Fantasy World Cup: What are the Booster Chips worth?

 

I've said before that I think one of the main faults with FIFA's Fantasy World Cup game is that it has just too many chips - which it calls 'Boosters'. Subject to the same harsh limitation as in Fantasy Premier League that we can only use one of these at a time, it's really a bit of a struggle to get all 5 of them out of the way in a competition that only has 8 rounds (especially as you probably don't really want to be playing any of them in Round 1 or Round 3; and you may - like me - have occasionally found it impossible to play one when you wanted to because the game website mysteriously unsaved your selection of it!).

Sorry, I appreciate that this little note comes rather too late to be of any help to most people in planning how to use these chips - but perhaps it will still show up in search results in four or eight years' and be of some use in a future Fantasy World Cup game.

In planning how you might use these various chips, I think it's important to form a clear view of how they can be useful and how many points you can hope to make out of them.

Qualification Bonus - this is the most straightforward one: only available after the end of the group phase, it gives you 2 extra points for any points-scoring player in your final eleven who progresses to the next round of the competition. (However, for some bizarre reason, this is calculated as completely separate from all the regular points, and does not enjoy a doubling procedure for your nominated captain.)  Hence, the maximum you can make from this chip is 22 points, 2 points for every point-scoring member of your final eleven.

That actually makes it the most valuable of the chips, and the 'easiest' to realise full value from. However, in order to do this, you almost certainly have to play it in the 'Round of 32'. Thereafter, there are few if any badly mismatched ties, and it becomes harder and harder to correctly anticipate the outcome of all the fixtures in the Round. Correctly identifiying 11 (or 15!) players who will all qualify for the next round is relatively straightforward in the 'Round of 32', but increasingly less so thereafter.

Clean Sheet Shield  -  originally announced only as an additional 'Mystery Booster', we weren't even told what this chip was going to be until during MatchDay 3 (although there had been some accurate leaks online); and, like the Qualification Bonus above, it was only available for use in the knockout stage. This extends your chance to earn clean sheet points by treating a clean sheet as 'conceding no more than 1 goal' rather than 'conceding NO goals'. (It is very difficult to find a description of exactly how this is meant to work, since a description is still omitted from the official 'rules page'! I was pretty sure that the original description I'd seen had suggested that clean sheet protection was being extended to 'conceding no more than 2 goals'; but even if that is what they originally said or implied, that's not actually what's happening.)

Now, in theory this could earn you 5 extra points for a goalkeeper and up to 5 defenders, and 1 extra point for up to 4 midfielders (or 5, if you only field 4 defenders): so, the absolute maximum return is 34 points - very handy. But in practice of course, you're almost certainly going to want to play 2 or 3 forwards (in the 2026 iteration, anyway, it has been absolutely essential to play Messi, Mbappé, and Haaland or Kane in every MatchDay), so that will reduce the number of players who can benefit from the chip; quite probably, you'll only have 3/4 defenders and 3/4 midfielders who are eligible, reducing the reasonable maximum expectation to 24-28 points. (I think, as with the 'Qualification Bonus' above, they do not double this bonus for your captain selection - mean!). 

That's apparently slightly better than the 'Qualification Bonus', but.... you're choosing players, especially your keeper and defenders, because of the likelihood that they will win games comfortably and keep clean sheets; so, most of the time, most of your keeper/defender picks are keeping clean sheets anyway, and you're not getting any benefit from this chip - it's just a kind of 'insurance policy', in case one of your star defensive players unexpectedly concedes a solitary goal. You're only getting extra points for defensive players who concede 1 goal (rather than 0 goals or 2-or-more goals).

In practice, then, you'd be very lucky to make even 15-20 points off this chip. And it carries a very high chance of returning little or nothing (if all of your defensive players either keep a proper clean sheet or concede 2 or more goals...). [I played it in the 'Round of 16' this year and made a lousy 1 point off it - and that only because Bruno Guimaraes was subbed off shortly before Haaland scored his second goal against Brazil!!]

It would have been kinder to offer a bonus chip like this in the group stage, when clean sheets or low goals-against likelihoods are more predictable. Once we get into the knockout rounds, with higher stakes, more closely matched teams, and the possibility of extra time, it becomes more and more possible that matches will become high-scoring, with both sides conceding more than once. In 2026, there was only 1 goalless draw and 3 other clean sheets in the 'Round of 16', with only 4 of the 16 teams conceding only 1 goal (making their players eligible for the benefit of this chip); in the 'Round of 32', there were no goalless draws but 7 real clean sheets, while 12 teams conceded only 1 goal. 

This would suggest that the 'Round of 32' is probably the best round to play this chip in also, but.... it's really a bit of a lottery, just about impossible to predict which teams will concede 1 goal rather than zero.... and you might not want players from those teams (you have to think primarily about factors like how likely they are to score other points for you, and how far into the competition they are likely to progress; you can't just be including players because their fixtures look potentially favourable for this bonus!).

You should have more chance of picking up at least 1 or 2 players who concede only a single goal if you play this chip in a round where you have as many teams as possible represented in your Fantasy side. However, this is a truly random chip, not one you can really plan for; and it probably won't make a lot of difference when you play it. You could even leave it until the Final, when it would be an all-or-nothing play: there is a high chance that neither of the two Finalists will concede only a single goal in the game, but if either of them does, you might have multiple players picking up the useful extra points.

12th Man - this bonus chip allows you to recruit an additional player for one MatchDay only: a 16th squad member who automatically counts as an extra member of your starting team (you can't choose to swap them out for one of your subs if they bomb!). The nice thing about this one is that it is free of any of the usual restrictions on country quotas or budget cap, so if there's a star player you can't quite afford, or an additional member of a top team like France that you covet because they're playing a very weak team and might be fancied to score a lot of goals - this is your opportunity. 

A top MatchDay return from a leading player has typically been in the range of 15-18 points in this tournament, so that's what you can hope to earn from this chip. But of course, even your Mbappés and your Haalands can have a blank here and there, so it might very easily give you little or nothing.

This is a very flexible chip that could be used on any MatchDay when the fixtures seem favourable. But there are two problems with that: i)  most of the other booster chips strongly favour use on a narrower range of MatchDays, so in fact with this one you're limited to the few MatchDays that might be 'left over', unclaimed by higher priority chips; ii)  you're more likely to want to use it while all of the starriest players are still in the tournament, which will bias you towards using it in the group stage or one of the early knockout rounds. I think MD2 in the group stage would probably have been the ideal time to use it this year.

Maximum Captain - this chip simply gives you the double-points score for the captain's armband on whichever of your players actually gives you the biggest return of the MatchDay, without you having to designate him in advance. As just mentioned above, the top scoring player in the MatchDay is typically returning about 15-18 points, so this chip might appear to be worth this much as a maximum. But if you weren't playing the chip, you'd get captaincy double-points from someone; and most of the time, you're picking someone that does actually give you a pretty good return - so the additional lift you could get out of this chip is usually only going to be a few points. At least, that's the case in Rounds 1-6 or 7, because the in-game 'manual changes' facility allows you to change captain between each match, and so you can, if you like, rotate the captaincy through a succession of your strongest players until one of them returns a good haul; especially in the earlier rounds when there are a lot of games, this usually means that you end up with a good score from your captain - possibly your maximum possible, and rarely more than 2-3 points lower.; so, that is the likely true value of this chip. 

However, in the semis you only get to try out two captains, and in the Final, you can't switch your captain at all, you're stuck with your original choice. So, I think this chip potentially has the highest value in the final round, or the penultimate round: you might of course correctly guess who your highest-scoring player in the Semi-Finals or Final is going to be; but there's quite a strong chance you'll pick someone who gives a fairly disappointing return, and in that case, the 'Maximum Captain' chip might have given you an 8 or 10-point, maybe even a 15-point lift.

Wildcard - unlike the other chips, this doesn't directly provide a positive points advantage; it's more of a rebuild chip, allowing you unlimited changes to completely refashion your squad. 

