Uefa Champions League 2013/14 – The Scout League

As many of you will have noticed, the official UEFA Fantasy Champions League game opened its doors last week ahead of the first round of fixtures. Once again, we aim to offer coverage of the competition this season with a pre-tournament guide and regular articles to follow.

Earlier today, we set up the official Fantasy Football Scout league – the code to join is 1209685-489925 for those looking to get involved. For those unfamiliar with the UEFA game, we take a look at the basic ruleset below – later this week we plan to roll out a detailed analysis of the Player List ahead of Matchday 1, which gets underway on Tuesday September 17, with the deadline at 19.30 GMT.

Points Scoring

Almost three million Fantasy managers are more than accustomed with the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) game and, luckily, this UEFA Fantasy Champions League offering bears a great deal of similarity – but for a few small differences. They are…

• Earning a penalty for a foul in the box picks up 1 point irrespective of whether it is converted or not – as a result, there are no assists for penalties.

• Converse to that fact, a player who concedes a penalty will score -1 for their infringement.

• Every 5 recovered balls (completed clearances and tackles gaining possession) will add 1 point to a players tally.

Beyond the three mentioned points all the scoring is similar to FPL (with no Bonus Points on offer here, though) but if you feel like you need a little refresher, have a click on this link.

Transfers

A 13 Matchday season sees Fantasy managers granted two wildcards (one which must be played at the closure of the group stages) in addition to six free transfers to make at the end of each knockout round. Every other Matchday, most notably during the group stages, grants the standard one free transfer.

This concurrent run of single transfer allowances in the group stages means that the “open” wildcard is more often than not executed by the experienced European Fantasy managers during this time. There have normally been two schools of thought to this practice, to date.

The first sees Fantasy managers set up a side for the first couple (or even just one) Matchdays, fully expecting to change their squad in its entirety as they hop on and off all of the right bandwagons for the remainder of the Group stages. The other side of the coin sees Fantasy managers use their wildcard in Matchday six when many sides will have already guaranteed their place in the knock-out stages and begin to rotate squads accordingly – the perfect time to snap up that key differential.

It should also be noted that any superfluous trades made will only set you back two points – a much greater encouragement to take a punt in the transfer market in any given Matchday.

Team Management

In terms of squad selection, you pick a squad of 15, with a captain scoring double and, in the opening stages at least, you can only choose two players from any given side. European Fantasy managers are afforded eight standard tactical alternatives (ranging from 4-4-2 to 5-2-3) to set up their sides from.

Managing your squad is where the real key differences start to kick in.

Fantasy managers are afforded plenty opportunity to be active in the Champions League game, as a squad game takes effect with the introduction of “Managers Substitutions” – man management and pushing the deadlines are an added perk for those willing to be hands-on.

Aside from the final, each Matchday is spread across more than one day. What this means is that you can field all your players who play on a Tuesday and, if they under-perform, bring those with Wednesday fixtures off the bench and gamble that their score will end up higher.

The same can be said for your captain’s armband. If your skipper fails to deliver the first time round, or if you just want to gamble that someone can do even better the following evening, the armband can also be moved to a player who has yet to take to the field, with the previous captain then no longer having double points to his name.

If any of your players pick up a red card, however, not only will their points deduction stick but they also can’t be replaced. You’ll want to be careful around the most hot-headed of players, then.

A prudent manager won’t be selecting bench-fillers in their squad as a result – they’ll need a full battery of 15 players they can call to arms as they rotate their players to maximum effect.

If a manager chooses to make use of any of the previously described Manager Substitutions then it must be noted that the auto-subs rule (where any players who do not make the field are automatically replaced by those from your bench) is negated and cannot come into effect. So the less hands-on Fantasy Managers can still get the usual assistance if one of their starting XI doesn’t end up playing.

Once again, the code to join the FFScout league is 1209685-489925. Good luck to all those taking part.