facepalm

I promise you and I are on the same page. I was only pointing it out because the whole "its a seeding match so we dont care" narrative was getting extremely old. Hopefully there will be a better solution in the future because I too would rather see all teams start at the same level.

I feel like it is perceived as early because this is the first point in the tourney that two teams from the same region even COULD face each other, but yeah in the grand scheme you arent entirely wrong.

I don't understand how placing XSet against the #2 team from group B would nullify seeding unless you are contesting that the groups were designed with differing strengths in mind. If you are that is fine, but given that the number 1 seed from Korea and the #2 seed from EMEA were in group B, I feel it isnt unreasonable to argue that the groups were built either randomly or with an attempt at even strength. Maybe there is something I am overlooking? I would love to hear your persepective.

and yeah you are 100% correct on your final point. If Optic loses then none of this matters.

I agree that same-region matchups are guaranteed to happen. The issue is that it is happening this early. I think the point here is that at least from the outside it appears that this instance could have been avoided even when considering seeding. Cross-region matchups are typically more interesting even when they are one-sided, and it sucks that at least one region will be eliminating eachother right of the line when a simple swap could have avoided the risk.

probably. wouldnt be surprised if that was part of the motivation

I think they started doing it that way to increase the value of seeding matches, but I agree its not a great solution.

if optic isn't the best team in their group then they aren't. Thats not really the issue here. my question is why was XSet even set up against the same group that has Optic in it? Why couldn't riot have given XSet the second team from group B thereby guaranteeing XSet would not be playing Optic in the first round? The risk is unavoidable with EMEA because they have three seeds with two in groups, so short of putting both EMEA teams in the same group there is no way to guarantee FNatic wouldn't be playing an EMEA team. But, unless I'm mistaken, the bracket can be built in such a way to avoid that risk with every other region.

It is annoying to see teams from the same or similar regions playing each other so early regardless of the reasons.

this man has a galaxy brain

I doubt he's switching sides. Who knows what his motivations are....

Should we be worried?

I laughed so hard at this. Good post.