The World Cup Fantasy cheat sheet 🤐

⏰ World Cup Fantasy’s Matchday 1 deadline is Thursday, 11th June, 20:00 BST.

🤝 Official: Andy Robertson joins Spurs.

🕊️ Brighton sign winger Zadok Yohanna from AIK Stockholm for £21.5m.

🔵 Kieran McKenna leaves his managerial role at newly promoted Ipswich to spend time with his family.

👀 Keep reading for a decent World Cup Fantasy draft.

Alright?

Today’s newsletter is the final instalment in our “Make sure you don’t embarrass yourself at World Cup Fantasy” series. If you haven’t built your team yet, may this rag be your guide.

Perhaps the most liberating thing about this tournament is that it gives you the chance to reinvent yourself as a fantasy manager. It’s like going to uni, or being sent to prison: You can be anybody here.

Maybe, in World Cup Fantasy, you’re a smoker called Axel who uses all your chips early, or a vegetarian called Kale who only picks differentials.

It’s a place where you can exercise your FPL demons, find some catharsis, or turn Ivory Coast vs Ecuador into something deeply fascinating.

It’s nearly time to meet your World Cup alter-ego. Here are some tips to guide them.

As every FPL manager will tell you, real goals (rG) don’t really matter that much. Expected goals (xG) are far more important.

That’s why we’re playing xG Predictor during the World Cup.

If you’ve ever played Super 6, you’ll already understand the concept: You predict the xG and the score for a game, and score points depending on how close you are.

It’s totally free to play, and we’ve created a mini-league for LazyFPL subscribers. You can join using the code 9OZWSO0B, and if you finish in the top 5, you win an annual subscription to LazyFPL Premium.

Oh, and you also win £100,000 if you correctly predict the exact xG and scoreline for a match.

Click the button below, and you’ll be playing within 30 seconds.

Remember, chips are called “Boosters”, but calling a chip a Booster is like calling football “soccer”. We just can’t bring ourselves to do it.

As it stands, the conventional chip strategy looks something like this:

Matchday 1 or 2: 12th Man - Pick any additional player to be part of your team.
Matchday 3: Wildcard - You know what this is already.
Round of 32: Qualification Booster - 2 points for each player who gets to the next round.
Round of 16: Clean Sheet Shield - The “secret” chip that requires two goals to wipe out a clean sheet.
Final (and third-place playoff): Maximum Captain - Gives your armband to whichever player scores the most points.

The logic behind this strategy is fairly straightforward, but you’re lazy, so we’ll explain it anyway:

12th Man

Playing 12th Man in one of the opening matchdays allows you to bring in a premium asset for a standout fixture. Think Erling Haaland vs Iraq, Cristiano Ronaldo vs Cape Verde, Kylian Mbappé vs Iraq, or Vinícius Jr vs Haiti. You get the idea.

Wildcard

Smarter people than us expect several dead-rubber fixtures in Matchday 3, with teams that have already secured top spot choosing to rotate heavily.

Using your Wildcard in Matchday 3 essentially gives you a Free Hit (as you'll also receive unlimited transfers again before the Round of 32), allowing you to target players from teams that still have something to play for.

Qualification Booster

With unlimited transfers available before the Round of 32, you can then build a squad full of players likely to progress, maximising the value of the Qualification Booster.

Clean Sheet Shield

Using Clean Sheet Shield in the Round of 16 allows you to target the final round of favourable fixtures before the competition reaches the stage where only the strongest attacking teams remain.

Maximum Captain

Finally, Maximum Captain in the Final helps you end the tournament on a high. If the most popular captaincy pick isn't the highest scorer, this chip can provide a healthy green arrow.

This is all the more juicy given that the third-place playoff will also be included in the final Matchday, according to the source code:

Of course, this is just the meta strategy. It’s perfect if you can't be arsed to map out your own chip plan.

The key is to have a rough strategy in mind from the outset, as it will influence how you build your starting squad.

For example, if you're following the approach above, you should focus on constructing the strongest possible team for Matchdays 1 and 2.

This year, 48 teams are competing in the World Cup, instead of the normal 32. It means there are more lopsided group stage fixtures than ever before. There could be some generational thrashings.

Thanks to the fixture tracker available to LazyFPL Premium users, it’s easy to plan rotations to allow yourself optimal coverage between rounds.

Depending on your chip strategy, you’ll probably be eyeing up slightly different teams:

Matchday 1-3:

If you’re not planning to use your Wildcard during the group stages, you’re probably looking to build a squad with the best overall group stage fixtures:

Matchday 1+2:

If you’re planning to Wildcard ahead of Matchday 3, these are the teams with the best fixtures in the opening two rounds:

Matchday 2+3:

It’s a less common strategy, but perhaps you want to see how the land lies after Matchday 1 and adjust your team with a pre-Matchday 2 Wildcard:

Do you ever see those squad depth pictures on Twitter, where the second team looks like it’d compete with the first team?

That’s how World Cup Fantasy feels. For every draft with Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappé and Bruno Fernandes, there’s another draft with Harry Kane, Lamine Yamal and the little-known Lionel Messi.

There’s just a huge number of excellent players at the World Cup. Funny that.

The draft below is passable. It targets the opening fixtures, has some big hitters in each position, and a sprinkling of <5% differentials for that cheeky differential bonus. You could do worse.

Remember, we have a budget. Fantasy managers are subject to the same financial fair play rules as real football teams, and the real kicker is that, in fantasy, FIFA actually enforces them.

It means we need some budget players to balance the books.

Below are some solid budget picks that’ll help you achieve just that. We’ve highlighted our top pick from each position.

Goalkeepers:

Defenders:

Midfielders:

Forwards:

Captaincy is a bit different in World Cup Fantasy because we can swap it between players during a Matchday. In theory, if you had a player from every match, you could rotate your captaincy 15 times during a Matchday.

So the best captain isn’t just the best player: It also matters when they play.

For example, it’s logical to start your armband on the player who plays first, because then you can move it on to someone playing later in the Matchday if he blanks.

Here are our top 10 captaincy picks (from 10 different matches) in Matchday 1:

Erling Haaland is well-positioned on Matchday 1, with big assets before and after his plum fixture against Iraq.

A captain with less than 10 points (20 with the armband) would be a viable switch to Haaland, assuming you have a few decent players featuring after him as cover.

The Professor is not a World Cup Fantasy expert, but we’ve drafted in some of the world’s best tournament managers in order to turn him - and our Premium members - into one.

There’s some great content being shared in our Broadcast WhatsApp group, from team reveals and differentials to studies on the impact of playing in hot weather (spoiler: It’s not looking good for Norway).

Here’s what you get by joining LazyFPL Premium:

Oh, and you’ll also be supporting the newsletter. LazyFPL only exists because of premium subscribers, so becoming one makes you an immediate legend. It only takes about 10 seconds ⬇️

As the World Cup progresses, these newsletters will focus less and less on the tournament. But for now, it’s all we’ve got. Could be worse, eh?

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.