FF247 McDonald’s Fantasy Football World Cup Team
A 23 man squad? Rules that contradict themselves? A site we can’t trust to load up properly come transfer time? Players we have never heard of? Players valued at £1.0m? This all looks a bit odd… Must be World Cup time, bring it on, we love it!!!…. Welcome to our first ever World Cup ‘Rate My Team’ and to kick proceedings off FF247 has it’s very own fantasy team that is entering the competition!
The site address to enter is Mcdonalds Fantasy World Cup, you can register here. The official site league is called FF247 – simply enter this in the search bar on the league section and press JOIN!
Here is the FF247 team as it stands. FF247 welcomes suggestions and criticism aplenty but don’t be offended if you get it back! We jest, of course. Sort of. He has been known to bite though! FF247 himself will be around to discuss the team itself on this article thread and will take on board your thoughts and suggestions for changes ahead of the deadline on Thursday and there will be updates throughout the tournament as to the teams progress and hopefully thoughts on selection and strategies as it progresses.
And the subs…
This is by no means the final squad that FF247 will go into the competition with but rather an initial attempt at building a squad. A lot will depend on the feedback tomorrow and what is learnt from your own submissions and findings. The final squad will be published later in the week.
We also welcome your own Rate My Team posts on here as you begin to finalise those squads and starting line ups. Thoughts on formations, players or teams to watch, bargains, strategies or just whatever you want to post are welcome as always.
Gary Linekers qualifier predictions on BBC sport:
Group A
Brazil / Croatia
Group B
Spain / Holland
Group C
Ivory Coast / Colombia
Group D
Italy / England
Group E
France / Switzerland
Group F
Argentina / Nigeria
Group G
Germany / Portugal
Group H
Belgium / Russia
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/27778386
Rule update:
“You can change every player in your line-up that has already played during the current round for any other relevant player in your squad that hasn’t already played. You can also change the captain as long as the new captain hasn’t already started to play.
For example if you have placed NEYMAR on Your Pitch and he did not perform as well as you expected after the first match you can replace him with a forward from your bench that hasn’t already played during the current round. You would lose the points from NEYMAR for the round but the new player might get more points.”
Now these do no longer contradict each other; we can change players who have played.
So does the player replacing, in this example Neymar, become the captain?
At least they’re beginning to make sense haha. So we can change (c) as many times as we like once the new (c) hasn’t played yet… interesting.
By “relevant” does it mean a player of the same position?
Think so.
So I guess that it would make sense to have at least one playing substitute for the forwards.
For the FF247 team for instance, if either Ronaldo, Neymar or Messi does not play (and that could very well happen, at least for the third game), we have nobody to substitute them with.
I thought I’d post my squad for feedback. I’ve gone for the squad strategy over a strong starting XI .
Gk cillessen, karnezis, mbohli
Def, schar, vertonghen, blind, aguilar (mexico), manolas (greece) + 2 cheapos
Mid Alonso, cabaye, valbuena, Gago, de brunye, fayzulin (russia) + 2 cheapos
Fwd messi, aguero, neymar, Diego Costa, + 1 cheapo.
That’s a lot to spend on forwards, one of which will be benched every gwk. Your midfield and defence are weakened because the forward line is so strong, in my opinion.
Thanks. That was my main concern. Whether I should downgrade a forward probably one of messi/aguero.
The thinking behind having 4 expensive forwards is that goals are more likely than clean sheets. And with the balls recovered bonuses defensive midfielders have a chance to do well in a fantasy football format. They are usually cheaper too. Hence I’ve gone for gago over di Maria and Alonso over iniesta.
I also have 4 big hitters up front so that I have a solid option to bring on or rotate due to fixtures.
RMT – Going with a 3-5-2 (* Indicates starting Xl)
*Lloris/Escober/Cesar
*Coentrao/*Lichsteiner/*Vertonghen/Mesbah/Moras/Halliche/Manolas
*Hazard/*Di Maria/*Busquets/*De Bruyne/*Pogba/Bentaleb/Rahmani/Palacios
*Sanchez/*Neymar/Heydari/Immobile/Shojaei
I’ve already changed Pogba to De Rossi and Hazard to J.Rod…
@Jimbob, start guts who start earlier in the GW. For instance Play Cesar if he doesn’t do well than you can bring in Lloris.
