The holidays are over, the Serie A championship has begun and evenings in front of the TV and Monday morning reading La Gazzetta Dello Sport have begun. And above all, the weekends spent trying to win at Fantasy Football. How do you say? Do you still have to start your tournament with friends? Then you are in the right place because today we are giving you some advice for the Fantasy Football auction.
Before starting to look at the probable formations and try to climb the ranking of the various leagues, in fact, it is necessary to lay the foundations of a winning team. The operation can only be done if you start with a well-calibrated and reliable pool of players.
Of course, it will be said: the most useful tips are those based on players. And the players change, however, their ratings fluctuate and who can be a good buy today may not be tomorrow. All true, but what we want to give you here is not a simple list of names. Instead, we want to offer you a series of techniques that always work.
Because it is true that the winning team must have the right players in the right place, but first of all we need to understand what is needed. In short, before the names, you need the head, you need programming. And we want to help you do just that: to understand in general how a winning team is built.
For those of you who have been playing for many years, perhaps it will be advised that you will not say anything new. But for others, however, we hope they will be useful to understand where you have been wrong so far or how to move if you are a beginner. Here is how to build your team’s squad during the auction, how to build training, and how to make the most of quotes, rules, and strategies.
1. It is not the player’s value that counts as much as his value in the game
The first piece of advice we start with is one of those things that everyone actually knows, but many forget. Fantasy football is not football. Despite being based on that sport, it has in fact largely different rules. That you have to learn to exploit to your advantage.
Let’s think, for example, of goalkeepers. As you know, this is a very delicate role in a traditional football team, but even more so in one of Fantacalcio. The regulation, in fact, provides that the goalkeepers’ score in Fantasy Football is strongly influenced by the bonuses.
Each goal taken in fact takes away one point. This means that you can also be the strongest extreme defender in the world, but if the backlog of the team in which you play is punched like gruyere there will be very little for the goalkeeper to do. And so even a 6.5 performance can easily drop to 4.5 or less in case of multiple goals.
For the goalkeeper, therefore, everything must be done to obtain a number 1 who plays in a level team. That is a team that can also score a few goals, but that never and then will never be able to concede 3 or 4 in one match. If then that goalkeeper is also able to parry penalties, perhaps you can also pass out for him.
Movement players
Similar speech for the defenders. Here too the modifiers have a fundamental weight. We must therefore keep our eyes on those players who have the propensity to score or at least to assist. So very well those who hit the head on corner kicks and those full-backs who play in teams where the outsiders go up to the bottom of the field and go to the cross.
In the midfield – needless to say – you have to spend a lot on at least one player with an offensive propensity. If he is a penalty taker, even better.
In attack, finally, one must be careful not to pass out for a big name for its own sake. The champion can also take good marks, but if he does not score continuously he will not give you the victory in your league.
You need, therefore, forwards who score every Sunday or almost: better to one who makes an extraordinary performance once but then disappears for the next three. The champion makes a scene. But in general, it costs a lot and makes Fantacalcio less of its value. Instead, focus on the working class of an old-style center forward.
2. Bear in mind injuries and turnover
Once you understand the most important characteristics of the various players, you must also think about the long run. When we are taken by the fervor of the auction, in fact, we tend to forget how we will find ourselves a few weeks later. We buy and buy, and we don’t keep in mind where that team will take us.
One of the problems encountered when playing Fantasy Football is in fact being able to field a formation Sunday after Sunday. And we are not talking about reliable or strong training, but just pure and simple training.
If you don’t act wisely, in fact, it is not uncommon to find yourself in difficulty and not have, at certain times of the year, 11 players to play.
Let’s say, for example, that you buy many players from the strongest teams. Champions that maybe cost you an eye and who, however, then on Sunday, when you have the decisive challenge, are made to rest for the turnover.
The most important teams are the most fascinating and those where the strongest players play, but they are also the ones that most often let their pearls rest. And if your lineup bases its strength on those two or three champions, the Sunday after a Champions League match could be very complicated.
When the toy breaks down
In addition, there is another problem to keep in mind: that of accidents. In fact, it may happen that a champion on which a lot has been invested breaks already at the beginning of the championship, becoming unusable. It will be said: it is a fatality (or, more brutally, a stroke of bad luck). And in part, you will be right. But bad luck can in some cases be circumvented.
In fact, there are players who are more likely to be injured than others. Think, for example, of fantasists, especially those who are a little light from the physical point of view: when their ankles are targeted by a defense mastiff, there is very little to do. Therefore, placing a lot of money on them can be a half-chance.
Or there are players who have a long history of injuries or ailments. Their names are quite well known in the environment, although sometimes we forget them during the auction. They too must pay particular attention, because their body could betray us in the most delicate moment of the season.
Of course, if the price of these fragile samples were particularly attractive, you can still buy them. Fantasy football, as we will see shortly, is a game in which you win not only by being cautious but also by embarking on some daring bet. The important thing is not to build an entire team (or an entire department) on unreliable players.
3. Do not buy entire blocks of a team, unless they are well tested
The most classic mistake when you start playing Fantasy Football is to build a team that follows almost completely that of the heart.
If you support Juve you create a formation made up of at least 8 elevenths of Juventus players. If you have a red and black heart you do the same with AC Milan players. And if instead, you are a fan of Inter, Roma, Lazio, or Napoli you fall into the same mistake. An understandable mistake, for heaven’s sake, but that in this particular game can be fatal.
There are many reasons why it is better not to take an entire block from the same team. The first is trivial. if you line up a formation that constantly follows that of a real team, there is no talent in the eventual victory.
