As we announced last week, Soccerway Fantasy iTeam have released one of the first available Fantasy Football games geared towards the Russia 2018 World Cup.

A free Fantasy football app, FiT is available on many mobile devices, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Android. It’s free to download and play, so you can start drafting your starting XI with unlimited transfers now.

We’ll be supporting FiT throughout the summer and have an official Fantasy Football Scout League, with a £1000 of Amazon vouchers to give out, split between the top three performers. There’s also the small matter of £10k worth of prizes available in the main competitions: Overall World Championship and Manager of the Gameround.

In this, our second article on the game, we take a closer look at the scoring system and principles involved when making transfers, monitoring price changes and maximising your squad for each Gameround.

Team Selection

FiT hands managers an initial budget of £75m to select their starting XI. There are seven formations (4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-5-1, 5-4-1, 5-3-2, 3-5-2 or 3-4-3) to choose from. Much like Fantasy Premier League, you must have at least three defenders and no more than a trio of forwards in your lineup.

For the initial group stages, you can only pick a maximum of three players from any side. This quota increases as the tournament goes on, rising to four in the first knockout round, five in the quarter-finals, six in the semi-finals and seven for the final.

Scoring Points

The scoring system is relatively straightforward, although there are several subtle differences from FPL.

Any player who starts a match is awarded two points, though an appearance off the bench earns a single point. There are no extra points earned for surpassing the hour-mark in a fixture.

Goalkeepers and defenders can both earn five points for clean sheets. To be eligible, a player must play 45 minutes or more and their team must not concede a goal in the entirety of the match. Contrary to FPL, players cannot retain their clean sheet even if they have played at least 45 minutes and the team only concedes after they were substituted.

For example, if Kyle Walker is substituted 55 minutes into England leading Panama 1-0, a goal from the opposition after his withdrawal will still wipe-out his clean sheet. Furthermore, one point is lost for every goal against rather than for every other.

If a game goes to extra-time, players will only register a clean sheet if they fail to concede over the entire 120 minutes.

Points for goal-scoring differ by position with seven on offer for goalkeepers and defenders, six for midfielders and five for forwards. An assist is worth three points, regardless of position.

Assist points are awarded by Opta within the Fantasy iTeam app.

This means that they follow similar rules that Fantasy managers will be used to playing FPL. Each one is carefully reviewed and you can read the criteria for them under the ‘Scoring Points’ tab in Fantasy iTeam’s Help section.

A red card deducts five points from a player’s score, while yellow cards do not have any detrimental effect.

Penalties are also crucial. Goalkeepers earn five points for saving a spot-kick, while a missed attempt deducts three points from the taker’s total. This does not apply to penalty shoot-outs, however.

As in FPL, the player you select as captain earns double points. A skipper can be set anytime, as long as it is before kick-off. You are, however, only allowed one captain per Gameround, but if the first captain you select doesn’t play, and is not on the bench, then you can choose another armband option in that Gameround.

When the matches kick off, it’s worth mentioning that you can also follow the action via the Match Centre. Opta’s content scoreboard is available for each match, and you can track goals and assists as they happen.

Transfers

The FiT World Cup game consists of seven Gamerounds.

The first includes every team’s opening Group Stage match, Gameweek 2 the second, and Gameweek 3 the third. After that stage of the competition is over, each knockout round is its own Gameround.

Managers will have three free transfers per Gameround to restructure their line-up.

There is an option to purchase a fourth Additional Transfer per round which costs 100 FiT Credits.

Transfers cannot be rolled over each Gameround; either you use them, or you lose them.

Once the Group Stages are over, managers are effectively handed a Wildcard where they can make unlimited transfers before the first fixture of the knockout stages.

However, there is a big twist to the FiT transfer strategy, unlike anything Fantasy managers will be used to playing FPL.

Once a player you own has started his match in a given Gameround, you can transfer them out for another who is playing in a later fixture, and still receive points for both.

This effectively means that if you have three transfers to use in a Gameround, you can gain points from up to 14 players.

This tactic could be particularly useful for rotating expensive players.

Rather than having three big hitters in your team at the start of a Gameround taking up a huge chunk of your budget, if you plan it right, you’ll have the one playing first in your team at the start of your Gameround.

Once they’ve played, you can then swap them out for the one playing next and so on.

This means you can have three big hitters playing without it having too much of an impact on the rest of your team.

The FiT rules give an example scenario where this strategy could come into play:

“You could have Antoine Griezmann in your iTeam for the 11 am match against Australia on Saturday 16th June, you can then transfer him out while France are playing, say 12 pm, and still receive his points for the rest of the game. You could bring in Lionel Messi in his place and then score points for him as well in the Argentina vs Iceland fixture at 2 pm on the same day.”

Finally, it’s crucial that you make your trades before the scheduled kick-off time of a match for a player to be eligible for points.

This rule is advantageous for the more active Fantasy manager, affording them the chance to monitor team-sheets and fine-tune their tinkering before kick-off.

One of the most interesting features of the game is the ability to schedule your transfers.

Scheduled transfers enable you to buy and sell players without the need to be anywhere near your device at the time of the transfer going through.

If you’re working, running multiple teams, forgetful, or relish those trips to the garden centre when matches are on, scheduling your transfers will be a great help. You can cancel or amend any planned transfers before they take place.

Player Prices

Keeping an eye on the transfer market is advised.

The Fantasy iTeam uses a PlayerDAQ index which changes at the end of each Gameround in accordance with player popularity.

Just as it is in FPL, it’ll pay to keep abreast of the bandwagons and to watch out for price drops in order to maximise team budgets.

However, Fantasy iTeam applies a more straightforward approach to earning profit from price rises than FPL. For example, if you purchase a player for £10.0m and he rises to £10.2m, your selling price is £10.2m as opposed to £10.1m.

Fantasy Football Scout League

We’ve already set up an official Fantasy Football Scout league for you to join – the league name is Fantasy Football Scout and the pin is 1887.

The issue with joining our league, experienced by Android users last week, has now been resolved.