FFS UEFA Champions League 2016/2017 – Qualifying Round 1

Welcome to the Fantasy Football Scout UEFA Champions League 2016/2017. I am pleased to say that, after a very successful debut season, this tournament is returning with greater participation and popularity. There was an extraordinary amount of interest shown amongst the community for this tournament and we have a total of 240 players entering the Qualifying Rounds.

Let me give you all a rundown on how the qualifying stages will work. There will be a total of three qualifying rounds, each consisting of a head-to-head format, and will take place on Gameweeks 2, 3 and 4 respectively. These will be single elimination, meaning that those teams who are successful in Gameweek 2 will advance to the second qualifying round due to take place in Gameweek 3. After Gameweek 3, 30 successful teams will proceed to the group stages and will join the two finalists from last year’s tournament (Lucy and HvT) to eventually make up 32 teams for the group stages.

Due to the sheer number of players, there are two qualifying ‘Pods’, A and B, each consisting of 120 players. The winners of each Pod will advance to the second round of qualifying where they will be paired against each other in another head-to-head fixture. In the event of a tie, the team with the highest goals scored will go through. If the scores continue to be tied after this then they will follow the head-to-head scoring from the official FPL game.

Without further ado, the fixtures for the first round of qualifying can be found here.

The tournament will be updated through a weekly series of community articles and will also be mentioned in the Community Roundup articles and hopefully the ScoutCast.

Good luck to all the teams playing and I really hope you enjoy the tournament. Remember to get the banter going in the comments below and if have not yet got a grav, then please get one so that you are easily recognisable on the forums.