The beauty of Fantasy Football is that you can literally replace those who create the formations. Giving up on this experience, therefore, means not fully enjoying the game and its challenges.
The most concrete reasons
But there are also more concrete reasons why the conduct of this type is not recommended. First, real teams normally experience periods of great form and others of poor performance.
When you have a squad made up of players from different teams, you can juggle your line-up, in order to put on the bench who is a little tarnished and who is in shape on the pitch.
With a rose that follows that of your favorite team, however, this “adjustment” is more difficult. And you live – indeed, you suffer – the period of form or poor performance of the real team, without being able to do anything about it.
Finally, we must keep in mind the mechanism of vows. As you know, a large part of your team’s score is based on the evaluation that players receive in the Gazzetta Dello Sport. This rating is influenced by many factors, and not only by the performance of the individual.
When a team loses
Let’s take a concrete example, to understand each other. Let’s say you have the entire defense of Milan, and you are constantly on the pitch. This can also work for a few games, but sooner or later the Rossoneri will face a bad day, an unexpected or particularly heavy defeat.
What happens in such cases? The newspapers go down heavily with votes and lower the average for all the players on that team. Even those who all in all have done better and are guilty of the wreck of the team are guilty, with votes that drop dangerously.
The newspapers always do this, they lower – even unconsciously – the votes to all the defeated teams. And, unfortunately, they don’t always do the opposite when the team wins. In those cases, it is only the champions who benefit from the victory. In short, to make ends meet it is better to put together a team made up of players from different teams.
4. Find the right balance between solidity and betting
So far we have listed a number of tips which, based on the Fantasy Football regulation, prove to be simple principles of common sense. To triumph, however, Fantacalcio also needs more than common sense. A pinch of unpredictability.
Once your opponents have gained some experience, in fact, they too will be able to create reliable formations. To prevail, therefore, at some point, advice and design will no longer be enough, but intuition will be needed.
In the case of Fantasy Football, intuition can manifest itself in many ways. Before the games, it can lead the coach to leave out a theoretically stronger player to field the reserve, assuming that the reserve will play an unforgettable game.
During the auction, however, the intuition of the winner is manifested in a different way. The initial budget, in fact, is used largely for the most important players, but there is always a certain amount that can be spent to complete the squad.
Usually, these residual ghosts are directed towards players who are cheap and who play on smaller teams. Players who, at least apparently, are all more or less equal.
The champion among the outline players
The fact is that in reality, they are not at all the same. A part of those low-ranked players, in fact, will not leave their mark at all: having chosen and placed them in the pink will not make you gain more points. But some of those perfect strangers will eventually breakthrough.
The true champion of Fantacalcio is the one who during the auction knows how to identify a talent of this type . That is, a player who has had a rather anonymous career so far, but who is preparing to make the leap in that very year.
How do you spot such a player? It is certainly not easy. You have to follow the summer games of the second or third tier teams with interest, get to know the young people who have just arrived from Serie B, get a lot of information. And then, of course, having a fair amount of luck.
Solidity is therefore not enough. You need a pinch of madness, a bet – perhaps, indeed, one per department – that with a little luck at the end of the year can prove to be a winner. So don’t be afraid to use it, at least a little.
5. How to divide the budget among the various departments
Finally, allow us a word on how to distribute the money between the various departments of the team. If you have already participated in auctions for Fantasy Football, in fact, you know that one of the risks is to let yourself get carried away and not be able to manage the money you had at the start. So much so as to fail the good intentions that had been formulated in the previous days.
In fact, if you want to win at Fantasy Football you have to implement a tactic that we could define as ” controlled imbalance “. It is very wrong, in fact, to allocate the same money to all departments. Money must be “unbalanced”. But this imbalance must not go beyond anarchy or loss of control of the situation.
A good tactic is to decide from the outset what percentages of your budget you want to allocate to goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, and attackers. In this way, you will always have an eye on your finances and you will know that raising the price of a player will soon result in some waivers among his teammates.
Put the money on the attack
That said, let’s see where it is convenient to concentrate your credits. This, in reality, is a question that everyone is asking, and to which it is difficult to give an unequivocal answer. Because Fantasy Football is a simpler game of football, but like its counterpart, it can present different philosophies and tactics.
There are those who think that the real way to win is to work in the midfield. A sector of particularly talented midfielders, in fact, can give you various satisfactions and above all give you the impression of playing good football (even if, in fact, you are only writing names on a sheet of paper).
There is another school of thought, however, which believes that to win the Fantasy Football the decisive sector is exclusively the attack. Indeed, that the midfield can all be sacrificed on the altar of the three points.
We basically marry this latter philosophy. Obviously you have to find – also through experiments – your way, but if you want advice from us, know that in our opinion the best tactic is to concentrate most of the budget on the first 3 or 4 attackers.
70% of the budget, to have 60 goals
As an indication, you can concentrate two-thirds of your credits on purchasing the tips. One must be of a high standard, a name like Icardi, or Dzeko, or Dybala. One who can plausibly aim to win the top scorer ranking. Obviously, players of this type pay dearly.
A second name must be good. you have to find an attacker who plays in a mid-table team, who can aim to achieve at least 10-15 goals in the season. Finally, two other attackers are needed who start holders in their teams, even of low ranking.
Overall, these top 4 points should be able to score between 50 and 60 seasonal goals. Then, the department can be completed with inventories; the names and profiles of these latter players are only relatively important.
Invest the billions on the attack, with the rest you can build the defensive department (concentrating a good amount on the first goalkeeper and on at least one defender) and then, lastly, on the midfield. It’s a risky and somewhat extreme tactic, we know, but that – if you make the right choices – it makes a lot.
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