Welcome to the latest update on the FIFFSA Five-A-Side World Cup. This is our last call for teams ahead of the registration deadline at 23:59 on Wednesday, November 11.

We now have 55 complete teams and three more captains recruiting. We want to thank all of you for your participation and especially those who have already got into the spirit of the tournament and have been making press conferences in the articles and making new gravatars for the occasion.

How does the tournament work?

The Five-A-Side World Cup is a tournament open to squads of six players, who will field a team of five players each week, with one player on the substitute’s bench. A team’s score each week will be the sum of the Fantasy Premier League scores of the five players the team fields.

Each week, teams will go head to head against another team and the team with the highest aggregate score will win that match.

How do I join?

Anybody in the FFScout community with an official FPL team is eligible to join, whether this is your first season or your tenth.

If you want to join a team that is still recruiting, please check this spreadsheet to see which captains still have space and then contact them either here on FFSscout or via email should you wish to join their nation.

For individuals who wish to participate in the tournament but not are unsure who you want to join, you can fill out this form for players looking for a team. Your details will then be included on our unaffiliated players list that will be passed to the team captains to recruit from. A post on this article may also attract the interest of a captain.

Please note: If you are on the unaffiliated player list and really want to take part in this tournament please consider becoming a captain and inviting some other players from the list to join your team.

How do I become a captain?

For the new captain among us, FIFFSA have put together a brief guide on the captaincy role and what the job entails.

If you are interested in captaining your own nation, please email fiffsa.exec@gmail.com to confirm the nation’s availability and allow us to track team numbers. The countries to be represented will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis as captains volunteer themselves.

Once you have a team together, with at least five players but preferably six, you should fill out this form to register your squad.

Limited spaces left

As previously mentioned we intend to follow a World Cup format as closely as possible with a 32 team World Cup Finals in Thailand, home to the real amateur five-a-side World Cup in 2016. To get to Thailand there will be a qualifying format not dissimilar to the FIFA World Cup’s qualifying process with qualifying groups and playoffs for best losers. The qualifying process will last between seven and eight weeks to ensure that no teams leave the competition too early.

With the number of teams entering slowing down in the past week, the likely shape of the qualifying process if becoming clear to us. As a result we are now going to cap entry at 64 teams. Furthermore, we are no longer allowing new entries representing CAF (African)  or CONCACAF (North America/Central America/Caribbean) nations. We still have space for 1 UEFA (European) team, 2 AFC/OFC (Asian/Oceanic) teams and 3 CONMEBOL (South American) teams. As such, registration will close at 23:59 GMT on Wednesday November 11th, or when we have 64 complete teams registered, whichever comes first.

The qualifying draw

Once the number of entries has been finalised and all team registrations have been signed off, the draw for the qualifying rounds will be made in the comments here during half-time of the England game at 8:30pm (GMT) on Friday November 13th.

If you have any further queries, feel free to ask below in the comments or email us at: fiffsa.exec@gmail.com

Enjoy the tournament; this is the FIFFSA 5-A-Side World Cup. Accept no imitations.

As a final request, please do try and keep FIFFSA 5-A-Side chat to the comment sections of our articles.

The FIFFSA Executive Committee – President Sepp Balders, VP BabyB, VP Jaffalicious!, VP Diva, VP Blue Lion and Secretary General Jerome Cheeseoid.