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We have just had another weekend that saw a record number of entrants, with 4,970 of you taking part. If you haven’t given it a go yet, maybe it’s time you had a look?
You can enter your team for free now ahead of Friday’s 11am GMT deadline.
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 gameweek
Our winning manager last Gameweek was The BlackCat. This wasn’t just a case of ‘luck’ on their part, though: this manager employed a ‘stacking’ approach to devastating effect. Targeting Inter Milan’s soft fixture at home to Serie A strugglers, Salernitana, really paid off – as you can see below:
With a hat-trick from Lautaro Martinez, two goals and an assist from Edin Džeko, a brace of assists from Nicolo Barella and a further assist from Denzel Dumfries, every single member of that team pulled their weight to put 457 points on the board – winning TheBlackCat a top-tier Limited card from Sorare.
Inter players were a feature across many of our top-scoring teams this Gameweek. The other standout players of the round were Kevin De Bruyne and Trent Alexander-Arnold, both of whom contributed a perfect score of 100 for the managers who picked them.
Remember, all our top 15 managers take home a Sorare player card prize, which you can build a team around to compete for more prizes in the main game, or sell and take the money – your choice!
Last week’s winning managers received some fantastic prizes including PSG star Marco Verratti (current value approx £470), Portuguese hitman André Silva (approx £165) and Rennes youngster Warmed Omari (approx £160). We look forward to seeing what prizes are picked out for delivery to our latest batch of winners…
To stack, or not to stack?
Stacking was a tactic used by our latest winning manager and is something we see often on the leaderboard, although rarely with a full team as was the case here.
There’s a logic in targeting multiple players from the same team. By stacking players from teams you expect to do well, you’re relying on a correlation of actions to get you a super score and propel you to the top of the leaderboard.
For example, where a team is going up against a low-scoring opponent, you might want to stack defensive players to double on the prospect of clean sheets. Where a team is facing a leaky defence, you might want to stack offensive players, in the hope that players will share the goals or supply each other with the assists (as was the case with Barella and Martinez).
This can often be an all-or-nothing way to play the game – if the team doesn’t play well then you’ve got nothing to fall back on – but in a game as competitive as this, you’re really relying on those big performances to make the difference, so you need to take those kinds of risks.
This gameweek
Let’s have a look at the teams you might want to stack players from this coming weekend.
Let’s start with the obvious contenders. Paris Saint-Germain are up against bottom-of-the-table Bordeaux, making them prime candidates for a stack. Bordeaux have the worst defence in the league (by some margin) and PSG have the best attack. Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi all look good for this but bear in mind that some players might be rested after the midweek Champions League game and be aware that they are rotating their goalkeepers at the moment. Also don’t be tempted to pick Marco Verratti – he’s suspended for this game.
In the Bundesliga, RB Leipzig play Greuther Fürth, another bottom-of-the-table team with little to offer up front or in defence. Christopher Nkunku is capable of hitting high scores and could potentially be paired with Dominik Szoboszlai in midfield and Angeliño in defence.
Lazio are often a good team to stack, and are up against Serie A strugglers Venezia. Their goalkeeper Thomas Strakosha could be paired up with Luiz Felipe in defence, or you could look at Luis Alberto, Sergej Milinković-Savić and Ciro Immobile as an offensive stack.
Manchester City are in a good vein of form at the moment and should have too much for Crystal Palace in the pick of the Premier League clashes. Could Kevin De Bruyne hit another 100 score? I wouldn’t bet against him.
Nothing really stands out from the La Liga match-ups but Real Sociedad should cruise past Alavés, so their goalkeeper Álex Remiro is perhaps worth a shout. Mikel Oyarzabal is on form at the moment, too.
With plenty to choose from, my team for the weekend looks like this:
Don’t forget to get your teams set before the deadline at 11:00am UK time and please tell your friends about Sorare Academy, so we can break the 5,000 mark next weekend!
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