Is NA Truly Greater Than EU?

The ongoing rivalry between North America and Europe has been interesting to say the least. Constant banter among the two regions and no clear picture as to which is the greater region. Historically speaking if you look at the accomplishments Europe has achieved in international play compared to North America, it is easy to say that they are greater. They have won the world championship and collectively have performed better than the apple pie natives for the matches that matter most.

From a different perspective, if you view the head to head matchup between the two, North America has been more dominant over Europe. Riot’s Rift Rivals competition between the two regions looked to settle the score as to who can earn the bragging rights. To the surprise of many viewers the European teams were drastically outmatched by their North American counterparts. Overall game knowledge and objective control, Europe seemed to be very behind the curve. They hardly prioritized dragons, did not have as much emphasis on vision control as North America and overall looked outclassed.

This leads many to wonder if North America has finally gotten over the hump. From the outside looking in it always seems as though North American teams have a higher ceiling as to how good they can be but never manage to reach it. There is that constant discussion of potential these teams have but it has yet to translate to international success. We have seen instances in which North American teams look as though they are closing the gap between themselves and the rest of the world. An example of this would be CLG making it to the finals of MSI in 2016. A tournament in which many analysts expectations of the North American squad was extremely low.

Then you fast forward to this year’s MSI tournament and TSM failed to make it out of groups. The inconsistency has been North America’s biggest enemy. We have seen instances where the teams look brilliant and appear to be on the same level as any other top performing team internationally. Then there are times where we see them completely crash and burn. After the success North America had at Rift Rivals, it only leads the spectators to wonder if the region will be able to carry that momentum into Worlds. Will this finally be the year that North America is able to produce better results than Europe and prove that NA is truly greater than EU? We will just have to wait and see.