fantasy world cup 2018 – Rob Reid’s final score and review

World Cup 2018

Here’s Rob Reid with his final fantasy world cup 2018 score as well as a review of the World Cup competition

fantasy world cup 2018 – Rob Reid’s final score and review

After a month of games, the feast of football has concluded for another 4 years. The World Cup finished with a bang yesterday in both a footballing and metereological sense with a final full of incident. It’s congratulations to France, worthy victors for the competition but also to runners-up Croatia who made a huge contribution to what was in my opinion the best World Cup Final in decades.

Final Score





As for my Fantasy team, it was a slightly underwhelming end to the competition. I gambled on the final 2 matches following tradition and couldn’t have been more wrong as The Final produced 6 goals and the 3rd/4th Play-off produced a clean sheet! I managed 4 returns from my 15 players, but nothing huge which kind of nullified my Maximum Captain chip as well (though I am a little confused as to why Griezmann wasn’t credited with the assist for the 1st goal in the final.)

So a paltry 36 points for the last round, which saw me finish on 348 points and an Overall Rank of 11k. Slightly disappointing to slip out of the top 10k at the end, but I’m still pleased with this overall finish and also with the added bonus of winning my main friends and family mini-league, the first time I’ve won this league for The World Cup or Euros since 2010.

Looking back and forward

It was a fantastic World Cup – for me arguably the best in memory (Mexico 86 was the first I really remember.) I’m also a bit sad as this will likely be the last World Cup in this guise, the format which in my opinion works best. Qatar 2022 may well still be 32 teams, but will be completely different due to it being played in November and December (something which will also have a massive effect on the FPL seasons for 2021-22 and 2022-23.) USA/Canada/Mexico 2026 will then definitely be 48 teams. I’ll be honest, the cynic in me can’t see this being of any benefit to the quality of the competition not to mention the numerous issues created with having 3 hosts.

FIFA of course would argue that they are trying to grow football by increasing global participation in the biggest tournament; pulling a bit of power away from the traditional superpowers, with perhaps a nod towards growing economies in Asia, South America and Africa. For me however, the quality of the tournament has to come above everything else. The hosts Russia put on a fantastic competition and I find it difficult to believe that Qatar next time or the triple hosts in 2026 will be able to get the same atmosphere a single host with a strong footballing pedigree does.

Each team that qualified also earned their place on merit and the number of surprise results showed that there was potential for anyone to beat anyone else on their day. Take Croatia for example- very few would have predicted their run to the final at the onset of the competition. You also just have to look at the calibre of some of the nations that didn’t qualify. For example, from Europe, Italy, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Euro 2016 semi-finalists Wales.

From the Americas – Chile and USA and from Africa – Ghana, Cameroon and The Ivory Coast. All highly competitive international teams with global superstars that could quite easily have gone deep into the tournament. This is a competition that should be difficult to qualify for and this list of teams if testament to that. If FIFA wish to improve global participation, perhaps they should invest more at a grass roots level in these countries to grow the game. That’s just my opinion anyway!



See you in a couple of weeks

Anyhow, this wraps up the 2017-18 season for me and I now look forward to FPL 2018-19 which as you’re all no doubt aware has already launched! Personally, I’m taking a couple of weeks off Fantasy Football now but I’ll be back at the end of the month with my first draft for 2018-19 along with my thoughts for the coming season. In the meantime, thank you very much for reading my ramblings – I hope they’ve helped and been of interest to you. And finally, a big thank you to Fantasy Football Geek for posting my articles and continuing to host such a great and informative site.

Cheers and see you in a couple of weeks!

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