Some are tempted to use it to chase a points advantage early in the competition. Big points in the group stage are usually to be found from the most mismatched fixtures, very strong teams playing the weakest teams; but the teams with the most favourable fixtures might change dramatically between MD1 and MD2, and so you might want to make a lot of changes for MD2. Some are even tempted to use the chip ahead of MD3, because a lot of star players are often rested in the third game, if their teams have already secured first-place qualification in their groups.

However, I generally counsel that it is better to plan your initial squad to try spread optimisation of fixtures across MD1 and MD2, and to accept that MD3 is almost always very low-scoring in Fantasy, and isn't worth expending much effort on (take a few cheap hits if you need to in order to muster an eleven, but don't be wasting the valuable Wildcard on fixing your squad for a MatchDay that rarely produces many points anyway).

The Wildcard is best saved for possible 'emergencies'. As a tournament like this progresses, more and more players pick up injuries, or fall out with the team manager, or get suspended; and then, of course, in each round, half of the players and teams are eliminated - often quite unexpectedly in 'upset' results! This hazard is proving to be particularly extreme in the 2026 tournament because the game's designers have been very nigarrdly in the number of Free Transfers allocated for each round, and also because it's been an unusually competitive tournament, with almost every team playing near the best of their ability, and even some of the lesser teams proving to be quite a handful. After the 'Round of 32', almost none of the ties have been at all easy to predict the outcomes of. 

So, there is a very high chance that in the Quarter-Finals or the Semi-Finals, you may find yourself missing half or more of your squad - and that is when you need to use your Wildcard. (This shouldn't be an issue in the Final because you don't need a bench for that, and you are given 6 Free Transfers after the semi-finals. You should be able to distribute your semi-final picks so that, whatever the match outcomes, you don't lose more than 9 or 10 players - 6 free replacements plus an empty bench!)

IN SUMMARY:

Qualification Bonus:  Near-essential to use it in the 'Round of 32'. Expected yield: 14-22 points. (Maximum yield quite easily attainable!).

Clean Sheet Shield:  An utterly random and unpredictable chip, and largely worthless: only available in the knockout rounds - use it whenever it isn't getting in the way of a more important chip.  Expected yield: 0-12 points. (Maximum yield could theoretically be 24-34 points, but it's very, very unlikely anyone would ever get anywhere near that - and it would be a massive fluke if you did!)

12th Man:  Probably best used in the group stage, especially MatchDay2 - when you've had some indications of form in the first batch of games, and the stakes are still high for everyone (by MD3, a lot of teams have nothing left to play for, and there may be a lot of rotations). But this is a flexible chip that can still bring an advantage in the knockout phase; although you probably want to use it in the earlier rounds of that, when there are more top players to choose from, and you might not be able to afford all of them in your regular squad.  Expected yield: 10-15 points. (The maximum could be even higher, if you're lucky; but of course there is a non-zero chance that it could return you little or nothing!)

Maximum Captain:  Probably best saved for the Semi-Finals or Final, when you have a chance to gain a bigger 'differential' points lift from it, as you no longer have the opportunity to 'maximise' your captaincy return by rotating through multiple selections.  Expected yield: In earlier rounds, probably only 0-5 points (because your regular captain picks would usually do very nearly as well); but in Rounds 7 and 8, perhaps as much as 8-15 points.

Wildcard: This might be of use sometimes in MatchDay 2, if a lot of your initial picks are in surprisingly bad form, and/or the most promising fixtures in the second batch of games are for very different teams than they were in the tournament openers. However, it is usually far better to save the Wildcard for possible emergency use (even if ultimately not needed, left unused!), to rebuild a squad after suffering heavily from unexpected eliminations going into the Quarter-Final and Semi-Final rounds.  

Expected yield: Impossible to quantify, since it's usually saving you from spending points on 'hits' (additional transfers above your 'free transfer' quota) and giving you additional points from better performances (or at least starters rather than non-starters!) from the players you bring in and, hopefully, giving you additional benefits from those new players through the subsequent rounds also; but conservatively.... 15-20 points!!

BEST OF LUCK!

Thoughts after the 'Round of 16'

The Balogun fiasco

First off, I can't see why there was any whingeing about the original decision, or any discussion about its being potentially 'harsh'. That was probably the worst foul we've seen in the tournament: the US striker came chasing after Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemovic and crashed into him, bringing his foot down with full force just above the opponent's ankle and folding his foot over sideways. It might have been 'accidental' rather than 'malicious' (though that is far from clear; if there wasn't an element of conscious intent in it, it was very, very clumsy), but the severity of an 'endangering the opponent' offence now takes no account of presumed intent, only of the possible severity of the consequences. That was a potential leg-breaker; and it is a small miracle that Muharemovic doesn't even appear to have suffered any serious ligament damage either, but is largely unscathed. It is probably the most clearcut and unarguable red card offence I've seen all year.

But then, yes, the notion that FIFA's Judicial Committee can arbitrarily suspend a red card (properly awarded!), without even giving any rationale, at a couple of days' notice, in the middle of the world's biggest tournament... is utterly outrageous. Red cards in the World Cup are unappealable: that is the way it has to be, to ensure some clarity and certainty and consistency in the disciplinary sphere. Some red cards may be harsh, some may be savagely unfair; but once they've been awarded, we just have to accept them. FIFA's ridiculous action here - apparently again just pandering to Trump, whose lackeys complained to Infantino that he wasn't pleased about losing the US team's star player - sets a disturbing and potentially very disruptive precedent: national football associations might now be forever challenging suspensions issued to their players. A dark day in football history, and one that slightly blights what has otherwise been a terrific tournament.

The one positive note in the story, really, is that we're all spared any more immediate embarrassment over this madness because the USA promptly crashed out of the competition, thrashed by Belgium. One wonders if the US team just died of shame - because it was a shockingly lacklustre performance from them, far below the standards they'd shown in the previous four games.

A decline in the refereeing standards?

Well, maybe. I've said a few times here on the blog recently, and elsewhere online, that I've been generally very impressed with the standard of the officating at this tournament. And complaints in this round have been greatly over-exaggerated, I feel. There were only two games with rather poor officiating; and even there, it wasn't absolutely terrible (in fact, the problem was more with the VAR team; and that might be down to protocols about thresholds for intervention, as much as the competence or otherwise of the particular officials); and it might have been just a statistical blip.

People who got up in arms about what a bloodbath the Paraguay v France match supposedly was are obviously Millennial 'snowflakes' who've never seen a genuinely dirty game of football! The stuff Mbappé jokingly referred to afterwards - and he was being fairly light-hearted about it! - was mostly gamesmanship and shithousing, not violent play. Yes, there was something amiss in the fact that only French players ended up with bookings, when Paraguayans had committed at least as many, and rather worse fouls. And because the referee had let too much go in the game, there was a danger of gradual escalation, and tempers were getting frayed towards the end. But nothing really bad kicked off, no punches were thrown, no-one had to leave the pitch injured. All a bit of a storm-in-a-teacup. While the on-pitch referee Ilgiz Tantashev was at fault in not being a bit more stringent and a bit more consistent in his issuing of yellow cards, the larger problem lay with the VAR team backing him up, since many of the niggliest incidents were happening off the ball, and were inevitably missed by Tantashev. 

There was a similar problem in the Mexico v England game. Nico O'Reilly clearly appeared to have flicked his elbow into the mouth of Jorge Sanchez just as the players were going to the second-half drinks break; but the referee apparently missed it, and we were not informed that the VAR team had looked the incident over or discussed it with their on-pitch colleague - although O'Reilly was then booked over the confrontation, so... somebody must have seen something. And then in the closing period, when England were pretty much continually under siege in their penalty area, our defenders were shamelessly grappling with their Mexican counterparts every time there was a set-piece delivery into the box - but nothing was ever said about it. Again, if things like this are being missed by the on-pitch referee - as can easily happen in such a busy game! - the VAR team needs to step in; but they're not doing it. That was why these two matches fell so far below the high standards we've enjoyed in most of the rest of the tournament.

