Ever had a run so bad it felt like you couldn’t do anything right? Then you might want to spare a thought for the Shanghai Dragons team in the Overwatch League, who have now lost 20 games straight.
It’s been a rough period for Shanghai Dragons. After a 0-10 record for the first stage, the team announced the recruitment of four new Korean superstars, including the first female to join an Overwatch League team, Kim “Geguri” Se-Yeon.
Unfortunately, none of those players have shown up just yet. Delays in visa processing have meant none of the new recruits played for the majority of the split. Lee “Fearless” Eui-Seok only jointed the Dragons last week, while Geguri only arrived in the United States around the same time.
If that wasn’t bad enough, team coach Wang “RUI” Xingrui, He “Sky” Junjian and Weida “Diya” Lu are still waiting for their visa applications to be processed. Diya – who only received a single-entry P1 visa when he joined the team initially, hence the reapplication – is the Dragons’ best player, and they already lost him for a fortnight after a family emergency forced him to return to China.
Visa Update????????: Coach RUI and Sky have completed the visa interview on 3/15, and Diya on 3/23. It will take few weeks to go through the review process from embassy. We are working with a lawyer to speed up the progress as much as possible, stay tuned for more update!
— Shanghai Dragons (@ShanghaiDragons) March 24, 2018
Still, over the weekend the team had a chance to get some runs on the board. Unfortunately, their opponent was London Spitfire: a team guaranteed of a top three finish before their match had began, and the winners of the Stage One finals earlier this year.
But there’s a reason London and Shanghai were opposite ends of the table. Shanghai started out defending on Hanamura, and while Spitfire took both points with 90 seconds left on the clock, London’s Joon-yeong “Profit” Park repeatedly made life miserable for Shanghai’s supports:
But that was the least of their problems. A key differentiator between the teams was the performance of London’s tanks, in particular Jae-hee “Gesture” Hong, who ended up switching to Widowmaker by the final map once everything was wrapped up.
Shanghai only notched one point on the board by the end – the first capture point on Watchpoint Gibraltar.
The 0-4 drubbing leaves Shanghai sitting at a miserable -65 across the first two stages, with a mere 8 wins and 1 tie to go with their 73 losses. The arrival of their new recruits should at least help Shanghai’s fortunes in the third stage, though, which is scheduled to kick off next Wednesday or Thursday Australian time.
To rewatch the full London/Shanghai match, or any of the previous Overwatch League games from the regular season, head on over to the official Twitch channel.
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