👋 Welcome to our first-ever Champions League Fantasy newsletter.

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⏰ Matchday 1’s deadline is Tuesday, 8th September, 17:45 BST. Create your team here.

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Alright? Wie geht es dir? ¿Cómo estás?

That’s right, we’ve gone all European. Unfortunately, in an effort to stick to our self-imposed word limit, we could only welcome you in English, German and Spanish, so if you’re from any of the 13 other nations represented in this season’s Champions League, please accept our excuses (excuses, btw, is French for “apologies”).

The rumours are true. This season, we’re writing about UCL Fantasy for the first time. UCL Fantasy is a bit like World Cup Fantasy: better prizes than FPL, and they insist on calling gameweeks “matchdays”.

Generally, we’ll keep these UCL previews behind the LazyFPL Premium curtain, but given it’s the first one, we wanted to give you a little taste, like a bit of cheese on the deli counter in Morrisons.

If your FPL team is enough to be getting on with this season, we’ll see you on Friday for the Gameweek 4 preview.

But if you’re really missing being able to own Anthony Gordon, and fancy something to keep you entertained midweek this season, keep on reading.

We’re sending a proper in-depth guide about Fantasy UCL tonight to our Premium subscribers. You’ll get chip strategy, attacking/defensive fixture analyses for the first 8 Matchdays, deeper analysis into budget options, and our UCL experts’ team reveal.

It’s serious stuff.

The Professor has assembled what is essentially The Avengers of UCL fantasy football. Proper experts. Let’s call them “Los Expertos”.

Los Expertos have a former overall winner amongst their ranks and are here to help guide you through UCL Fantasy, from the league stage through to the final.

Aside from newsletters ahead of every Matchday, you’ll also get access to an exclusive £500 prize UCL mini-league.

Upgrade today and unlock a whole new fantasy game this season.

Summary for the Lazy: The big difference between UCL Fantasy and FPL is that you can make substitutions and change your captaincy during the gameweek (or Matchday).

Anyone who played World Cup Fantasy over the summer will be somewhat familiar with some of the conventions of UCL Fantasy already.

In UCL Fantasy, by far the most important difference from FPL is that you can make decisions during a gameweek (or Matchday). This means:

Big rule difference 1) You can make substitutions during the Matchday.

Just like in FPL, your UCL team consists of 15 players. But in UCL, you can make substitutions from your bench during a Matchday.

Once all games on a given day have finished, you can sub a player out for someone on your bench whose team is yet to play. You’ll need to make the change before the next day’s first kick-off, and you lose the points of anyone you sub out. One catch: you can’t sub out a player who’s been sent off. No escaping that one.

Big rule difference 2) You can change your captain during the Matchday.

This is pretty self-explanatory. Let’s say you captain Mbappé, and he blanks on Tuesday night. Fear not - you can switch the armband to any player who is yet to play. Of course, if you switch, you’ll lose the double-points bonus on the previous captain.

Summary for the Lazy: Ball recoveries, POTM and points for winning penalties.

UCL Fantasy has other nuances to its rules. For an FPL player like yourself, these are all within your comfort zone, but worth knowing nonetheless.

1) Ball recoveries, not DefCon.

Forget about DefCon: They use ball recoveries on the continent. The official definition of a ball recovery is:

“Where a player recovers the ball in a situation where neither team has possession, or where the ball has been directly played to him by an opponent.”

You get 1 point for every 3 ball recoveries.

2) Player of the Match, not bonus.

There are no bonus points either, but instead a “Player of the Match”, which awards a player an extra three points. Incidentally, the POTM is chosen by the UEFA Technical Observer Panel, whatever the hell that is.

Let’s just hope they don’t have their own UCL Fantasy teams, else we will be using the corruption card whenever our players aren’t picked.

3) Winning penalties and wondergoals.

Any Schade owners will already know the pain of getting zero points for winning a penalty that then gets missed. Well, in UCL Fantasy, winning a penalty earns 2 points, regardless of whether it’s converted. Conceding one means -1 point. The exception is handball: if that’s why the penalty is awarded, neither of those point adjustments applies.

Also, goals from outside the box get an extra point. Nice.

For the full set of rules, take a look at the official website.

Just like a sad seagull, UCL Fantasy has only two chips:

Wildcard.

You know what a Wildcard is. Unlimited transfers.

Limitless.

Not to be confused with that mediocre action flick starring Bradley Cooper, the Limitless chip is essentially a Free Hit, but you get unlimited budget as well. Blimey.

Aside from these, you’ll also get:

You also get extra transfers depending on where we are in the competition. Here’s a table we’ve stolen from the official website:

Summary for the Lazy: Stuttgart, Bayern, Barcelona, Sporting.

Our team of UCL nerds are proper serious. They’re all like that one bloke you know who can name every player in Sampdoria’s title-winning squad from 1991.

They’ve gone through the teams with the best fixtures, then the most interesting players within them. Here’s what they came up with.

Stuttgart

Stuttgart have Viking (H) and Slovan Bratislava (A) in the opening 2 matchdays.
Mittelstädt looks like the pick - a €4.5m DEF who also happens to be the primary pen taker.

