Welcome
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, forget your woes, or if you’re one of the lucky ones, hold on to your glories, for this Summer we have the pleasure of an international tournament. Now while usually this means more woe for England fans, this time round (and especially when considering the run in England have had), we all have a small glimmer of hope. I remember Euro ’96, though it’s strange to think it was 20 years ago! Gazza. Shearer. Pearce. Glory and woe. We are going to love it!
Of course the other beauty of an international tournament is that FFUK will be running a fantasy football league to compliment it. My usual tack is to not have any England players as it makes it doubly annoying when England bottle it, but I feel different this time round, my hope is reborn, the team is full of young, form players, fresh and ready to conquer the world (well, Europe). Leicesteritis?
The Rules
The rules of the Euro 2016 fantasy game are pretty similar to the FPL game though with a few tweaks.
Same
It has the same set up of 15 players, same formations, no more than 3 players from the same team at the start. It has basically the same scoring too except there are no bonus points.
There is also a wildcard to play, and price rises.
Different
Rules aside, the main difference here is the pace of the tournament, the games are virtually every day, and are grouped into blocks called Matchdays.
Matchdays and deadlines:
Matchday 1, 10 June 20.00
Matchday 2, 15 June 14.00
Matchday 3, 19 June 20.00
Matchday 4, 25 June 14.00 Round of 16
Matchday 5, 30 June 20.00 Quarter Finals
Matchday 6, 06 July 20.00 Semi Finals
Matchday 7, 10 July 20.00 Final
*Take note, these deadlines are for team selection, transfers and substitutions, but you can also make substitutions right up to the first kick off of each day.
The fact that the games are so quick affects the other main differences, primarily in the way substitutions and transfers are made.
You can make substitutions between ‘gamedays’. A gameday is very simply a day’s worth of matches, so Matchday 1 will break down into 5 gamedays, with varying numbers of games on each gameday (1 game on gameday 1, 3 games on gameday 2, etc.). This means that you can play France/Romania players on day 1, and if they fail to earn points, sub them out yourself before the first match of the next gameday.
Take caution here, as once a player has played and is then substituted back onto the bench you lose their points and they can not be automatically subbed back on, even if you get a 0 point no show later on.
Please note, you can not make substitutions between matches, which was an option in the previous McDonalds tournament.
Similarly, you can also change your captain on each gameday. This means if your captain scores poorly in the France/Romania match on gameday 1, you can change your captain, for example, to Harry Kane on gameday 2. Now this can be tricky if your captain gets an average point score in his match, and then you have a big gun still to play, but that’s all part of the fun as we will see. Stick or twist?
Still with me? Ok, so forget about substitutions for a minute and let’s talk about transfers. Transfers can be made between Matchdays (no transfers between gamedays), and any transfers over your allocation incur a -4 point hit.
Transfers will run as follows:
Group stage: one per matchday
Round of 16: unlimited
Quarter-finals: 4
Semi-finals: 6
Final: 6
We believe you can carry over one transfer in the same way as FPL.
Note that as the rounds progress, you can have more than 3 players from the same team, rising to 8 players from the same team by the final.
For full rules check their website and click how to play and rules http://eurofantasy.uefa.com/en
Housekeeping
Prize entry money is £5, payable by the usual methods. Considering the pace of the tournament this needs to be paid by the end of Sunday 12th June otherwise we will not be able to allow you to continue in the competition.
Our league code is 00768P5A
Prize money details will follow after the league is closed on Monday 13th June.
We have noticed that some teams have Team names but no player names meaning we do not know who some of you are. Please can you make sure your profile is set up with your own name as well as a team name so you are easily identifiable. Thank you.
We are on hand to clarify any issues or rule debates etc but please bear in mind that the operation of this website/game is not as tight as the FPL game. Any issues will be resolved fairly by FFUK in accordance with the workings of the game.
Keep an eye out for Pete’s Punts. Playing a tournament can be a lot of fun as there is much more luck involved than in the course of an FPL season. Still, there are a lot of players we’ve never heard of to pick from so analysis is being carried out and some hot player tips will follow very soon.
As always, best of luck to one and all.
Pete and Chris
FFUK 