In case it wasn’t clear from G2’s triumphant stomp over TL at MSI this year, Europe is in fact better than North America. After convincingly beating NA in both the round robin and the relay race, the European representatives will return to a heated LEC race in what has proven to be their year thus far. With Worlds coming to EU in just a couple of months, it is looking like G2 isn’t far from being the only threat from the region.

After the matches, FNC jungler Broxah told Ovilee, “I’m not going to lie — it looked pretty easy to win this thing, but NA teams managed to step it up on the last couple of days. It’s pretty clear by now [though] that EU is better than NA.”

Alongside the other representatives, they seemed to be enjoying the banter between the two regions. While there isn’t much of the underlying hatred that can boil up on a soccer pitch or a baseball diamond, the players still feel quite a bit of pride in playing for the better team in what is quickly cementing itself as an elite region in the world.

Origen’s mid laner, Nukeduck, echoed a similar sentiment to me earlier in the week, saying, “I’m not really vocal on the rivalry. I don’t trash talk NA or anything because I don’t think it’s that classy to do, especially if they’re losing. But when you’re actually playing, you want to win. We’re practicing all the time, so we want to show that we’re better.”

A small trip like this might be routine for the likes of Fnatic and G2, but for Nukeduck, it’s his first international tournament since his days with the Lemondogs in 2013. He’s been regarded as one of the top mid laners in EU even since then, so it must be a little bittersweet for his return to the international stage to be mostly exhibition-level matches, but hopefully it has given him some perspective on what it could be like to play in a big international tournament again.

In addition to winning the games on the Summoner’s Rift, G2’s bot lane pair of Perkz and Mikyx also took home the 2v2 showcase to lay claim to the title of being the “best bot lane in the West.” G2 as a whole seemed more intent than anyone else to have some fun with this tournament — we saw flex picks like Perkz’s Zed in bot lane and Jankos locking in Pyke in the jungle.

Perhaps a more sombering take for NA faithful is that EU not only managed to match them with weird picks, they actually bested them more often than not. While picks and bans aren’t a surefire indicator on whether a team is “tryharding” or not, it definitely felt like NA teams were taking that aspect of the matches more seriously than their counterparts. They were just unfortunately outmatched.