I was distressed to see that Thomas Tuchel was suddenly slagging off the refereeing in the tournament yesterday. He really has no cause to do so, as the only beneficiary of the poor refereeing in  Sunday night's game was England! Of course, he omitted to give any specific examples in his remarks, to try to avoid getting into trouble with the organisers, but... he must surely have meant the Quansah sending-off and the penalty given away by Kane. And those were both absolutely 100% unarguably correct decsions. When a manager comes out and says shit like this, it looks as though he is just doing it to curry favour with the more rabid elements of the England fanbase, whose delusional tendencies I was ruing the other day. That kind of pandering is not a good look for Tuchel; I wish he wouldn't do it.

And of course the online dingbats are having a field day with the unfortunate denoument of the Argentina v Egypt game last night. It was a most unhappy coincidence that a late Argentine breakaway for the decisive goal in stoppage time should have started with two potential fouls on Egyptian players, one of them Salah, in the Argentine penalty area, and thus potentially demanding a probably decisive penalty award to Egypt. But both incidents were thoroughly innocuous, and rightly dismissed by the VAR team. It was even more unfortunate that an earlier breakaway goal in the first-half by Egyptian forward Mostafa Ziko, which would have been one of the great team goals of the tournament, and possibly even the best goal of all, had to be chalked off because VAR discovered that Marawan Attia had clearly committed a double foul on Lisandro Martinez right at the start of the move. The only cause for discontent there is with the current framing of the rules themselves, that it is perhaps excessive and inappropriate to insist that VAR screen all possible fouls in the build-up to a goal, even those that may have happened 20 seconds prior, at the far end of the pitch. But that is the rule we have in place, and it was properly applied: no room for any conspiracy theory nutjobs there. 'Unfair' as these two incidents may appear to have been to many - well, obviously to all Egyptians, and to a great many neutral supporters who were rooting for an underdog win - they were both perfectly correct, and actually pretty straightforward and uncontroversial. But you'll never persuade the legions of online dingbats of that.....

The best World Cup game ever??

It is, I think, a great pity that those two inflammatory talking-points to arise from the Argentina v Egypt match may detract from a simple appreciation of what a thrilling spectacle it was. It was truly a match that had everything, skill, physicality, drama, constantly swinging fortunes, big refereeing decisions, and lots of fantastic goals. I was still a lad during that legendary 1982 semi-final between Brazil and Italy; and I was enraptured by that, I didn't think I'd ever see it topped. But that game last night.... I think it might just have done so. It's certainly got to be well up there amongst the top handful of most fabulous games of football ever played.

Sleepytime for me...

As I noted at the weekend, the relaxation of the game schedule from here on is a welcome relief to me. I had been full of good intentions that I would now diligently watch every single minute of every single game from here on, and as much of it as possible actually live, but... the USA v Belgium game yesterday morning defeated me! Either my alarm somehow didn't go off, or I managed to sleep right through it: 9 or 10 hours of solid slumber.... for the first time in three-and-a-half weeks: blissful.

The rise of the 'slow starters'

Apart from the excitement of Egypt so nearly taking down mighty Argentina, this round has seen the almost as great - though, frankly, not nearly so unexpected - excitement of Norway putting out Brazil (who, apart from the sensational form of Vinicius Jnr, had looked severely under par in this tournament). Switzerland holding their own against the impressive Colombia (and nicking the tie on a penalty shootout), and Belgium trouncing the previously rather formidable-seeming USA were also somewhat surprising results. And, frankly, not many people had been making England favourites - certainly not strong favourites - to get a win at the Azteca. So, for me, the 'theme' of this round has been the striking improvement of teams who'd almost been written off after somewhat faltering starts to the tournament. Belgium had laboured to impotent draws in their opening games against Egypt and Iran, while Switzerland had likewise struggled to a 1-1 with Qatar in their opener, while England had made heavy work of beating a poor Croatia and then got embarassingly held to a goalless draw by Ghana. I confess, my hunches went against all three of those teams in this round (although I'd held off on taking players from them, or their opponents, because I'd judged these fixtures too close to call with any confidence). But often this slow building of momentum is a good sign in a tournament: sometimes teams need to struggle to find the right solutions, to battle against adversity, in order to grow - to develop more resilience, determination, confidence, fluency. I would not have risked my money on England or Belgium a week ago, but now.... I just might. (Not favourites for the win, but suddenly with a much better chance of reaching the semi-final or the final than I'd thought before. Switzerland were always one of my 'dark horse' picks for the tournament - belatedly starting to earn my belief in them.)

The great Quarter-Final conundrum(s)

With a number of moderately 'unexpected' results in this past 'Round of 16', most of us are looking at some rather alarming holes in our squads now. I had bet heavily on Brazil and the USA, so I'm now hurting for that. In total, I've lost 6 players to elimination. This puts me in a dilemma that's going to be rather typical for this quarter-final round: should I leave gaps on my bench, or spend points for additional transfers (beyond the rather niggly allowance of 4 Free Transfers we're being given for this round)? Answers to this dilemma will vary, depending on your view of the upcoming fixtures, how confident you are in your core players to return reliable points - and whether you still have your Wildcard available. 

Since extra transfers in this game only cost 3 points, rather than the 4 points we're used to in Fantasy Premier League, it is quite tempting to just spend willy-nilly on as many transfers as you need; particularly as MatchDays in this tournament have tended to be rather more high-scoring than a typical FPL Gameweek. In FPL, it's generally only a good idea to spend points on filling a hole in your starting line-up caused by injury or suspension or disastrous loss of form; but with the active in-game substitutions available in Fantasy World Cup, every player is effectively a member of your starting line-up, so there is just as much reason - well, almost as much reason - to fill in holes on the bench as in the original eleven. However, a player you're subbing out for a bench player has almost invariably earned you some points: rarely less than 2, sometimes perhaps as many as 3 or 4. So, it's not really worth spending points on a new player beyond the core eleven unless you have high confidence that they can deliver >6 points. And if you're planning to Wildcard for the semi-finals, there's no harm in leaving some holes on the bench in this round.

There's also a common dilemma for many about when to use the 'Booster' chips. [I wrote a little more on this the next day.] A lot of people still seem to have the 'Maximum Captain'; I think this will probably go best in the Final, In earlier rounds you can usually 'maximise' your captaincy return fairly well by just rotating the armband through different players until somebody gives you a decent haul: in the Final, you can't do that - and I think the advantage of definitely having your best possible return in that game will probably be greater than the usually low (or zero) advantage you might get in other MatchDays from having a perfect captain rather than a good enough captain (most people are settling on 10 or 12, and rarely having a later player get any more than a few points higher than that). In the quarter-finals, I'm set to rotate through Mbappé, Yamal, Bellingham or Haaland (haven't decided yet: coin toss!), and Messi - which looks promising. If you still have any of the other chips, you probably play them in whichever round you don't have to use your Wildcard in. I feel I can hang on until the semi-finals to Wildcard; others have been harder hit by eliminations already, and would like to drop it for the quarter-finals.

Although France, Spain, Argentina, and (much less strongly!) England are favourites in this coming round, they're all facing strong opponents who are well capable of causing an upset. I think we should probably expect to see at least one of those 'favourites' go out. I think I've got my squad pretty well balanced - but I have taken the gamble of going quite heavily for France and Spain, the two teams in whom I have the highest confidence. If either of them let me down, I'll be in quite a bit of trouble. If the results go as I hope/expect, I'll only lose 4 players, and won't have to worry about using my Wildcard at all. If things go badly, I could lose up to 10 players. I don't think they will go that badly, but.... that's why you save your Wildcard in a tournament like this.

