Test your Fantasy Football skills in the free-to-play Sorare Academy tournament

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The Sorare Academy is back for another Gameweek with 10 more prizes on offer to the winners!

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

The last Gameweek featured nearly 3,500 unique players and that number is growing every week. 

Let’s look at the winning team from the last Gameweek before the international break – and the prizes that were won. 

Congratulations to Kevin P, Jorge Mendes and foxinthebox_, who finished in our top three.

Our winner Kevin P went for a ‘Galacticos +1’ approach, with the stardust of Messrs Militao, Kroos, Mbappe and Neymar combined with Villarreal goalkeeper Geronimo Rulli as a more offbeat differential. 

Personally, I like this tactic of throwing in a less obvious player as a good performance from them can really pull you up the rankings. I’ll do that when I pick my team for this week below.

All of the top 10 actually got prizes but the top three rewards were:

These are three great young players and I would not be surprised if we see one or two of them in the Premier League in the next season or two. These cards are worth hundreds of euros on the Sorare market so they are great prizes – congratulations to our winners!

Picking your Team

The Academy is completely free to play, so why not give it a go this week? Just head over to the Sorare Academy site here to enter your team. 

The free game gives you chance to check it out, and if you enjoy it and wish to do so, you can consider buying some Sorare cards to start building your team for the main Sorare Tournament “SO5”.

Fixture Frisking

You can pick stars from across all these leagues where a Sorare card exists. As Sorare cards are officially licensed by the clubs, not everyone is available yet – although this is rapidly changing. Recently La Liga and the Bundesliga signed a rights deal with Sorare and the Premier League licences are being worked on currently. But we can already pick plenty of EPL stars.

I have a super-secret tool over on my website to help with fixtures across the ‘big five’ leagues in Europe, something that we’ll integrate into the Academy site soon. 

This easily shows the teams that are likely to have the most appealing fixtures on paper across Europe and just like FPL, this is always a good place to start.

Bayern Munich are points machines on Sorare and have the best fixture this week according to the algorithm, so we can expect plenty of entrants to be running with Bayern players. So do we do the same? Or do we bet against the favourite and hope this will take a lot of opponents out if it comes off?

Manchester City, pretty much like always, come out on top versus Everton, who arguably are not that soft. Nevertheless, the algorithm expects a kicking. A bit like Bayern, City players do well in the Sorare scoring system because high-possession teams tend to shine (more actions = more points). 

PSG, Barcelona, Liverpool and Dortmund will also provide good options but we can also go for a few differentials at Atalanta (who are no pushovers, as Manchester United can now attest). Gladbach, Sevilla and Leverkusen can provide strong players, too.

Form

The Academy will give us quick access to information about the players’ previous form. 

Let’s start from the front this week. We can use the filters to easily show us the available forwards, like so:

The Academy automatically serves us up the players with the highest average scores over the last five Gameweeks. And you can see the individual scores in each match, too.

Robert Lewandowski looks extremely tempting with that attractive fixture and is currently the highest-scoring available player on average. A no-brainer, except for the fact that so many people will pick him! We could dodge him and hope for him to flop, and Thomas Muller would be a great alternative.

Neymar is sitting there as a strong option, too, as is the resurgent Vinicius Junior at Real. And, lest we forget, there is always Kylian Mbappe, Cristiano Ronaldo and Memphis Depay. Across all five leagues, there are so many great options – it might seem straightforward to just pop in a Galactico and be done but choosing the right man for the Gameweek isn’t always that easy!

In midfield, Toni Kroos is popping off at the moment with an average of 72 (out of the maximum Gameweek score of 100). Real next face Granada and will expect to dominate the ball, giving Kroos plenty of chances to rack up points. Teun Koopmeiners at Atalanta might be a decent pick versus Spezia for the same reason, while Kerem Demirbay at Leverkusen is in a similar boat for the clash with VfL Bochum; both of these are good differentials.

At the back, Bayern’s Dayot Upamecano looks plum for big returns, and will likely be amongst the most popular players this week. Mats Hummels at Dortmund could be a great alternative at home to Stuttgart.

Much like FPL, there’ll be a lot of interest in Trent Alexander-Arnold, who is currently the top performer in defence on average in Sorare. However, Arsenal are no pushovers lately. Marquinhos at PSG would be a solid choice. too. 

Manuel Neuer and Alisson will no doubt prove popular options between the posts and both would be strong picks. Thibaut Courtois is up there too amongst the favourites. Let’s learn from last week’s winner, though, and find a small differential: Yann Sommer of Gladbach is solid and his side face lowly Greuther Furth, who sit rock bottom of the Bundesliga with just one point and eight goals from 11 games.

The Squad

Here is my final team on behalf of the Academy. If only to keep it interesting, I will dodge Bayern given that I expect most people to go heavy on them this week. It’s high risk, but if Bayern flop, I should be able to do well. I’m not entirely confident about that, though!

Neymar gets the armband, while Vinicius Junior comes in as he is resurgent at Real Madrid this season. Koopmeiners is given the nod over Kroos mainly because I just bought him in my latest Football Manager save. Hey, it’s a free game and we can have some fun, right?

Enter your team right now for free – just make sure not to miss the earlier-than-usual 11am Friday deadline. 

Good luck with your teams!

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