World Cup Fantasy expert season review

The World Cup is now over and what a tournament it was! We look back and reflect as we bring in some of the best International Fantasy managers around to provide you with their World Cup Fantasy expert season review.

It was an extremely turbulent World Cup and the Official World Cup Fantasy game shared that same path. Some of the following managers have been providing team reveals throughout so it is only right we see how their season ended with their expert season reviews.

@FPL_Crisk

Notes

My final Rank was 40,090k.
First of all, if there is a word to describe this Fantasy game it would be disappointing. The quality of the platform ranged from low to laughable, especially at the start. That said, the competition itself was a strange roller-coaster. I know my rank isn’t the best, but given how things went it could have been a lot worse.
I’ve made two main mistakes which held me back during this. Captaincy choices and 50/50 decisions both let me down. In regards to the latter, I don’t think I could have done a lot more and it’s more related to luck. However, the former is definitely on me and it motivates me to improve.
Matchday 1 (64 points). I twisted captain from Messi (seven points pre captain) to KDB (only four points). Other than getting into trouble by my only two 50/50 decisions of Musiala and Martinez (three points total) vs Torres and Richarlison (who both hauled).
Matchday 2 (53 points) was ok with Lewandowski captain but not owning Kudus who I had had in my drafts before wasn’t great. However, I can’t be too much angry for that. It was not an easy call and “Kudus” to the fantasy players who went for him (terrible joke).
Matchday 3 (51 points) was an underwhelming Matchday overall. We all remember it for the shock results from Denmark, France, Brazil, Spain and Portugal messing with all of us. A theme that will be repeated later in the tournament.

Advanced stages

The Round of 16 (87 points) was very high scoring Matchday for everyone. So my good score was less impressive. I managed to bottle the captaincy (with Messi being my lowest scoring forward, costing me 8 points).
Then the quarter finals (23 points) arrived. I am a fixture fantasy player. If I see a green fixture, I’ll go for it. I prefer to have all of the highest scoring template players than a team with differentials with lower ownership. This is because I genuinely believe that playing safe and with consistency, gains you more than being “punty”.
Semi-finals was (57 points) with 10 players total, which ended up being nine after Rabiot fell ill. Owning the best left back in the world in Theo (13 points) wasn’t enough to compensate the lack of points.
Giroud vs Alvarez was another bad 50/50 that didn’t end up in my favour.
The final Matchday (67 points) obviously went pretty well. I had the Power Captain planned for the final. Going back I would still play it in the final though, this year was really a big statistical anomaly overall. In the end, I’m ok with how it went, lots to analyse, lots to learn from.
This was never anyone’s main fantasy game for this season, it was (sometimes) a fun way to enjoy some World Cup games a bit more, and in the end this is what football is all about after all, having fun. Back to try hard mode in FPL now.

@FplToni

Notes

Overall I liked this game even if I lost some points with bugs. For example in first matchday Sane didn’t start and I tried to sell him for Asensio and the app didn’t allow me to. After the game I was able and it cost me three points but somehow Sane remained in my team with his 0 points!
Another thing that didn’t go well was ignoring Dumfries against USA because I expected them to concede. I was right but he managed to pick up three attacking returns.
The last thing that cost me a lot of points was defenders. It is really easy to get minus points here if there are a lot of goals and if I played again I’d pick defenders that play earlier so that I can bench them if they get minus points. You can see on my screenshot of the last matchday (-6 from defenders).
Other than those things i liked this game, loved both new chips and was really happy with my captain picks.
I am especially happy because my country finished third and can’t wait for another national tournament because there are so many quality games that I doubt that there is any football fan not enjoying those tournaments!
Cheers and I hope that everyone is happy with the rank in the end and that was my expert season review.

@FplRossoneri

Notes

I finished with 76 points for Matchday 7 which pushed me into the Top 1K (814th) globally. This was the goal in the first place so super I am satisfied with where I finished.
Some key takeaways for me were nailing my captaincy and chips throughout the tournament.
I got six out of seven captain hauls which gave me 140 points out of a total of 460. This was just over 30% of my points, for shorter formats like World Cup Fantasy it’s important to have at least 25% share of points come from your captain.
Planning and optimizing chip strategy at the start was vital and that’s what helped me to finish in the top 1K eg: I didn’t save my Power Captain for the final Matchday as I knew I would have enough options to get it right.
For shorter format games, attacking the group stages is vital because that’s where you can gain the most points.
Some players that stood out for me from a World Cup Fantasy perspective were Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi with their consistency throughout the tournament. Then players like Cody Gakpo, Theo Hernandez, Hakim Ziyach, Denzel Dumfries were revelations for me.
Some disappointments were Maehle, Diogo Costa, Bergwijn and Skov Olsen whom I thought would do much better than they actually did in the end.
Overall barring the chaos at the start with “hack” rule changes and wrong points allocations etc I had a relatively good experience playing this rendition of World Cup Fantasy and I hope to be back in 2026 to hopefully add to my good finish this time around.
That was my expert season review.

@TheLineUpBrazil

Notes

Well, I had a terrible time in World Cup Fantasy for two reasons. I’d say that was my worst fantasy performance ever.
Disappointing, with just 327 points and 362k overall. I had to deal with so many issues with my job, that I lost the focus on fantasy, therefore I couldn’t make my usual power ranking and get better results. Secondly the app was really poor. During the group stages I noticed people making transfers during it and doing well. I realized that so late and kept behind.
My mistake was not bringing in Di Maria instead of Rabiot. I hope in UCL Fantasy l come back to get great scores, which I am already working on.
That was my expert season review.