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.