Two final words of warning

I only discovered the other day that while this Fantasy World Cup game allowed you to roll 1 transfer from one MatchDay to the next during the group phase (when you'd almost certainly have no opportunity to do so!), for no good reason, it does not allow you to do so during the knockout phase (when that facility could be incredibly useful!). I find this really quite a huge pain-in-the-arse.

Also, I had thought that the 'Clean Sheet Bonus' chip supposedly extended clean sheet points to players who'd conceded up to two goals. I can't check on that now, because they haven't actually filled in the details of this chip yet on the 'rules' page, and the information is removed from the 'Booster Activation' pop-up window once you've used it! It would appear that in fact it only extends it up to players who've conceded a single goal - which is actually far more sensible; but I'm fairly sure it's not what the original description of the chip said, and it does make a hell of a difference.

So, the game is shoddily, incompetently put together, and we can't rely on it to treat us fairly, remember our team selections, or even (I fear, in my most paranoid moments...) count our points accurately. But hey, it's still a bit of fun, right?

But you have been warned!

BEST OF LUCK FOR THE QUARTER-FINAL ROUND, EVERYONE!!!

The REVENGE of ITVx

 

I didn't get very far with my recent resolution to try to watch all the remaining World Cup games live...  Last night's tie between Argentina and Egypt actually started at a reasonably accessible 11pm for me; but, alas, the UK coverage was being carried on the independent TV channel's ITVx streaming platform - so, I knew I was likely to be fucked.

ITVx has been so notoriously BAD, for so long (annoying UI, archived programmes impossible to search, and - worst of all - a glitchy and unstable stream, with unusably low speeds for any high-demand live event; I recall the Queen's Funeral being about an hour behind actual time by the time I eventually managed to finish watching it!), that I've gone through extended spells of giving up on it altogether and not even trying to make it work. I skipped most of England's qualifiers for this World Cup because they were on this useless bloody channel.

But, to be fair to them, I have been pleasantly surprised recently: they do seem to have - finally - invested in some substantially upgraded server capacity, and their stream has been more stable and less prone to freezing.

Until last night. I suppose a crunch game for Messi's Argentina, against the also highly popular Mo Salah and Egypt, was likely to be one of the biggest worldwide draws of the competition so far - particularly with the way Messi's been playing in this tournament. During the first-half, I suffered a few bothersome mini-freezes; and about midway through the second-half, just as things were getting really interesting, the dratted stream started breaking down altogether.

In the further interestts of fairness, I should also acknowledge that the issues might not have been entirely with ITVx this time. My VPN kept breaking down as well; and a few times, the Internet in my guesthouse dropped out altogether for a few seconds. So, it was more likely to be a problem with my local network - whether censors attempting to interfere with a recognised VPN routing (I've had that happen to me a few times), or just a demand overload as half the neighbourhood stayed up into the early hours streaming this same match. The final outcome was somewhat spoiled for me by a huge cheer from a coffee shop a couple of hundred yards away - about 20 minutes or so after I finally gave up on my errant stream,... and decided to try to watch a full re-run this morning.

Watching the footie from the far side of the world is a constant challenge, I'm telling you....

Five Levels of Self-Delusion

 

I rather fear that England's football fans may be some of the most obnoxious and objectionable in the world. It is one of the reasons why I abandoned the country to set out on my globetrotting adventures 30-odd years ago.... and I have seldom been back since. But, of course, you can never completely escape them. In just about every sports bar I've ever visited in Asia, the most loudmouthed, offensive, unreasonable punter in there is almost invariably a Brit (in fact, 9 times of out 10, it seems to be a Spurs fan;... but that's another story). And now, of course, they're all over the online forums too.

It would have been nice to be able to enjoy a rare moment of success for England, the gruelling victory in the Azteca stadium yesterday morning, without having to suffer all of these dingbats crowing about how we trounced the host nation and it was a thoroughly dominating performance, and.... all manner of other horseshit. I even saw one poor lamb today averring that it was the best England performance in the World Cup since 1966; I can only assume that he's less than 30 years old and thus has nothing in his memory to compare it to. An important win is not necessarily the same as a great performance. (And, alas, all too often for us a great performance has not been rewarded with victory. Our defeats to Argentina in the 1986 quarter-final and to Germany in the 1990 semi-final were by far the best England performances I've seen in the tournament.)

Now, to be fair, I think this was much our best performance yet in this tournament (though that is fairly faint praise), and included many elements that should be greatly encouraging: Pickford emphatically getting his mojo back, Saka being fit again at last, Bellingham continuing to look as if he's a man determined to steal Messi's last Ballon d'Or. And our determination and discipline in defence was especially impressive, as we grimly clung on to our narrow lead with only 10 men. Many online commenters have also asserted that it was part of Tuchel's gameplan to surrender the bulk of possession to Mexico, confident that they weren't incisive enough to hurt us too much (that was surely the case in the opening period; but not thereafter - I fear they were just better than us at keeping the ball).

And I have an inkling that the manner of this victory, the huge flood of relief at having managed to pull it off in such demanding circumstances, may prove to mark a decisive momentum-change for us, giving us the emotional boost we need to kick on and play better, more successful football from here on. (Although, I am also anxious that our players won't be able to completely recover physically before our quarter-final against Norway. By the end of the game in Mexico City, both teams looked utterly, utterly knackered, and I really don't think any of them could have played 30 minutes of extra time. After all the thunderstorms in the vicinity earlier in the day, the humidity in the stadium was apparently up around 85%, and all the players were completely drenched, perspiration dripping off their faces, from the opening minutes. I think that might have been one of the sweatiest games of football I have ever seen!)

However, having given credit where it is due,.. I cannot countenance all of this absurd hyperbole that instantly sprung up around the game - how the result was so thoroughly deserved, how we had completely outplayed our opponents.

We did not. Mexico - even before Quansah's (entirely uncontentious) sending-off - had had the lion's share of possession. Overall, they saw twice as much of the ball as us, and created nearly five times as many attempts on goal (the majority of those actually before the sending-off; we contained their threat much better once we'd 'parked the bus'). But for some uncharacteristically 'off' finishing in crucial moments from Raul Jimenz, and a couple of absolute world-class saves from Jordan Pickford, Mexico might have won fairly comfortably. In fact, but for Jude Bellingham's astonishing last-gasp clearance when Cesar Montes had been presented with an open-goal opportunity at the far-post to equalise at 2-2, seconds before the half-time break - I feel fairly sure Mexico would have gone on to win, even without the Quansah sending-off.

Moreover, Nico O'Reilly was very, very fortunate not to have become our second sending-off, when he petulantly flicked out an elbow at Jorge Sanchez's face just before the second drinks break (it doesn't matter that it 'wasn't that hard', or 'barely made contact'; you can't usually get away even with making a gesture like that). And we clung on to our precarious lead by our fingernails for the whole of the last half-hour, resorting to a 5-4 low-block - and even taking Kane off in the closing minutes to bolster the defensive ranks even further.

And the thing that soured me most about our victory was that during that siege of our penalty area in the closing stages of the game, we resorted to peak Arsenal tactics of wrestling opponents in the box every time they had a set-piece delivery, practically ripping the shirts off their backs on a few occasions. We committed more than enough holding fouls to have conceded 2 or 3 more penalties, but the referee and the VAR team were mysteriously sleeping, and we were allowed to get away with every single one of them.

So, all this talk of 'deserved' and 'dominant' quickly began to rankle with me. You can celebrate a success without being dismissive of your opponent's performance in a game. If England lose a game in circumstances like this, we whinge about it for the next 50 years. So, it seems to me to be only fair to acknowledge that on this occasion our gallant opponents were somewhat hard done-by. Yes, we played well; but all the breaks went our way as well - and without that, we wouldn't have won.

After an hour or so perusing the Internet forums yesterday, I concluded that we could attempt a classification of just how out-of-touch England fans were being in their assessments of this game. So, I give you.....

