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In the last Gameweek, the Sorare Academy game hit an astonishing 4,256 unique players! It just keeps growing. That makes us the largest Sorare game outside of the main tournament, by our count. 

Once we hit 5,000 players in a Gameweek, Sorare have generously offered an additional five quality cards as prizes that week – meaning a Gameweek with 15 cards to win is hopefully coming up, so share the league with your friends.

Last Gameweek, LetoPino FC stole the top prize, and what a prize it was. This was his team of European heavyweights, with a differential of Napoli’s Amir Rrahmani thrown in.

For that, he scooped highly-rated wonderkid Hugo Ekitike from Reims, a player the Sorare market is currently pricing at around $700, Our second and third-placed teams snagged Donyell Malen and Pau Torres respectively, another two highly valued cards. Not too shabby.

And these prizes are being given out each and every week, in a free-to-play game.

It takes just a few minutes to enter a team, and you have the best stars across Europe with which to pick your best five from each week.

GET STARTED WITH THE FREE-TO-PLAY SORARE ACADEMY HERE 

Entering a team for this week

It’s really easy to play, and to make it even easier, I will share some team selection thoughts for the weekend.

Fixtures

Just like in Fantasy Premier League (FPL), I tend to start with a look at the fixtures. There is a tool on my website for this:

With no Premier League this weekend, it’s a perfect time to explore other teams and the Academy makes it really easy to pick decent players from abroad, even if you don’t know them too well at first.

Looking at the fixture ticker above, we have strong options at Real Madrid who face Granada.

Atalanta might provide some differentials, as they aren’t always the first team to spring to mind for many. However, they have a good fixture against Cagliari who probably can’t remember the last time they kept a clean sheet.

Roma and Napoli are looking tasty. The latter face Venezia, who make have some of the best kits in world football but there are no league table points for that! They have not won in five matches.

Bayern Munich have a tougher fixture vs Leipzig but they are such a friendly team for the Sorare scoring system. In games like this – where you rack up points for more than just goals – high possession teams like Bayern and Manchester City tend to do very well.

Form

We can spend hours deliberating over every player. However, for the free-to-play Academy, I generally just have some fun and don’t stress too much. The Academy makes this easy by showing us the average score, out of 100, of players from the last five games. Plus, an indicator of whether they generally start or not.

Real Madrid offer some really good options as you can see in the above screenshot. Toni Kroos, Karim Benzema and Luka Modric are all very reliable. Vinicius Junior has some solid scores to his name recently too.

The Academy also indicates each player’s likelihood of playing. Here, all players above are greenlit as “Starting” – a sign this player is generally getting good game time in recent matches. However, as with FPL, always check team news prior to the deadline.

A Roma keeper or defender could be a good shout with opponents Genoa scoring just once in four games. Rui Patricio in goal or Chris Smalling at the back might fit the bill.

Napoli are very attractive at both ends of the field. We could take inspiration from last week’s winner with Rrahmani or instead go Kalidou Koulibaly or Mario Rui. Further forward, Lorenzo Insigne would be my pick.

The Final Cut

Here is my line-up for the weekend, with an average age of over 30. In a one-week free competition, targeting veterans at their peak is a great idea. However, given the importance of long-term value on Sorare, you might make different decisions in the main game about who you play week in and week out. That additional strategic dimension to the game can be very interesting.

Good luck with your teams for the weekend. Remember the Friday deadline at 11:00am UK time and share the league with your friends so we can hit 5,000 players and give away five more prizes!

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