Team Vitality - Schalke 04

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The fifth edition of the Strongest European League Of Legends Tournament, known as LEC, week. League Of Legends has been one of the most popular e-sports games for some time now, and the well-developed and evolving e-sports industry continues to grow every year. Tomorrow there are 5 matches to be played, but we'll take a look and make our predictions on what is likely to be the most interesting of them all - Schalke 04 vs Team Vitality.
Team Vitality

Team Vitality

Team vitality is one of the newest teams to appear on the European League of Legends map. Founded at the end of 2015, the core roster consists of Cabochard, Shook, Nukeduck, Hjarnan and kaSing. The line-up was promising, but no major results were achieved. A major change in the team took place at the end of 2017, when the roster was overhauled, leaving only top laner Cabochard among the starting line-up. With the addition of Gilius, Jiizuke, Attila and Jacktroll, Vitality has shone brightly. Aggressive style of play, great individual skills and one beautiful episode after another led to the team's highest result to date in the summer phase - 2nd place in the regular season and 3rd place in the playoffs. This achievement gave the team a great chance to make a name for themselves in the international, major League of Legends World Championship. The team didn't win any prizes, but the debutants were certainly no easy nut to crack for any opponent due to their unique style of play at the time. The season started off on a rough note, with the arrival of new Jungler Mowgli taking a while to integrate into the team, and not looking as good as the teammates before him. In general, the whole Vitality team seemed distracted and unprepared for the top level battles, but last week the situation changed a bit and it's hard to say if it was just more playing time or some internal problems were solved, but in the game against SK Gaming you could already see the signs of a good old Vitality team. Aggressive play, outstanding and unique picks from each player led to the victory. Team Vitality has a lot of potential and has proven it time and time again, so if the team's play continues to improve and there are no internal problems, it is likely that we will see this team fighting for the top spots in the playoffs again.

Schalke 04

Schalke 04

With the purchase of the 2016 EU LCS Championship, FC Schalke 04 Esports became only the second professional sports organisation to acquire a League of Legends team, following Besiktas' acquisition of Aces High in 2015. Schalke had a good line-up from the start with Smittyj, loulex, SELFIE, Upset and Vander, but after an excellent regular season, the team failed to qualify for the main league. loulex and Vander have been replaced by Memento and Norskeren, both of whom are young and talented players individually. The decision paid off as Schalke 04 finally won a place in Europe's strongest League of Legends tournament. The team's best achievement was finishing 3rd in the regular season in the summer of 2018 and reaching the finals, where they lost 1-3 to Fnatic. Schalke started this season with a major change:

Vizicsaczi -> Odoamne, an experienced, individually strong player with good reading of the game;

Nukeduck -> Abbedagge, a young but very talented and promising player who may need one or two seasons to fully integrate into the team and show his potential;

Vander -> IgNar, an experienced Support player, best known for his excellent performance for Misfits in the 2018 season. A strong individual player with good map-reading skills who doesn't need much time to adapt to different environments.

Guilhoto -> Dylan Falco, many people underestimate this change and don't celebrate it, but it's important to mention that although Guilhoto is a good coach and strategist, Dylan Falco reached the final of the main League of Legends World Championship with Fnatic in 2018.

The team is really well put together, but it will need more time to develop and if the nucleus is maintained, we are likely to see its full potential next year.

Mutual history

In the 2018 summer season, the two teams met in the play-offs, in the semi-finals. Below you can see a short video from this season, which gives a good idea of the rivalry between the two teams:

The teams have not met before this season and this will be their first match. Both teams are at a very similar level, but with Vitality playing together for the second season, the desire to get even is a very important factor here.

Forecast

Currently, the odds for Vitality range between 2.05 and 2.10 at all foreign bookmakers, with betsafe: https://betsafe.lt/ivykis/2126647 , we can find the same bet with an odds of 2.2. Overall, given the circumstances of the match and the current form of the teams, Team Vitality should be the slight favourite here, so the 2.2 odds have a lot of value.

For those who want to take a look for themselves and learn more about the LEC, the teams and the league information, please visit the official website https://eu.lolesports.com/en/league/lec .