The Five Levels of Self-Delusion 

(about the Mexico v England game)

Level 5: England fans who insist we must have been the 'better' team simply because we ended up with (narrowly) more goals. [Football 101: the final scoreline is not always an accurate indicator of desert.]

Level 4:  England fans who 'didn't see' any of the numerous holding offences we committed in the later stages of the match, simply because the BBC commentary declined to draw attention to them.

Level 3:  England fans who think Nico O'Reilly did nothing wrong - because the Mexican had it coming to him, or similar. ['Retaliation' is not a defence, lads.]

Level 2:  England fans who don't even think Mexico should have got the penalty that was awarded to them. [A 'thought experiment': imagine Harry Kane is in the opposition box, raises his leg high to meet a falling ball and gets there first, but a defending player behind him decides to try to kick the ball anyway and instead kicks through the back of Harry's calf with full force. What would you say then? Eh, Mr Shearer??]

Level 1 (the most extreme form of this mania):  England fans who don't even accept the Quansah sending-off!! (They are depressingly numerous.)

It is astonishing and dispiriting how the environment of 'anonymous' discussion on the Internet seems to lead people into a total loss of any sense of objectivity. So many England fans are intent on spinning themselves this fantasy narrative about how this was the most wonderful, wonderful England performance ever and Mexico were hardly in the game. And they will rapidly get surly and abusive with anyone who rains on their parade by daring to point out any facts inconsistent with this comforting lie they want to keep on telling themselves.

All I'm arguing for is a little bit of balance and open-mindedness. I'm an England fan, I like to see us do well. I'm pleased that we have progressed to the quarter-finals. But I resist the pressure to buy into this absurd narrative that every important victory must also necessarily have been a flawless performance and our finest moment ever. There were still a lot of problems in this performance, and we've certainly had many finer moments. And I do find it difficult to exult about a victory in a game where we really should have had a second player sent off, and should have conceded another penalty.

Not AGAIN??!!

 

Yes, the FIFA World Cup Fantasy game is doing my head in again.

To be fair to them, this time it is my own fault - for not taking care to read all the fine print of the absurdly over-long, over-elaborate, over-finicky rules.

But to be fair to myself - and every other poor schmuck trying to play this game - it is absolutely fucking absurd to allow the rolling of unused transfers during the group stage but not during the knockout stage (when they're likely to be far more needed, and there would be far more tactical subtlety in being able to plan to do that). [The Fantasy Football Scout summary of the rules - which I confess I have been relying on, rather than the rules on the FIFA site itself - entirely fails to mention this rather important wrinkle. (And I find it rather worrying that FIFA label these rules as 'guidelines' - as if they're not going to feel bound to actually follow them all the time! Oh, wait, it's FIFA: no, of course they won't!)]

So, in addition to having two or three times 'lost' - or simply had the game site refuse to accept - an attempted captaincy switch, and having been misled into retaining a player in my scoring eleven who'd got a far lower score than I thought (because I didn't realise he was still my 'captain', and there was nothing obvious in the display to alert me to that fact!!), and, most momentously of all, having also seen my selection of Mbappé as my '12th Man' on MatchDay 2 mysteriously unsaved the next day,.... I needlessly saved a transfer before this 'Round of 16', anticipating that I'd need at least 5 (not the measly, entirely inadequate 4 the game allocates to you) for the following Quarter-Final round; and indeed I do find I need 5 transfers, but I've only got 4 available because of this ridiculous - inconsistent, unnecessary, unreasonable, hidden - rule. I am grinding my teeth to powder over this game. It has robbed me of at least 20 points now; but I'm somehow still in the top 200,000.

The LULL

After three straight weeks where we've had three or four games (occasionally six games!) every single day, now... we only have 16 games remaining over the next fifteen days. There'll only be 1 or 2 games per day from now on. Heck, we'll even have five days with no football at all - I don't know what I'll do with myself!

It is a bit of a relief, I have to say. While I think the expansion of the tournament this year to 48 teams is a thoroughly good and necessary thing - in giving more teams and players the opportunity to compete on the biggest stage in the sport, and giving more countries and supporters the ability to experience a direct emotional investment in the competition. And we might also be seeing, soon if not already, a more indirect but also joyous benefit - that we'll all have the opportunity occasionally to see great players in this tournament who would previously have had no chance of qualifying (it is a bit of a tragedy that the likes of Georgie Best, Ryan Giggs, and George Weah never got to play in a World Cup because they represented such small nations). The one downside of the expansion has been that.... it is now an overwhelming watch. There were 8 more games in the group phase alone than we have seen in the entire competition before, and we now have twice as many knockout games as previously to get through in the last two weeks. And I've been finding it all just a bit too much to keep track of.

For most of the previous World Cups in my lifetime (at least since I was about 4 or 5!), I have somehow or other managed to watch just about every single game in its entirety. But this year, I've probably only managed a quarter of them (and most of those not actually live: the games are all on in the middle of the night in my timezone!). I haven't even bothered to watch proper extended highlights for all of them, but only the rather shorter reels that pop up on Youtube - and even them, I fear I'm sometimes skimming through with glazed eyes, not really paying much attention. There are probably a few games that I've overlooked entirely. Oh, the shame.  I am committed to trying to watch every single minute from here on in (and, as much of it as possible actually 'live').

We're probably all unaccustomed to this much larger roster of participating countries, and perhaps we'll adapt and deal much better with the memory challenge it presents in the next iteration of the enlarged event. But I am starting to fret that there is perhaps a problem with my aging brain as well: I'm really finding it a struggle now to remember what order the games came in, or what all the results were, or who was in who's group originally, or who scored the goals in a certain game,.... or who Curacao's goalkeeper is. You, the important details are not staying put as they used to. I hope it's just a lack of sleep rather than the beginning of the long decline into senility....

Best World Cup ever?? (Some thoughts after the 4th Round)

How does this tournament compare to those of the past - is it possibly the best ever??

I really think it might be!

1970, of course, had some moments of unbelievable magic - mostly from Pelé. But the combination of some brutally hot weather, unaccustomed elevation at some of the venues, and the generally much lower level of physical conditioning in those days meant that the matches were mostly played at walking-pace. 1974 and 1978 were illuminated by the dazzling 'Total Football' of the Dutch, but not that much else; and they were, for me, and many others, ultimately somewhat marred by the chronic injustice of that fabulous Holland side twice being robbed of their deserved victory in finals against the host nation. 1982 and 1986 were surely the pinnacle - mainly thanks to the legendary Brazilian and French sides of the first half of that decade; although, of course, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, Holland, and even England were also very good for most of the 1980s, and 1986 was further enlivened by Michael Laudrup's wonderful Denmark. 1998 and 2006 weren't bad; but really, all the tournaments since the 1980s have, I think, been somewhat disappointing - until now.

Over the past quarter of a century or so, the increasing physical demands of the modern game have taken a heavy toll in injuries and fatigue towards the end of domestic seasons, and we've usually had to suffer a number of the expected stars of a tournament either being missing completely or at least operating well below their best. But this time, apart from Jamal Musiala (who missed much of last season after breaking his leg in last summer's Euros) and Nico Williams (injured again at the moment, but hopefully available for the quarter-finals, if not this next round), all the big names are present - and in absolutely banging form. I really don't think there's been another World Cup where there were so many leading players all looking absolutely at the top of their game. And who would have dared to hope that 'over-the-hill' Leo Messi would somehow produce his best World Cup performance yet??

Tournament hosts have often had weak teams who might otherwise have struggled to qualify, and couldn't make much of an impression in the competition. But this time, the three hosts, Mexico, the USA, and Canada, have all looked very capable - and I'd expect at least one of them to reach the quarter-finals.

We've seen lots of drama already, especially in this first knockout round: tight games, late winners, late equalisers, extra-time and penalty shootouts. And there have been some intriguing tactical battles as well. While the 'hydration breaks' have been universally derided (they are necessary for player health in such hot and humid conditions; but they don't need to be more than 30 or 60 seconds long - and they could happen under FIFA supervision, well away from the coaching areas), they have added to the tactical intricacy of matches by allowing coaches a major reshuffle three times each game instead of just once.

