Afreeca Freecs vs Griffin – KeSPA Cup 2018

In South Korea, League of Legends is still being played competitively. The KeSPA Cup 2018 has started today and will last until December 31st. In fact, it will be the last level tournaments of the year.

The KeSPA Cup 2018 joins professional teams of the LCK (the South Korean league) with semi-professional teams from the CK (competition of teams that aspire to ascend to the LCK, the country’s highest competition).19 invited teams will fight for the trophy. Of course, they will also compete for $ 90,823 that is to be distributed among the participants.

The reason we have picked this match for is that we will have a comprehensive look into the lineup of team Afreeca Freecs that did so well in LCK but had a poor run at Worlds. Now the team has completely changed its roster and looks like a better contender for the title. Let’s have a look at the possible future champions.

Afreeca Freecs 2.0

2018 is considered a very successful year of Afreeca Freecs (AFs) when it won the position of runner-up and third-place in LCK spring and the LCK summer playoff, respectively, along with the achievement in the CKTG quarter-finals.

However, the current Afreeca Freecs is still considered an “underdog” team. The reason why they could not reach the stature of a big name was simply that these achievements only came in a year, and indeed the performance of AFs was not really stable at Worlds.

Freecs starting from point zero

On 20 November, Afreeca Freecs officially announced that their contract with the midlaner Kuro, the ADC Kramer, the support TusiN, and their coached Zefa and Comet had ended. Similar to SKT, Afreeca also faced the challenges of rebuilding the squad for the next year. With their top players, Kiin, Aiming and Jelly signing a multi-year contract, they were focused on recruiting other players to get ready for the next split. In addition, the absence of coach Zefa and Comet meant that AFs was content on signing new coaches.

On November 22, Afreeca Freecs announced that the former KT mid-laner Ucal will join their squad. Ucal released information that he had become a freelance player. According to this announcement, Afreeca Freecs quickly proposed signing a contract with Ucal. After Ucal left KT to become a freelance player, the news attracted the curiosity of fans across Korea since Ucal is a very promising youngster. Afreeca, with a strategy focusing on young players of future generations, chose Ucal on their team.  Obviously, Ucal is desperate to be part of a big team, he was quickly put into the penalty area by Afreeca.

In December, Afreeca Freecs further strengthened their lineup with a new supporter Lee “Proud” Jung-jae. Proud started his competitive career in 2017 by joining Ever8 Winners team. In 2018, he played for LPL Suning Gaming. With Proud’s excellent performance, Suning Gaming achieved success in the summer of 2018.

Afreeca Freecs filled the vacant support position left by TusiN with Proud. However, the transfer season didn’t end and still, Afreeca Freecs had some work left to take care of.

Big Announcements in December

The 2nd week of December was a busy one for them. In those seven days, Afreeca confirmed Spirit’s contract renewal. Afreeca Freecs also extended the contract with coach Yong Son “iloveoov” Choi until the end of 2019. The organization also signed two new assistant trainers – Chae “viNylCat” Wu-chol and Yang “Yeon” Gwan-pio, whom last season worked with Chinese teams in the LPL and LDL. Then a day later the Korean side recruited a third mid laner for its 2019 LCK season who is the former member of the Rolster and Ever8 Winners team, Kim “SSUN” Tae-yang. They ended the week by revealing SSol. Afreeca Freecs contracted ex- Kongdoo Monster player Sio “SSol” Jean Saul. SSol was the fifth player AF has signed in the offseason. The player has played for Kongdoo Monster since February 2016. As part of the team, he was twice in the top 4 CK – the second most powerful regional championship in LoL.

Freecs putting their trust in NoFe

A week ago, Afreeca Freecs has made the official hiring of Jeong ‘NoFe’ No-chul as the new head coach who will be managing, iloveoov, viNylCat and Yeon. The Korean coach completes the transfer market of Afreeca. He will have the difficult mission of leading the reconstruction of Afreeca after a very busy transfer market, in which up to four players have decided to separate their ways from the club.

NoFe has been training since 2014 when he decided to move away from keyboards. Prior to that, he was a renowned player of MVP Blue and Najin White Shield. From there he moved on to KOO Tigers (later Tigers and ROX Tigers), where he would remain for two years until he joined EDward Gaming in 2016. The Korean coach has the summer split (both in regular and playoff league) of 2016, which he won with ROX Tigers. That team, consisting of Smeb, Peanut, Kuro, PraY and Gorilla will always be remembered for the phenomenal performance in the semifinal series of the 2016 Mundial against SKT T1.

Now, at Afreeca Freecs, NoFe will seek to improve the second and third positions achieved in the spring and summer splits of the LCK 2018. To do so, he will have to overcome the exit of TusiN, Kramer, Kuro and Mowgli, assembling and cohesive the new team formed by Kiin, Spirit, Ucal, Aiming and Jelly.

Final Verdict

On a good day, AFs can play fair with big players like Kingzone, Gen.G or SKT can defeat hard opponents after only 2 or 3 games. But in another development, they can also expose their clothes to teams that are underestimated many times.

The lineup of AF felt instability somewhere, maybe from too much dependence on Kiin. But now they are stronger than ever and a team like Griffin stands a very Narrow chance of beating Afreeca Freecs.

Afreeca Freecs Victory

Odds on bookmakers

Bookmakers	Griffin Odds		Afreeca Freecs Odds
	European	American	European	American
GG.bet	1.36	-277	2.89	+189.00
Loot.bet	1.35	-285	3.05	+205.00
Bet365	1.36	-277	3.00	+200.00
X-bet.co	1.36	-277	3.01	+201.00