Fantasy FIFA World Cup managers now have two more boosters (aka chips) to use from the Round of 32 onwards: the Clean Sheet Shield (formerly the Mystery Booster!) and the Qualification Booster.

In this article, we look at the optimal time to play these two boosters.

Some managers may, of course, have a Wildcard, 12th Man and/or Maximum Captain chip still left to burn.

But, for the purposes of this piece, we’ll focus only on the two newly released boosters.

WHAT IS THE ‘CLEAN SHEET SHIELD’?

• The Clean Sheet Shield can be activated from the Round of 32 onwards.
• Any goalkeeper, defender or midfielder in your team will only lose their clean sheet after conceding two goals.
• To be eligible for a clean sheet, as usual, a player must play at least 60 minutes.

AND WHAT IS THE QUALIFICATION BOOSTER?

• The Qualification Booster can be activated from the Round of 32 onwards.
• Any player in your starting XI who progresses to the next round of the knockout stage, or wins the final, gets +2 points.
• To be eligible for the bonus, the player must play at least one minute in the match.

PAST FIVE WORLD CUPS

CLEAN SHEETS + ONE GOAL CONCEDED

The power of the Clean Sheet Shield is evidenced in the graphs above.

While just 23.8% of nations have kept a last-16 clean sheet in the past five World Cups, a further 42.5% conceded once – and these are the defences that would benefit from this particular booster.

The notion that games become tighter, edgier affairs as the tournament progresses bears out in these graphs.

Why the dip in the clean sheets in the final round? The third-place play-off, usually a carefree, entertaining affair, accounts for a lot of that.

Three or more goals have been scored in 11 of the last 12 bronze medal matches!

By contrast, the high-stakes finals can be cautious games. We had seven clean sheets in as many finals from 1990 to 2014, until things went goal-crazy in the last two.

FAVOURITES QUALIFYING FOR THE NEXT ROUND

*in the final/3rd-place play-off, we’ve taken ‘qualifying’ to mean ‘winning’ (whether that’s in normal time, after extra time or on penalties)

Interestingly, the favourites in any given knockout round – by which we mean the highest-ranked nation – tended to have a similar success rate.

It’s worth pointing out that some flawed FIFA rankings in 2006 (hosts Germany ranked 19th, Mexico in 4th!) skewed the figures above.

But overall, no one round stood out.

THOUGHTS ON WHEN TO USE THE TWO NEW BOOSTERS

Let’s address one additional factor first.

In 2026, we’ve got something that we haven’t previously had at any previous World Cup: a Round of 32.

More teams making the knockout stages, and more bang-average ones, too. With the greatest respect to the likes of Congo DR and Cabo Verde, who could join Bosnia-Herzegovina and South Africa in the knockout rounds, they would have struggled to get out of their groups (or even qualify for the tournament!) in past years.

While we await to see what pans out over the remaining group-stage games, we could have some bigger mismatches in the Round of 32.

Anticipating who makes it through to the last 16 (ergo would benefit from the Qualification Booster) might be more straightforward. We’re likely to see match odds more one-sided than in any other round to come. For example, as it stands, Spain face Austria and Portugal meet Ghana in the Round of 32. Spain and Portugal would then be on course to meet each other in the Round of 16. You’d probably have an easier time picking out a winner of the last-32 ties than the subsequent clash between the two Iberian neighbours.

A Qualification Booster in the Round of 32, and a Clean Sheet Shield in the Round of 16 (we’ve seen how effective that can be in previous years), is the first thought, then.

Having unlimited transfers to set our squads up for the Round of 32 should help maximise the chances of doing well with those two chips.