Most previous tournaments have also been marred, at least occasionally, by erratic, sometimes outright poor refereeing. But this year, I really think the refereeing, and the operation of the VAR room, has mostly been exemplary. In the 'Round of 32', I felt there were a few penalties that were strangely missed, and one or two goals that were perhaps wrongly disallowed; but these were all tight calls, arguably "50-50s", not really egregious errors. Prior to this, there hasn't really be any major controversy at all. I remarked last time how remarkable - and enviable - it was that in 70-odd matches so far, we'd seen fewer dubrious decisions than we typically get in any single week in the Premier League!

The expansion thoroughly vindicated

Though many people have carped at the enlarging of the tournament, I think you have to accept the value of giving more of the 'smaller' footballing nations a chance to participate. And in fact, it has only been an enhancement to the entertainment of the competition; most of the 'expansion teams' were more than half-decent, and a few of them proved capable of threatening a major upset. Cabo Verde's astonishing performance, deservedly finishing second (in a tough group!), and then just scaring the bejesus out of Argentina in the first knockout round, has been the great story of the tournament so far - and should serve to shut up all the naysayers who've been ridiculing the enlarged format.

A proper shoutout for the Golden Boot

We've seen much the highest rate of goal-scoring in modern times (an average of very nearly 3 goals per game!), with very few 0-0s - and even those have often been very entertaining games. There have been some absolute belters amongst those 257 goals to date; it's going to be really hard to pick a 'Goal of the Tournament' this year (although I suspect Sidny Lopes Cabral's extra-time equaliser today for Cabo Verde may claim it, as much for the emotional impact it had as for the sublime technique). And the race for the Golden Boot is just ridiculous: Messi now on 7 goals, Mbappé on 6, Haaland and Kane on 5; Vinicius Jnr., Oyarzabal and Dembélé on 4; Cunha, Quinones, Saibari, Manzambi, David, Balogun,.... and Cristiano all on 3 (that's just among those who are still playing). I don't think there's ever before been a tournament where so many players were all scoring so freely. Often, the title has been cruised to with a relatively modest total haul, mainly from one or two big performances in easy group games right at the start. This time, it looks set to be a proper contest, going right down to the wire.

'Boring'???  Are you kidding??!!

So,... I really don't understand people online whingeing about how 'boring' this tournament has been! I think they must not have been watching many of their games. Or they're peeved that their team hasn't done as well as they'd hoped. Or... they just don't understand football. It's been an absolutely fucking brilliant tournament.

It may be too early to call it as the 'best of all time', when we're only half-way through. Obviously we'd like to see some more thrills-and-spills in the later rounds, and a big final with a deserving winner. But it looks very much as if we're going to get all of that. I think it's going to be between France and Spain, and Brazil and Argentina; but teams like the USA, Mexico and Morocco are certainly in with a shout as well.

My 'crystal ball' mojo is back

I'd been having a pretty wretched start to my perennial 'Nostradamus Challenge' with my best friend, predicting relatively few correct results, and almost no exact scorelines during the Group Phase. But in this 'Round of 32', I nailed 5 exact scores (and was very close on Argentina v Cabo Verde!); only Egypt's hard-fought draw with Australia (I thought Australia would win!) and Paraguay's surprise win over Germany eluded my precognition this time.

Fantasy strategy recap

I went into the strategy considerations for this tournament in some detail at the start of the week. I feel fully vindicated in recommending the use of the 'Qualification Bonus' chip in this Round just past. I achieved a maximum haul of 24 points from it. (That gave me my first ton of the competition so far; although I was also very close on MatchDays 1 and 2, and would have breached it on MD2 as well if the damn game had allowed me to enroll Mbappé as my '12th Man'.) [But, oh no, wait - in fact it was only 22 points, because they apparently don't double the bonus for your captain. That seems unnecessarily petty; and I don't recall seeing that explained anywhere...]

Every batch of games from here on is just going to get harder to call, I fear; so, those who didn't play the 'Qualification Bonus' in the last round are likely to suffer - it will be very difficult to achieve a maximum return from the chip now. In the upcoming 'Round of 16', only France, Morocco, Spain, and Argentina look likely to be able to progress fairly comfortably (and even venturing that much may be 'tempting Fate'...); the other four fixtures are a bit of a toss-up. However, I feel it should be safe to play the 'Clean Sheet Shield' chip in this round, since it's hard to envisage any of the top teams conceding more than 2 goals, even if they do have a bit of a rough time. '12th Man' and 'Maximum Captain' will probably do quite well in the quarter-finals or semi-finals; although I might save the latter until the final. (You have a pretty good chance of 'maximising' your captaincy anyway in the earlier rounds by rotating it through your best players until one of them strikes a big haul. In the final, you can't do that.)

I'm a little nervous about how long Messi may need to recover after having to play a full two hours in that thriller against Cabo Verde. It wouldn't surprise me to see Nico Paz start instead of him against Egypt on Tuesday. But the form he's in, he can probably register an attacking contribution even with a short run off the bench; so, I imagine everyone will be keeping him in their Fantasy squads. (It really is astonishing that his ownership in the game is only at around 52%. The way he's been playing, 95% would be low!!!)

Fantasy irritations

I had thought that the 'Date of next game' option had been restored to the during-the-Matchday display on the FIFA Fantasy website during MatchDay 3 - but it seems to have disappeared again (which is a bit of an irritation when you're trying to remember when you need to bring in your substitutes or swap your captain's armband around). 

And I've suffered another of those infuriating glitches where a 'saved' captaincy change somehow got unsaved again, denying me 6 extra points from Kylian Mbappé in this MatchDay - Gggrrrrr......

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!

Ooops - they did it again!

I am cursed with Kylian Mbappé! In the group stage, the damn FIFA Fantasy webpage wouldn't 'save' my selection of him for the '12th Man' booster chip on MatchDay 2. When I brought him into the main squad for MD3, it failed to save my selection of him as captain. And now, on MD4, the same problem. I've had problems with the captaincy on other players too, but.... there does seem to be a particular obstacle about accepting the selection of Mbappé! 

So, now I'm left hoping that Yamal or Messi can save my MatchDay. But I very much doubt they'll match Mbappé's 16-point haul. Bugger.  [Indeed, no. I suppose I shouldn't complain about a 10-pointer from Leo. Although I'm bummed he was denied the assist for the winner.]

A little bit of Zen (101)

"Everywhere is walking-distance - if you have the time."

Steven Wright

A great line from one of my favourite comedians. Deeper than you think... 

For me, the wisdom of it lies in recognising how much our thinking is constrained by the categories we unconsciously impose upon things.

Best of the analysts

I've often said on here before that it's very valuable to watch some good quality analysis of football games, to improve your understanding of what's gonig on - of why teams are performing as they are, well or badly, and thus how they're likely to do in an important upcoming game.

The standard of punditry on the mainstream TV channels inevitably tends to be somewhat superficial. And, with so much football to get through at the moment, I just don't have the appetite for sitting through the pre- and post-match and half-time discussions as well as the actual play (I'm having to watch most of the games in 'as live' re-runs the following morning, since the kick-offs are in the middle of the night in my timezone!). But I have been enjoying some of the Youtube content from my favourite online football analysts. Here are some of the best videos I've enjoyed in the last few weeks.

Conor McAinsh of Football Meta recently produced this excellent breakdown on how defensive discipline has been enabling some of the 'smaller' teams to embarrass the big boys of the game in this tournament. (He's just added another specifically on how Germany were undone by this.)

The Purist Football has also been putting out some great coverage of the competition (just before it started he had an interesting series of short videos assessing the prospects of each of the favourites to win the competition). This is a particularly good breakdown of why Morocco have looked so formidable so far far.

