Our World Cup of FPL tournament asks you, the Fantasy Football Scout readers, to vote for the greatest Fantasy Premier League asset of all time.
We first invited you to submit your long-list nominations before sorting the 32 most popular players into eight groups of four.
Eight FPL legends past and present have already qualified for the last 16, namely Frank Lampard, Robin van Persie, Thierry Henry, Gareth Bale, Harry Kane, Didier Drogba, Cristiano Ronaldo and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Some big names have already fallen at the first hurdle, meanwhile, including Steven Gerrard and Eden Hazard.
Voting for Group E and Group F has been taking place over the last couple of days and we can now reveal the next quartet of players who have made it through to the knockout stages.
GROUP E – FINAL STANDINGS
- Wayne Rooney | 40.3%
- Marcos Alonso | 29.8%
Raheem Sterling| 19.2%Nemanja Vidic| 10.8%
Raheem Sterling was the latest high-profile casualty in our World Cup of FPL, failing to make the knockout rounds as Wayne Rooney and Marcos Alonso progressed from Group E.
Unlike when Eden Hazard was eliminated by just half a percentage point, Sterling was never really in the running and finished a clear third behind runner-up Alonso.
We speculated in our preview that Sterling’s so-so 2019/20 campaign may have slightly tainted his reputation in the Fantasy community and that could well have been a factor, given that he had racked up 77 attacking returns and 463 FPL points in his previous two seasons combined.
That would be to overlook Alonso and Rooney’s contributions, however, especially the former Manchester United and Everton man.
Rooney is FPL’s all-time leading points-scorer and no Fantasy forward past or present can better Rooney’s four appearances in the end-of-season Dream Team.
The current Derby County player/coach soaked up 40.3% of your votes to finish top of this foursome, although no group leader has so far polled such a low percentage.
Alonso, meanwhile, averaged five goals, five assists and 14 clean sheets per season in the three campaigns before this one, racking up over 160 FPL points in each of them.
The Spaniard has yet to blank this season when he has started a Premier League game and, although that has only happened on nine occasions, he had been enjoying a brief renaissance before COVID-19 stopped play.
Nemanja Vidic picked up the wooden spoon but he was no mere whipping boy, having gained a respectable 10.8% share of the vote.
GROUP F – FINAL STANDINGS
- Luis Suarez | 48.9%
- John Terry | 25.8%
Clint Dempsey| 18.5%Gareth McAuley| 6.8%
There were no major shocks in Group F, with Clint Dempsey and rank outsider Gareth McAuley bowing out.
There was a possibility that Dempsey’s cult status among FPL veterans and refreshed memories of his superb 2011/12 campaign may have been enough to cause an upset but John Terry‘s longevity and Luis Suarez‘s record-breaking 2013/14 season were stronger pulls among our voting base and both players eased through to the last 16.
The Uruguayan garnered almost half of the vote in the Group F poll.
Suarez’s stay in England was relatively short-lived and he indeed made a fairly slow start on Merseyside, only really entering ‘must-own’ territory in his final two campaigns at Anfield.
His total of 295 points in his last season at Liverpool was the best ever since FPL’s inception at the turn of the century, although Mohamed Salah subsequently passed that tally in 2017/18.
Terry meanwhile has racked up more appearances in FPL’s end-of-season Dream Team (six) than any other player bar Frank Lampard and once delivered 25 clean sheets in a single campaign, en route to lifting Chelsea’s first league title in half a century.
The long-serving Blues’ stopper attracted over one in four votes in our Group F poll.
McAuley was always likely to struggle against such competition and the fact that this author initially posted a picture of Craig Dawson in the header of the Group F preview, to little protest, perhaps sums up his modest status.
Still, a 6.8% share of the vote was more than the likes of Andrew Robertson and Carlos Tevez received in their respective groups, so his goalscoring contributions as a budget defender haven’t completely been forgotten about.
WHAT’S UP NEXT?
A rundown of Groups G and H will be launched soon so keep an eye out for the next articles in this series over the coming days.
The polls for these two groups are already available on the sidebar.
4 years, 14 days ago
No keepers