Here’s our article with the FIFA World Cup Fantasy First Draft of Rob Reid’s team. There’s an explanation around the selection and Tactics plus discussion around the Boosters. Rob finished the FPL season with an Overall Rank of 73k and the 5 seasons prior to that of 47k, 122k, 29k, 66k and 12k
FIFA World Cup Fantasy first draft – Rob Reid’s team
A Few Links
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Here’s the link to Play
https://play.fifa.com/fantasy/team
FFGeek League Code/Link
Code: F1MUQOX4
Link: https://play.fifa.com/fantasy/join-league/F1MUQOX4
World Cup 2026 FFGeek Slack Channel
Scrool down to the channel World Cup Fantasy 2026
https://join.slack.com/t/fantasyfootballgeek/shared_invite/zt-3n72s5gzm-tid7IiwcDVtE7hkCVENf3g
Read the FFGeek article regarding the rules
Introduction
Hi everyone – hope you are all well. With no FPL until August, I’m guessing a few of you will be getting Fantasy Football withdrawal symptoms. Have no fear though, World Cup Fantasy Football is here!
I’m a big fan of the major tournament Fantasy Football games as you well know and always play the World Cup and European Championship games. They present a different challenge to the season-long grind of FPL, they are short, fast tournaments and you need to be prepared to move quickly so as to not fall too far behind. The 2026 game is possibly our biggest challenge yet with 48 nations involved and no fewer than 104 games. We are simply not going to be able to cover every team or option, so perhaps need to be ore selective about how we attack this game – especially in the group phases.
Thoughts on the game structure
The game broadly follows a similar format to previous Euros and World Cup games, a format that is also similar to the Champions League format for any of you that play that game. Geek provides a thorough overview of the system in one of his previous posts so I won’t go into too much detail here to avoid repetition. From experience of previous play, how you approach the game I think depends on 2 factors.
Firstly there is how you use your chips. There is also an element of the unknown this year in that there will be an extra mystery chip given to us after the group stage. My initial thought looking at the game is that the Wildcard and where you use it is effectively the key as to how you set your team up in the group stage. If you’re going to use it during the group stages you therefore either set your team up for Rounds 1 & 2 and then use it in Round 3 where teams may rotate; or you set a team that purely targets Round 1 and then Wildcard with a team that attacks Rounds 2 & 3.
In previous games, I’ve generally used the Wildcard in the group stages, however the extra knockout round in this World Cup offers a bigger level of jeopardy to doing this so it may be worthwhile saving the Wildcard and using it either between the Round of 32 and the Round of 16, or between the Round of 16 and the Quarter-Finals. If you do this, then you need a team that covers Rounds 1-3 well with an eye on making some key changes for Round 3 in case of rotation.
The second big factor in this years competition is trying to target possible mismatches. This year, more than ever there is potential for this with 48 teams involved and nations of less competition experience facing more hardened tournament outfits. This ultimately can be where you can bolster your rankings – if a team dishes out a real hammering then there can be some big individual fantasy scores in this. If you luck out and pick up a haul or 2 then it can really get you ahead of the pack.
A bit more housekeeping, before I get to my first draft is that we can swap subs in and out throughout a round and this includes swapping Captains multiple times too. It therefore can pay to cover a few teams and have several different Captaincy options on each round – try to have a spread of players across the groups and gamedays to do this.
First Draft
Here’s a first draft from me then and is an initial thought rather than a definitive line-up. I
n this draft I’ve gone heavier on what I feel are Round 1 mismatches – Germany vs Curacao and Spain vs Cape Verde being the examples I’ve used for starters. My plan this week is to now get some research done and try to lock in more on my Chip strategy.
I’ve a reasonable working knowledge of a lot of the European and a few of the South American teams, but I’ve got a bit of work to do for the other nations. I plan to post another article next weekend with a few more thoughts following on from this. With 48 teams involved, I’m not going to be able to do a thorough overview of every nation as I have done in previous years, but I’m going to try and get my head around things group by group and go from there!
Here’s the team