Football Made Simple has also put out some good videos on the tournament, particularly this recent one on Brazil's success in their knockout win over Japan.

And my pal Adam Clery of ACFC, a huge Scotland fan, just did a sombre post mortem on their disappointing tournament (ultimately pretty savage on Steve Clarke, but deservedly so). He also had a very good assessnent of Brazil last week.

Do give these a look. Analyses like these can be very helpful to your Fantasy endeavours.

Ha-haa!

 

Schadenfreude is not Germany's new holding midfielder, but the concept of taking pleasure in other people's misfortune. And most of the footballing world is surely feeling that this morning, as mighty Germany find themselves preparing to come home from the World Cup - after messing up a penalty shootout??!! For decades, the Germans have been viewed as the masters of the shootout - invincible, almost flawless in them on so many occasions (well, particularly against England!). And now at last..... they've discovered human frailty and learned how to be really bad at them. Joy unconfined rings around the globe! [To be fair, though, it did look as if they were the victims of the first really dodgy piece of refereeing so far in this tournament: Substitute defender Waldemar Anton appeared to be blocking rather than pushing the big Paraguayan keeper, Orlando Gill, who fell over theatrically, but was perfectly able to stand up again to try to save Tah's header. Calling that decision 'very soft' - as most of the TV pundits ultimately seem to have gone with - was something of an understatement.]

But as my old college buddy always likes to say:  "Cheer up, Fritz. For you, ze VAR is over!"

The Nostradmus Game

For many years now - at least 20, I suppose - my best buddy from college and I have regularly been indulging in our 'Nostradmus Game' during summer footall tournaments: each round we'll trade lists of predictions for the scores in every game, and see how well we do.

I have almost always been well ahead on the number of exact scorelines guessed, but I felt bad for him that he often seemed to notch up a lot more 'near misses' than I did. So, I devised a scoring system where we get 5 points for a spot-on scoreline, 3 points for a correct result that's only out by a single goal, and 2 points for a correct result but inaccurate scoreline.

I'm pretty sure this tournament so far has been my worst ever. In fact, until the weekend, my buddy was actually ahead of me; and he's still got a lead in exact scores, which is what he still cares about the most.

In general, during the group phase, at least (when ties are often a bit unbalanced, results against the weaker teams usually rather easier to predict), I mostly get the right results about 70%-80% of the time, and the exact scoreline a least once in every 5 or 6 ties. This time,... I've only hit the nail on the head once in every 18 games, and I've only even had the right result in 42 of the 72 matches (less than 60%). Of a potential maximum of 360 points from the opening phase, I've only garnered a paltry 128 points. Oh, the shame!

I believe this tends to confirm my general impression that this has been a more than usually topsy-turvy kind of tournament so far, one that is particularly hard to predict. Most of the supposedly 'weaker' teams were not as poor as generally expected; even the weakest of them weren't really complete pushovers. And a number of the big names stumbled out of the starting-blocks rather. Nobody foresaw Qatar taking a point off Switzerland in their opening game, or tiny Cabo Verde holding European Champions Spain to a draw, or Ecuador nicking a win off the mighty Germany, or Congo frustrating Portugal, or Turkiye going down to Paraguay, or Iran and Ghana holding Belgium and England to impotent goalless draws.

I am not a great fan of gambling: I am wary of its addictive potential, disdainful of the supposed thrill of risking money you can ill afford to lose. But I do like to back my own judgement occasionally; I like to think of it more as 'investing'. I only make bets very occasionally, and only when I feel fairly sure that, even if I have less than 50% confidence of success, at least the odds on offer are strongly in my favour, and so, if I make enough of these well-judged bets, I should come out with a net profit. And I almost invariably do - not usually a very large profit, but some.

Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that I get well ahead during the group phase of a tournament and the first round or two of the knockouts, and then start pissing my winnings away again - usually only redeeming myself with mostly successful pre-tournament bets on the semi-finalists and finalists. I've realised that my weakness is sentiment; in the later rounds, I am more inclined to back the teams I want to win, rather than assessing the pros and cons of betting on them more objectively. I wonder if I can finally reverse that trend this year??  (Well, I won't have the chance to do so with an actual betting campaign this time, since I've lost my UK bank card, and am thus unable to top up my online betting account. Bother. But, given how badly I've been doing with my Nostradamus-ing so far, perhaps that card loss was a happy accident; it might have saved me from a first loss-making campaign. Funny how 'luck' seems to have a way of balancing itself out like that!)

Oddly enough, though, despite my thus-far fairly disastrous attempts at prognostication on the results, I'm having one of my best-ever campaigns in a summer Fantasy tournament. It is a funny old world, indeed.

World Cup Fantasy 2026 - Strategy for the knockout phase

The bracket for the knockout phase of the 2026 World Cup 

So, now that the Group Phase is over, we get into the real meat of the tournament - sudden death, put up or go home. And FIFA's Fantasy game is kindly giving us unlimited transfers (during this tiny 15-hour gap between the end of the 3rd Round and the beginning of the 4th!!): a de facto 'Wildcard', so that we can completely rebuild our squads for the second half of the competition.

In the Group Phase, we were concerned to try to optimise returns from the more mismatched fixtures, where the strongest teams and players seemed likely to have a better-than-average chance of really high returns because they were up against one of the competition's weaker teams (although it often didn't work out like that; none of this year's 'expansion teams' were completely toothless, and a few of them have proven to be quite formidable). This often means that the teams with the best prospects in Round 2 are completely different from those in Round 1, and there can be a case for playing the game's Wildcard chip straight away in that round to optimise for the apparently vulnerable fixtures (though that's a very risky ploy, as you often need your Wildcard later to fill huge holes suddenly appearing in your squad); but that didn't really happen this year, as the best performers were looking so much better than everyone else, you could trust them to probably give good returns against anyone. The other major hazard of the Group Phase is that there will be a huge number of rotations in the 3rd Round, with teams that have already secured first-place qualification resting most of their star players; but again, that didn't really happen this time - only four teams had secured top spot in the group after only two games, and two of them, surprisingly, fielded full-strength teams in the third match anyway. Messi and Pulisic, though rested, got decent run-outs and could contribute some points; Haaland was the only big name who didn't feature on the final MatchDay.

But that's all behind us now. How should we prepare our Fantasy squads for the knockout rounds to come?

Some things to keep in mind....

Elimination roulette - In the knockout phase, you need to take care to spread risk by never taking too many players from one team. You can't afford to leave yourself short for the subsequent round by landing yourself with a lot of eliminated players. The game tempts you toward self-destruction by allowing you to take far more players from one team than you should sensibly want; you don't want to be taking anywhere near the full allowed 'quota' of players from one country until the Semi-Finals and Final. Moreover, the larger number of transfers than we're used to in extended league format competitions encourages the dangerous hope that we might get away with it, that one wrong guess about a result won't leave us having to take 'hits' for additional transfers. But, oh yes, it can; it very often does. As a general rule of thumb, I'd say - try to take no more than 2 players per team in the 'Round of 16', 3 players per team in the Quarter-Finals, and 4 players per team in the Semi-Finals. Of course, this may vary, depending on whether there are any fixtures in the round that you feel you can trust as absolute gimmes (always a bit of a gamble!), whether you're making do with any empty spaces on your bench, and how many Free Transfers you have available for the next round. 

In the Semi-Finals, and perhaps also in the Quarter-Finals, you should consider spreading risk by taking roughly even numbers of players from both sides in a match. Although this guarantees that a certain number of players will be lost from the subsequent round, it also guarantees that a certain number will be saved. If you only take players from one side in each fixture, you lay yourself open to the possibility that you might guess the results wrong in every game and be left with no squad at all!

Also, of course, in this World Cup, there's a Third Place Play-Off game forming part of MatchDay 8 along with the Final; so, you don't necessarily lose anyone from the Semi-Finals. But you'd rather have as many players in the Final as possible, because it will be a more competitive match, and isn't likely to omit any of the teams' top players. The Third-Place game is usually quite unpredictable; neither side is hugely motivated by it, and often they play their second-string teams. 

