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Football is coming thick and fast at the moment and there’s another weekend of games in the Sorare Academy to look forward to, with a chance to win some great prizes. 

You can enter your team for free now ahead of Friday’s 11am GMT deadline.

Over 3,000 managers submitted a team for last weekend’s Sorare Academy tournament – were you one of them?

This week, contributor MDJ is going to look at the winning line-ups from the previous week and preview the weekend of football ahead.

Last weekend’s winning teams

We’ve seen some tight contests recently so it was slightly unusual to see our first placed manager more than 10 points clear of the chasing pack. 

BerNerd finished in that top spot. He made some inspired choices in his line-up, including picking Hugo Lloris in goal, our highest-scoring goalkeeper in the Gameweek with 78 points. 

The scoring matrix can be punishing for goalkeepers so a score like that is the exception rather than the rule. As well as Spurs keeping a clean sheet, Lloris scored highly with a couple of saves and for his role as a sweeper-keeper, intercepting the Norwich attack. 

BerNerd’s outfield players were Virgil van Dijk, Hakan Çalhanoğlu and Robert Lewandowski, plus Leverkusen wonderkid Florian Wirtz, who scored 86 points, plus an extra 20% for taking the captain’s armband. 

Wirtz and Leverkusen were highlighted in Adam’s preview last week and they were arguably the team of the weekend, smashing seven goals past Bundesliga strugglers Greuther Fürth. [Edit: called it!] 

What Adam didn’t anticipate was that the hero of the Gameweek would be their striker, Patrik Schick, who scored four goals and grabbed an assist to score a perfect 100. [Edit: Did not call it!].

Despite his score, Schick doesn’t feature in our top teams of the Gameweek, with most managers sticking with much more familiar names.

Completing the top three this week were B3n and GeorgesKaldas-1. Both also picked Wirtz and Lewandowski in their teams and there was plenty of overlap throughout the top ten – very fine margins again.

Recent prizes

Managers finishing in the top ten places receive a Limited card from a top European team. 

In Sorare, player cards are separated by their scarcity – the number of cards that can be issued for each player per season. The more scarce a card is, the most valuable it tends to be. Limited cards are the entry-level scarcity, with up to 1,000 cards per season. Following on from this are Rare cards (up to 100 per season), Super Rares (up to ten) and the Unique cards, of which there is just one card issued per player, per season. 

The previous weekend’s winning manager took home Real Madrid defender Éder Militão, who is currently selling for around £650 on Sorare – one of our biggest prizes yet. Our second and third-placed managers won cards valued at around £135 each too.

Once you win a card, it’s up to you what you do with it. If you enjoy Sorare, you might want to use it to kickstart a Limited team to compete for rewards in the main game. If you decide that Sorare is not for you, the card is yours to sell on to another manager and you can withdraw the cash instead. Your card, your choice!

Coming up this Gameweek

There are some slightly tighter match-ups across Europe this weekend so perhaps we might see a wider spread of players selected?

In the Premier League, Liverpool assets will be in demand again as they host Aston Villa. Mohamed Salah will be everyone’s favourite captain and who would be brave enough to bet against him? Their defensive assets will also be popular, with Trent Alexander-Arnold looking most likely to lead the points. 

Manchester City have also got a pretty soft fixture against Wolves but they aren’t a licensed team in Sorare yet so you can only pick the players that have acquired a Sorare card elsewhere: Rúben Dias (from his time at Benfica) and İlkay Gündoğan (who has a card for the German national team).

In Serie A, Inter are up against second-bottom Cagliari. Hakan Çalhanoğlu has become a permanent fixture in our winning teams in recent weeks and looks a very good alternative choice for captain this weekend. Denzel Dumfries and Milan Škriniar could be interesting options in defence, too.

In Germany, whipping boys Greuther Fürth are up against Union Berlin next – is it worth considering any of their assets, such as striker Taiwo Awoniyi? That could be an interesting wildcard choice that might just pay off.

So now it’s over to you! Don’t forget to set your line-ups before the deadline (11am Friday) and best of luck with your teams this weekend! 

Enter your team for free now ahead of Friday’s deadline

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