Fantasy Euros –Everything Your Average FPL Player Needs to Know

You all know us. We are not a Euros Fantasy Expert Website. We are an FPL website.

James is willing to admit he hasn’t got much of a clue of what’s going on in the football world beyond England’s dark satanic mills. Joe knows a bit about the Champions League but he’s an Arsenal fan so you know he can’t have been watching it for that long can he?

We are fantasy football nerds and that is going to help us. After all, most people don’t know all about fantasy and all about European football as well. Nevertheless, I want you to take our views on players with a degree more scepticism than you normally would.

In this piece we are going to cover:

• How does Euros Fantasy work and how does it differ from FPL?
• What are the optimal strategies and tactics for Euros Fantasy?
• Initial thoughts on players and teams ahead of the first game

How Does Euros Fantasy Work?

It’s the same basic concept as Fantasy Premier League. You have a budget of 100mn to buy 15 players – two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders, and three forwards.

The price brackets are also pretty similar. For example, you can get a nailed defender for a bad team for 4.5 or Kylian Mbappe for 11.0.

What Makes Euros Fantasy Different From FPL?

Euros Fantasy differs from FPL in a couple of ways.

Points scoring

The points system is basically the same except players there is no bonus point system and players get a few extra avenues to points:

• -1 for giving away a penalty
• +1 for a goal scored from outside the box
• +1 for every three balls recovered
• +2 for winning a penalty
• +3 for being “Player of the Match”

Player of the Match is decided by UEFA’s technical observer panel.

Players will keep scoring points throughout extra time. However, players who play 120 minutes don’t get double points for appearance or clean sheet (2 x 60 minutes). If a match goes to penalties, no points will be scored during the shoot-out.

Maximum Players per Team

Naturally, the maximum players per team differs from FPL and throughout the tournament:

Transfers

Like in FPL, you can make transfers. But the number of free transfers you get changes each round:

Chips

Like in FPL, you will get a wildcard chip. Obviously, you won’t be using that at the round of 16 where you can make unlimited transfers.

You also get a different chip called limitless. It’s a bit like the free hit chip but better. Limitless gives you the chance to pick your dream squad for one matchday only. Playing it allows you to make unlimited free transfers for that matchday with no budget restrictions. Once the matchday has finished, your squad will go back to how it was before you played your Limitless chip.

Substitutions and Switching Captain During Matchdays/Gameweeks

Okay, this one is a little complex. A matchday in fantasy euros is the equivalent of a gameweek in FPL.

During the matchday you can change your team, like in fantasy Champions League. So, say you start Florian Wirtz in the first match, and he shits the bed by conceding a penalty and getting sent off. Well, you can remove him from your squad for another player as long as that player has not played yet.

This is also true for captaincy. You can switch to a person that hasn’t played yet.

Strategies and Tactics for Fantasy Euros

Tactics

Hopefully its clear to you what the day-to-day tactic for fantasy euros is. You should sub players in and out. This means that you can sub out players that don’t score points and switch your captain two or three times in an attempt to maximise points.

Strategy

In terms of overall strategy, firstly you should enable the above tactic by picking players that play on different days. Ideally, you want to be able to switch your captain every day and you should start players that play in the early games and sub them for those playing later.

Secondly, you need to consider chips. That’s going to sound a little strange to FPL players that get 4 chips over a 38 gameweek season. But this game only involves seven gameweeks/matchdays and two chips. So, chips have a much bigger impact.

You should play the limitless chip in MD 2 or 3. This is because the best teams will be playing the worst teams. That means there is an increased chance for big results.

The wildcard is a tougher call to make but I have two suggestions based on your risk appetite.

If you want to play high upside and riskier then I would also play the wildcard in the group stage. Effectively you give yourself 4 free team selections in probably the highest scoring rounds of the game (MD 1, 2, 3 & 4). The risk with this is that you fuck up your round of 16 team and you struggle to get players out for the quarter final as you only have three free transfers.

If you want to play more prudently and carefully then hold your wildcard for the quarter-finals. This has lower upside but also lower risk as you are protected against upsets in the round of sixteen.

For the time being, I think you should pick the best team you can right now. Focus on matchday 1 but have a little eye on matchday 2 and/or 3. You can adjust your strategy after matchday 1, particularly looking at how your rivals have lined up.

After you’ve thought about chips, then do the usual. Think about fixtures more than form (though don’t dismiss the latter). Think about ownership if you like (Mbappe is 76% owned at the time of writing).

At this point in the tournament, you don’t need to bother wondering whether a team will make it through. You have unlimited free transfers after the group stage so ignore that.

Initial Thoughts On Players and Teams

When I started looking into this, I realised the problem beyond the problem.

The problem is I don’t know who half these players are and I don’t know how good most of the teams are. The problem beyond that problem is that I don’t have a shorthand way to get there – I need data. So, I went and grabbed some from FBRef and the official Euros qualifiers site.

I have used the Euros qualifiers as the sample size so we can see how teams perform in competitive games. Obviously, it is a limited pool of data AND Germany don’t feature AND the tournament should be more difficult than the qualifiers but it’s a helpful indicator.

Useful Data Tables For Euros Fantasy

So, starting with the best attacks and defences from the tournament.

Attacks and Defences Ranked

This is primarily going to help you target fixtures and defenders/goalkeepers. For example, I have just picked up a Romanian defender because they are a top ten defence, and they play against the second worst attack in the first matchday.

I also think its just quite interesting to see some teams not looking as good as you would expect. For example, Italy kind of sucks. If you have no idea coming in to the tournament you would normally assume they are good.

Top Scorers and Assisters

This table is going to help you pick your midfielders and forwards. I LOOOOVE Lukaku (I know, I’m the only one) and his stats mean he is 100% nailed in my team. Same for Mbappe and Bruno who appear high on both lists.

Top 20 Ball Recoverers

This table is principally useful when considering defenders. It shows the top 20 ball recoverers (by total number) in the qualifiers. As you may remember, players will get an extra point for every three balls recovered.

That’s It

I think we will probably be back next week with a preview. I hope to go position by position and pick out some players for you all to consider at various price brackets but it will depend upon how much time we can commit to it. Regardless, good luck!