Also, you need to be mindful that, if you max out your number of Free Transfers replacing eliminated players, you may be further screwed by injuries or suspensions, which tend to become more numerous towards the end of a month-long competition; then, you might find you have absolutely no wiggle-room for additional elective transfers to swap out players who've shown disappointing form.

Gambling on a thinner bench in the later rounds - In the last two or three rounds, you can consider gradually emptying your bench. As the games in each round become fewer (and less far apart; and, often, much more closely contested - meaning there might be low points for all attacking players, and perhaps scarcely any for keepers and defenders), the value of the manual substitutions is progressively diminished. In the Final, manual substitutions are no longer posssible (unless you have some players in the Third-Place Play-Off - not recommended), and the remaining value of your bench in being able to replace any unexpected non-starters by automatic substitutions (as in the regular Fantasy Premier League game) might be fairly minimal; so, you can consider having at least one or two gaps on the bench for that last game, perhaps even leaving it completely empty. For the 'Round of 16' - and sometimes, perhaps, for the Quarter-Finals too - with multiple games spread across multiple days, it is still worth trying to keep a full and strong bench; but after that, you can hang on to one or two eliminated players - ideally a cheap goalkeeper or defender - as a 'budget enabler' to leave yourself more transfers, and more money, to use on the rest of your squad. However, leaving gaps in the squad puts you more at risk of needing to use large numbers of extra transfers to rebuild the squad if some of your players are unexpectedly eliminated from the competition - that's why I would try to avoid it until the last couple of rounds.

It's even worse this year! - In last summer's Club World Cup, there was quite a broad stratification of ability levels among the participants; and so, many fixtures were relatively easy to predict - even in the early knockout rounds. In this World Cup, such disparities seem to be fewer, and not so dramatic; I fear most of the knockout games are going to be quite tough to predict the results of with any confidence. Moreover, the ridiculously biased bracket ths year means that most of the leading contenders are stuck in the same half of the draw and will all play each other relatively early on.

Also, I think this Fantasy competition is being especially niggardly with the extra Free Transfers. I can't remember for sure, but I think last year's Club World Cup, and most of the summer tournament Fantasy competitions I've played in before, gave 1 or 2 more transfers per round than this one is! That is going to make things particularly tight: suffering losses to your squad if you make some wrong guesses on game outcomes in a round will more easily necessitate having to resort to taking multiple 'hits' (at least additional transfers only cost 3pts each in this game, rather than the 4pts we're used to in FPL).

Hence....

Selection Strategy - In an ideal world, we'd try to focus on choosing players that we were reasonably confident were going to go deep into the competition (so, even if we were only right about some of them, at least there would be that strong core of players in the squad that we'd never have to change, never have to use precious transfers on). But with the way the draw is this year, half of the competition's best teams will be gone before the Quarter-Finals, and some of them might fall out even in the 'Round of 32'.

So, I think we have to spread our selections especially thinly - no more than 1 or 2 players from each country (because even if they do get through the current round, most of them are sure to be eliminated in the next round or two after that).

I would also avoid taking any players from a fixture that is hard to predict in the 'Round of 16' - because we're going to get enough grief from unforeseen upset results in this round, and from the inevitable carnage in the immediately subsequent rounds; we just can't afford to take any risks on players who look like they might not progress beyond this next game. For me, Holland v Morocco, Portugal v Croatia, and Belgium v Senegal are too close to call - so, I'm not touching players from any of those teams (even though I love Ismael Saibari - he's been my breakout 'player of the tournament' so far!). And I'd be wary of taking anyone from Germany, Portugal, Norway, or Switzerland - because, even if they do well in the coming game, they're almost certain to lose in the 'Round of 16': so, those are players you're going to want to be replacing before or after the next round. And there are enough unexpected changes you're probably going to have to make; you don't want to be loading your squad up with entirely expected changes you have to make!

Chip Strategy - This competition is rather over-cluttered with chips. And, if you didn't manage to offload one or two of them in the Group Phase (I tried, but failed - owing to an infuriating glitch with the FIFA website!), you might well find yourself with one left unused - probably the Wildcard, which is really a 'luxury' in competitions like this that is often not needed, best kept in reserve for possible emergency firefighting (if you find yourself missing half or more of your squad after a particularly bruising Round...!)

Moreover, most of the chips are probably going to work best in the same Rounds of the competition - but you can only use one per Round, so..... Yeah, it is pretty much impossible to choose how to make optimum use of them.

The Maxmimum Captain is probably the most flexible chip: it could work well in any Round. And I fancy it might actually yield the biggest advantage in the Final - where probably only one player will deliver a really big points-haul,.... but it's impossible to know for sure who that will be out of so many capable players on the pitch.

The other three, however, the 12th Man, the Qualification Bonus, and the just-announced Clean Sheet Shield, would probably all work best in the 'Round of 32' or the 'Round of 16'.

The Qualification Bonus, where you can get an additional 2pts for every member of your starting eleven who progresses to the next round, is probably going to work best in the 'Round of 32' - where you can have the highest confidence about anticipating almost all the results correctly. In the 'Round of 16', anticipating the game outcomes immediately becomes a lot harder - and you're much more likely to get some of your picks wrong. To have a good chance of getting somewhere close to the optimum 22-point haul from this chip, I think we really have to play it in the 'Round of 32' (although you might fancy that some of the 'Round of 16' ties are also sufficiently predictable to make this a valid option for playing this chip).

The Clean Sheet Shield (only revealed as such after the 3rd Round was under way; previously referred to only as a 'Mystery Booster') is rather more flexible, could go well in any round. I think it's a badly designed chip: it would have presented a more intriguing challenge if they only raised the threshold for earning 'clean sheet points' from 0 goals to 1 goal. But they're saying you can get 'clean sheet points' for any player who doesn't concede more than 2 goals. - which is basically everyone: very few teams have conceded 3 goals or more in this World Cup so far; and you would imagine that that is going to become even rarer, as the ties become more closely matched and more high-stakes. However,... we have quite often seen in recent tournaments that there can be some high-scoring games in the later rounds - partly because teams have to chase the result if they're behind, and may leave themselves vulnerable; and partly because there's the possibility of extra-time to factor in. Also, of course, some unexpected, unpredictable events may occur that lead to a team crumbling disastrously: an injury to a star player, an early penalty conceded or an early sending-off can lead to a very one-sided final scoreline. Something like this can happen in any round; but I think it seems slightly more likely to happen from the Quarter-Finals onwards. Also, of course, in the later rounds, you have fewer teams to choose your squad from, so the chance of you having one of these unlucky disasters impacting the points of multiple players in your squad is elevated. In earlier rounds, where you don't have any representation from some teams, and only 1 or 2 players from any one country, such disasters won't impact this chip too heavily. So, I'm inclined to regard it as a coin-flip option with the Qualification Bonus: you play one of them in the 4th Round and one of them in the 5th Round - you don't really want to risk hanging on to either of them any longer than that.

There is a temptation to play the 'individual bonus chips', the 12th Man and Maximum Captain, during the Group Phase - when we're likely to get some higher-scoring games, and it's easier to predict which those will be. But these chips can also work well later in the competition. The 12th Man (which allows you to field an additional player in your 'starting eleven', free of all the usual restrictions on budget, formation, and country quota), in particular, I think, will be an attractive option in the Quarter-Finals or Semi-Finals - when, with a bit of luck, nearly all of the top-performing players will be pitched against each other; but... we probably can't afford them all and/or we don't want to run the risk of having them all in our permanent squad, knowing that some of them must certainly be eliminated.

ADDENDUM:  Looking at the bracket now, I reckon the Quarter-Finals are going to be.... France v Morocco, Spain v USA, Brazil v Mexico, and Argentina v Colombia.

I hope these observations may have been of some use to someone.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!