+1
My squad for McD’s
Goalkeepers3 / 3 Value
Hugo LLORIS 6.5
Maty RYAN 4.5
Orestis KARNEZIS 2
Value 13
Defenders7 / 7 Value
MARCELO 7.5 (Bra)
Leighton BAINES 6 (Eng)
Patrice EVRA 5.5 (Fra)
Marcos ROJO 4 (Arg)
Konstantinos MANOLAS 2.5 (Gre)
Jose CHOLEVAS 2.5 (Gre)
Djamel MESBAH 1 (Alg)
Value 29
Midfielders8 / 8 Value
John Obi MIKEL 5 (Nig)
Walter AYOVI 4.5 (Ecu)
Mark MILLIGAN 4 (Aus)
Mensur MUJDZA 4 (Bos)
Emilio IZAGUIRRE 3.5 (Hon)
Yeltsin TEJEDA 3.5 (Cos)
Hotaru YAMAGUCHI 3.5 (Jap)
Nabil BENTALEB 1 (Alg)
Value 29
Forwards5 / 5 Value
Gonzalo HIGUAIN 8 (Arg)
FRED 8 (Bra)
Olivier GIROUD 6 (Fra)
Romelu LUKAKU 6 (Bel)
Khosro HEYDARI 1 (Ira)
Value 29
Starting lineup
Ryan
Marcelo-Manolas-Chloevas-Baines
Milligan-Yamaguchi-Tejeda-Ayovi
Fred-Giroud
This is the sum of yesterdays research, I’m relying heavily on a Greek treble at the back but I’ve got it covered fingers crossed by an Argie and a Frenchman, three of my Mids are actually defenders so I’m hoping that recovery’s might possibly outscore the goals in this format plus all the defensive Mids are cheaper than the offensive ones so I think I’ll have better rotation prospects. I wouldn’t quote me on this but I think that if a defensive mid has a good game a forward may need to score 2 goals at least to match his score.
The lack of big names in midfield and up front worries me..
I think the forwards are over priced NIN, I’m going to be able to have at least two good bites at the cherry with Higuain and Lukaku if Fred and Giroud fail to deliver.
I agree. The forwards are overpriced. If they score just one goal in a game they will likely be matched or outscored by a holding mid. Not great value up top unless you get a cheap starting forward who plays more as a midfielder like Rooney does at times for United.
A brace is 13 points at least..
Yep, but he’ll need to probably score a brace every game to beat a Mids score, little Izaguirre from Honduras would have scored 14 points from the England match recently and even if Honduras conceded 4 or 5 in that game he would still of walked away with a cool 13 points.
NiN if they do recoveries like MLS, I expect keepers and holding mids to be the top scoring players in most games. They will both score the equivalent of a goal a game and that’s if they have a bad game when it comes to recoveries. Now if they have an above average game than 10 recoveries is very possible and that is not counting any possible clean sheet or offensive points they could also garner. A good holding mid is almost a guaranteed 10 points a game if they do recoveries like MLS.
Think only mids and defenders get points for recoveries.
The best of both worlds is needed, that’s for sure. I just think that a squad full of Aussies, Hondurans Greeks etc isn’t the way to go, someone like Yaya Toure will rack up the recoveries and is likely to score/assist too. There’s some weak groups too so a brace or two isn’t out of the question for a lot of forwards/mid’s. Goals are needed.
Yaya, Messi, Neymar and Ronaldo I could have a lot of restless nights ahead not having one of them in the team, a lot of my team is based on the recovery system and how it’s implied, to late to change it now off to work, hopefully back for the Aussie game.
It’ll be interesting to see how the different approaches fare against each other, good luck mate.
Sepp Blatter received unanimous backing in the midst of bribery and corruption allegations when the 22 man FIFA committee voted to re elect him to the chair by 26 votes to 0.
There are numerous academic papers on corruption within international sport corporations. I’ll leave these papers here for anybody who is interested in it. (Use Google Scholar, they’ll be free somewhere).
Jennings, A. (2011). Investigating corruption in corporate sport: the IOC and FIFA, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, iFirst article doi: 10.1177/1012690211408845.
Sugden, J., & Tomlinson, A. (1998). FIFA and the contest for world football. Who rules the people’s game? Cambridge: Polity.
The first is a great read.