Fudge claims Cloud9 is “playing poorly” ahead of LCS Finals despite dominating the league

Cloud9 have been absolutely dominating in the LCS Summer Playoffs, with the team not having dropped a single game on the road to the Finals. However, Fudge claims that the team has a long way to go and isn’t playing well.

Cloud9 are back-to-back-to-back LCS Champions, with the team dominating North America with a solid roster of players that have defined modern-day C9 and, by extension, the LCS.

Even with Cloud9 having swapped mid laners a few times and Zven switching to support a few splits ago, the team has managed to stay on the throne domestically, with the caveat being that they haven’t fared well at international competition.

Fudge claims that Cloud9 is “playing poorly” even with their dominance in the region, saying that the team has a long way to go if they want to make their mark internationally. He went as far as agreeing that it’s entirely possible C9 loses the LCS Finals if NRG or Team Liquid steps up.

C9 Fudge feels like the team has a long way to go

Cloud9 has been destroying domestic LoL over the past year and a half, but it’s no understatement to say that they’ve underperformed internationally. At Worlds 2022, their roster, which had four of the five current members, only won one group game.

Granted, their group at Worlds 2022 was one of the deadliest, pitting them against Fnatic, T1, and EDWard gaming, but the vast majority of their matches were fairly one-sided losses.

In order to make their mark internationally, Cloud9 are going to have to really step it up. Even with their current record being so strong, Fudge was refreshingly realistic about the chances of the team having a deep Worlds run in a conversation on The Dive Podcast.

“Realistically, we haven’t won. We are playing poorly. We’re beating these NA teams, but we aren’t playing well,” he said.

When asked by Azael about what he thinks Cloud9 can work on to get better results internationally, he wasn’t shy about saying that they have to try some new things and take risks with how they approach Worlds.

“Being harder on ourselves now will help us be even harder on ourselves internationally and help us focus a lot harder. There’s nothing you can really – I’ve thought about it a lot, I’m sure my entire team has thought about it a lot – there’s nothing you can really change in NA in terms of your approach other than being more disciplined and taking it as serious as you can.”

Fudge also spoke about “focusing on what other teams are doing internationally, and seeing how they play and trying to understand it.” He has a focus on trying to learn why teams from the best regions do things, not-so-subtly tossing NA out there as a region that is worse than South Korea, China, and even Europe.

While this isn’t exactly reassuring news for LCS fans hoping the region can make a deep run, acceptance is the first step to improvement. Who knows, maybe Cloud9’s skepticism and discipline will bring the team more success than even they’re expecting to get at Worlds 2023.