They also really like Undav - the €7m forward who kept scoring in the World Cup for Germany. He had 25 goals and 14 assists in 46 games last season.

Their €4.0m goalkeeper, Bredlow, might be tempting, but beware: he’s not first choice and will be replaced by Seimen when he returns from injury in early October.

Stuttgart’s fixtures turn in Matchday 3, when they’ll face Atlético, Galatasaray and Inter. That coincides with good fixture runs for Inter, Real Madrid and Dortmund.

Bayern

You may have heard of these small German minnows, who start their UCL campaign with Bodø/Glimt (H) and Viking (A).

Trigger warning: We’re bringing out the E word. Kane (€11.0m) is essential. Or, at least, as essential as a player can be. It’s also nostalgic for FPL managers to be able to own him again.

Díaz (€8.0m) is listed as a midfielder this season (he was a forward in UCL Fantasy last season), which increases his stock.

Olise (€9.0m) is, on the surface, the better option, and scored 22 points more than Díaz last season. Had Díaz been a midfielder, however, it would’ve only been 13 points, which makes the €1.0m saving on Díaz intriguing.

These are the sorts of players you keep for the whole league phase.

Sporting

Sporting have a lot of really nice budget players and decent fixtures to start off. Galatasaray (H), Lens (A), LASK (H) and Shakhtar Donetsk (A) is a pretty kind first four.

€4.0m defender Altimira ought to be on your watchlist: Mostly because he’s starting in midfield. Zalazar is a €4.5m midfielder who starts in attacking midfield.

Suárez looks like a great pick at €7.0m. He was a popular choice last season, scoring 38 goals and providing 8 assists in 53 games, including 5 UCL goals. He’s also on penalties.

Barcelona

They’ve got a tough fixture against PSG in Matchday 3, but otherwise, Barcelona are one of those teams that you invest in and keep for the long haul.

And haul they probably will.

Raphinha (€9.5m) is probably a must. He’s the starting forward this season (despite being listed in UCL as a midfielder), is on penalties, and already has five goals and one assist from three La Liga games so far.

Here’s a hot take: Our boffins reckon that Fermín López (€7.0m) and Gordon (or Górdón as he’s now known - €8.0m) will prove to be better value picks than Yamal (€10m).

Yamal had a very disappointing UCL campaign last season, and it was Fermín who took all the plaudits as Barcelona’s top point scorer with 71. Gordon has gotten off to a nice start with 3 assists in 3 games for Barcelona and looks a starter at LW.

The €4.0m Gerard Martín in defence is one to watch. He’s a regular in the Barca defence, making 51 total appearances last season. Not one for goals or assists, but €4.0m is a laughably good price for a place in a top defence.

If you need a team in a pinch, you could copy this one our UCL boffins created. It’s got some good players in it, including more of the ones we’ve mentioned above.

Some notes about this draft:

This draft follows a Limitless in Matchday 3 strategy, saving the Wildcard for a later Matchday.

It targets some of the teams we’ve mentioned here, like Bayern (2), Barcelona (2) and also PSG (3), who play Slovan (H) in Matchday 1. Everyone here has really good fixtures to start things off.

The Limitless chip in Matchday 3 is like a family counsellor, helping us to avoid some ugly conflicts. Barcelona play PSG, and Bayern face Arsenal. By playing our Limitless, we can side-step these to capitalise on fixtures like Man City vs AEK Athens, Inter vs Shakhtar, Sabah vs Dortmund and other juicy fixtures.

Our goalkeepers rotate well, and we really like all of our budget defenders.

It only takes a minute to upgrade.

Because we can have multiple captains in UCL Fantasy, we have to give you multiple options.

For example, we've listed the best captains for Tuesday, but if your Tuesday captain underperforms, we’ve also lined some up for Wednesday and Thursday. Here’s a lazy guide to UCL captaincy:

Tuesday 8th Sept:

Haaland vs Porto
Mbappé vs Inter
Guirassy vs Villarreal

Wednesday 9th Sept:

Raphinha vs Feyenoord
Dembélé vs Slovan Bratislava
Undav vs Viking

Thursday 10th Sept:

Kane vs Bodø/Glimt
Bruno Fernandes vs Sabah
Olise vs Bodø/Glimt

Obviously, this depends on who you’ve picked. Olise could become Díaz, Raphinha could transfigure into Yamal. The focus here is more on the fixtures to target for potential captaincy, rather than the specific players.

When should you stick or twist?

As a general rule, we’d stick if your Tuesday captain scores 10 points or more, or your Wednesday captain scores at least 8. That’s 20 or 16 points with the armband. Anything less, and it’s probably worth rolling the dice.

Of course, this depends on the specific players featuring each day. This week, for example, your risk appetite might be higher knowing that Kane plays on Thursday.

Right, if you’ve made it this far, it means you’re probably playing UCL Fantasy this season. Have a great season.

We’ll continue our dedicated UCL Fantasy coverage over on LazyFPL Premium, so if you’re ready to win it this year, do join us over there.

See you on Friday for the FPL Gameweek 4 preview.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.