Well what drama. The opening day of the World Cup served up a tasty little starter as the host nation’s fluid clash with Mexico and then went and spoiled it with a awfully undercooked second course as the French stuttered to a turgid draw with Uruguay. The big events materialised off the pitch however. In the realm of Fantasy Football we were certainly treated to a tale of the unexpected. As many of you have already noticed, the McDonalds/FIFA game have gone and tweaked their scoring rules a matter of hours after the first ball was kicked…
The somewhat fuzzy attacking and defending bonus point rulings have been culled with negative points for surrendering possession and fouling opponents done away with. Players can now only score positive bonus for “every 2 balls delivered into the penalty area” and for “For recovering a ball”.
The definition of both still remain cloudy to be honest and it’s likely to take more than a couple of matches to decode them. We have an extensive Q&A with FIFA right now via game organisers ISM – hopefully we will have that back with us soon which will sharpen our view on how these bonus points are earned.
Tonight’s changes are undoubtedly welcome. The initial scoring in today’s games started to follow Sir Paulos’ script written up in yesterday’s article as even the very best attacking players were struggling to collect a decent points total, simply because they were making risky forward-thinking passes and runs that lost them possession and therefore points. In many ways being punished for direct, attacking play and correcting this was a good move.
It’s admirable that the organisers acted quickly, although changing the ruleset on day one of the tournament is hardly ideal. There will be those who selected their squad with the old bonus rules in mind – perhaps selecting players who retain possession or avoiding those who often make long passes. Foul magnets like Alex Song and Javier Mascherano may also have been overlooked – now, without the penalty for accumulated fouls – they could turn out to be shrewd purchases. In addition, presumably the pricing of players in the game were put together with the bonus point rules in place – it will be interesting to see if there are now any major disparities as a result of the changes.
Time will tell – for now the general opinion is that the rule change is a positive one. Quite literally. Yes we could have done without a day of live testing before the change but right now the McDonalds/FIFA game is looking promising and the bonus allocation looks considerably more effective and fairer than the blindfolded dart chucking arrangement that the Fantasy Premier League adopt with the Press Association.
I’ll bring you a review of day one later this morning. For now let’s sleep on it.