League of Legends: BDSA, EMEA monsters

Logic has been respected. French League of Legends Summer Split champion BDS Academy defeated fellow LFL representative Vitality.Bee 3-1 in the EMEA Masters final at Olympia Hall Munich on Friday. The Swiss club thus brought the French regional league its seventh trophy in the competition's history, and succeeding Eintracht Spandau at the top of the ERL hierarchy.

BDSA opened their best-of-five series with a flawless victory over the Bees in Game 1, thanks in particular to a masterclass from Rudy "SkewMond" Semaan, who went 12-0 with his Viego. Hope was briefly restored on the Vitality side after the second game, during which the Hive and Josip "Jopa" Čančar made their Seraphine pick work well. After two one-sided games, the third match seemed more balanced... until the 15th minute. BDSA gained a clear advantage at the Herald, and although Tim "Keduii" Willers made a questionable play in the midlane, the AD Carry quickly recovered, shining in teamfights and finishing the game with a quadrakill.

Both teams then offered an explosive draft in Game 4, featuring Yone-Yasuo in the midlane, Vayne for Kaan "Naak Nako" Okan—which had worked in Game 2—and Polat "Parus" Çiçek's signature Pyke. BDSA dominated all phases of the game around objectives and built up their lead to 10k gold. The only neutral objective Vitality managed to secure, a stolen Baron Nashor, not only cost all five players their lives but also led to the end of the game.

This title punctuates an almost perfect split for BDS Academy. The Swiss team lost just one game in the LFL regular season (17-1) and bounced back perfectly from the defeat by Karmine Corp Blue in the playoffs (0-3) to take their revenge in the grand final (3-1). In the playoffs, the club had already faced Vitality Bee, with a similar result: a 3-1 victory. During the EMEA Masters, BDSA maintained their momentum, losing just one match to Dark Passage in the Swiss Stage.

More generally, this sense of domination persisted throughout the year. Despite the absence of a title in the spring, the organization was already a formidable force for any opponent. So much so that the 2024 version of BDSA can legitimately make a claim for the title of the best team in ERL history.

The weekend in Munich continues this Saturday with the lower bracket final of the LEC—the EMEA championship—between G2 and MAD Lions KOI. The winner of this match will face Fnatic in the grand final the following day, in front of a crowd likely to be larger than the one that witnessed BDSA's coronation on Friday.