Rotation fears spark mass sale of England and Belgium’s Fantasy assets

The penultimate match of the 2018 World Cup takes place on Saturday at 3pm as England and Belgium meet for the second time in the tournament.

Much like in their Group G encounter at the end of June, managers Gareth Southgate and Roberto Martinez have given a number of their fringe squad players a run-out in this effectively meaningless fixture.

Harry Kane (£11.2m) is the leading points scorer in both the Fantasy iTeam and the McDonald’s FIFA World Cup games but is the most-sold player of this round in the latter.

Romelu Lukaku (£10.0m), who trails Kane by two goals in the race for the Golden Boot, is the next-most transferred out player at the time of writing.

Fears that their respective managers would choose to rest the premium forwards for this third-place play-off has no doubt contributed to the hundreds of thousands of sales, but there will also be a small proportion of Fantasy managers out there who, perhaps, don’t realise that Saturday afternoon’s match still counts towards their scores.

Jesse Lingard (£7.5m) and Kevin De Bruyne (£9.8m) are among the other players to have been widely ditched by those who are playing McDonald’s FIFA.

Hopes will be high for a high-scoring fixture, particularly as Belgium (18) and England (15) have had more big chances this summer than the other 30 nations taking part. Martinez’s side have also allowed more shots on goal (91) than any other side in Russia, which bodes well for an open game.

Only Brazil (81) have carved out more chances than Belgium (70) in this tournament, meanwhile.

England’s total number of attempts from set plays (37) is by far the highest figure of any nation at this World Cup, with nine of their 12 goals coming from dead-ball situations or penalty kicks.

Adnan Januzaj (£5.0m) scored the only goal of the game when the two sides last met in Kaliningrad.

World Cup Data

We’re delighted to offer World Cup data as an early addition to our regular season offering to help those playing Fantasy games over the summer.

We’ve secured Opta data, not only for the tournament itself, but also from the Qualifying Rounds for Europe and South America and for international friendlies involving the participating nations. This includes all the matches played right up to the tournament kick-off.

Just to stress, this World Cup offering comes packaged with the regular Fantasy Football Scout membership.

Check out this new trailer detailing the World Cup content below…

McDonald’s FIFA World Cup Fantasy

Join our McDonald’s FIFA World Cup Fantasy league ‘FantasyFootballScout’ using the code: HEWJPVYR

Fantasy iTeam

Fantasy Football Scout is supporting Fantasy iTeam, a free World Cup game available on a number of mobile devices, including iPhone, iPad, iPodTouch and Android. We have an official Fantasy Football Scout League open to UK users only, 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.

Click here for details and here to sign up.

Our League name is Fantasy Football Scout and the pin is 1887.

Please note, users must be over 18 and based in the UK to join our league.