A lot of you are most familiar with fantasy football and fantasy basketball, it’s the two most popular fantasy sports in the US. Fantasy soccer, on the other hand, is mainly popular in Europe but is growing in popularity throughout North America. I for one love playing fantasy soccer, more specifically Fantasy Premier League. This season is the first time I’ve ever played, but so far it’s been a great experience.

So How Does It Work?

The game is played on the official Premier League app or the Premier League website. The fantasy section will open up around a month prior to the beginning of the season. That’s when everything gets kick-started. To start, you are given a $100 million budget to select 15 players, you can go under but not over. There are certain requirements to how many players of each position you can select and how many players from each particular team you can select. Each team must consist of:

• 2 Goalkeepers
• 5 Defenders
• 5 Midfielders
• 3 Forwards

Along with that, you cannot have more than 3 players from the same team, which is why transfer budget management and team selection is crucial.

Squad Management

Squad management is a mixture of gut feeling and luck. Sometimes, someone on the bench scored a lot of points and you would definitely regret the decision to keep that player on the bench.

With the squad selected, 11 players must be chosen for the starting lineup, and 4 players will be on the bench. The points scored by the players in the starting lineup will count towards your score. If a player does not play in the game, they will automatically be substituted for a player from the bench. In terms of the formation of the team, a minimum of 1 goalkeeper, 3 defenders, and 1 forward must be present at all times.

Captaining a player is one of the most important things when managing a Fantasy Premier League team. Essentially, whoever you captain for a specific week will be the backbone of your team. When you want to captain a player, their points will be doubles for that week. A vice-captain must be selected just in case the player you captained happened to not play. In that case, the captaincy will be transferred to the vice-captain and now his points for that week will be doubled. If both the captain and vice-captain happen to not play, then no one’s points are doubled.

The Transfers

Transfers are also a big part of your team’s success. From when Fantasy Premier League open until the start of the season, you can have an unlimited amount of transfers. But once the season starts, you have one transfer per week. Each additional transfer made in a week will result in 4 points deducted per transfer. Keeping that in mind, say you decide to not make a transfer for a certain week, that means in the following week you have 2 free transfers. To prevent an unfair balance, you can never have more than 2 free transfers at any given time.

All transfers must be made before a certain deadline. Week by week that deadline time changes depending on when the first game of that week is played. Getting your transfers done on time is crucial.

Now onto player prices. At the start of the fantasy season, each player is given a price ranging from 4.0 to 12.0. Prices range in increments of 0.5 Generally, the higher the price, the better the player. That’s how it is at the start of the season. Once the season begins, the prices of players can change depending on how well they are playing. If a player is in good form, his price will increase. If a player is in poor form, his price will decline. When player prices change, they usually shift by 0.1. Player transfers also have a lot of thinking and gut feeling involved. Sometimes a player you transferred out does really well and the player you transferred in did horribly, and that’s just super unlucky. This is why sometimes Fantasy Premier League can get super stressful.

Chips/Powerups

Chips are basically powerups. They’re there to help you enhance your team’s performance. There are 4 chips that you can use each season. There’s:

• Bench Boost- This can be used once during the season and will also add points scored by bench players. So essentially, for a week you have all 15 players getting points for your team for 1 week.
• Triple Captain- This chip is also can be used only once during the season. When activated, your captain will triple in points instead of doubling in points.
• Wildcard- You have an unlimited amount of transfers to permanently change your squad.
• Free Hit- This is just like the Wildcard, you can make unlimited transfers. The only difference is that these unlimited transfers used will only be in effect for 1 week. After that week is up, your team will return to how it was before the chip was activated.

Scoring

Scoring goes as followed:

ActionPointsFor playing 60 or fewer minutes1For playing more than 60 minutes2For goals scored by a goalkeeper or defender6 For goals scored by a midfielder5For goals scored by a forward4For each assist3For each clean sheet by a goalkeeper or defender4For each clean sheet by a midfielder1For every 3 saves by a goalkeeper1For each penalty save by a goalkeeper5For each penalty miss-2Bonus points for players in a match1–3For every 2 goals conceded by a goalkeeper or defender-1For each yellow card-1For each red card-3For each own goal-2

The Prizes

The prizes awarded for Fantasy Premier League are very good and offer a great incentive. For being eligible for these prizes, there are a couple of rules. The first is, you must join two weeks prior to when you win the prize. This is in place so people cannot create new accounts just to win them. Also, you cannot use a chip the week you earn a prize. Now here are the prizes for being the highest scorers:

Manager of the week:

• FIFA 21
• Nike Premier League soccer ball
• Fantasy Premier League mug
• Fantasy Premier League rucksack

The top 20 managers of the week receive a Fantasy Premier League t-shirt, stress ball, pen, mouse pad, and key ring

Manager of the month:

• Tablet
• Bluetooth speaker
• FIFA 21
• Nike soccer ball
• Nike jacket

The top 10 managers of the month receive a Fantasy Premier League rucksack, t-shirt, mug, water bottle, stress ball, pen, mouse pad, and key ring

FPL Cup winner:

• VIP hospitality for 1 Premier League match in the upcoming season
• Includes travel and a 2-night stay
• FIFA 21 and a game console
• Tablet
• Bluetooth speaker
• Nike jacket
• Fantasy Premier League rucksack, t-shirt, mug, water bottle, stress ball, pen, mouse pad, and key ring

Note, the FPL Cup is an in-season head-to-head tournament starting around the middle of the season.

3rd Place:

• FIFA 21 and a game console
• Tablet
• Bluetooth speaker
• Nike jacket
• Fantasy Premier League rucksack, t-shirt, mug, water bottle, stress ball, pen, mouse pad, and key ring

2nd Place:

• VIP hospitality for 1 Premier League match in the upcoming season
• Includes travel and a 2-night stay
• FIFA 21 and a game console
• Tablet
• Bluetooth speaker
• Nike jacket
• Fantasy Premier League rucksack, t-shirt, mug, water bottle, stress ball, pen, mouse pad, and key ring

1st Place:

• VIP hospitality for 7 nights and 2 Premier League matches in the upcoming season
• A week’s worth of experiences at England’s tourist attractions
• Hublot watch
• FIFA 21 and a game console
• Nike jacket
• Fantasy Premier League rucksack, t-shirt, mug, water bottle, stress ball, pen, mouse pad, and key ring

So that’s Fantasy Premier League in a nutshell. If you’d like to start playing, download the official Premier League app. Thank’s so much for reading! I hope you really enjoyed this post!