Last updated on July 17th, 2026
With the expanded 48 team World Cup tournament, that was also triple hosted for the first time by the United States of America, Canada and Mexico, now soon to be at a close with Spain and Argentina facing off against each other at the MetLife Stadium in the showpiece final, domestic fans are beginning to turn their attentions back to real football and their all important opening fantasy football selections that will see them through 2026/27.
The major European leagues will soon be back with us as August’s big kick offs near, and most teams are already back in pre season training with a number of friendly build up games set to take place from next week onwards. With the summer distraction almost over, whilst fans up and down the country have already seen some transfer windows moves starting to go through. Like many casino games online, transfer windows are usually the same – you do your research to give you the best odds of success, and then you roll the dice and see what happens.
One of the most notable so far was Manchester City’s capture of Nottingham Forest’s England midfielder Elliot Anderson for a reported £116 million, so along with the speculation rumour mill now beginning to kick into a higher gear, and free agents starting to decide their own futures, normal transfer activity will soon spike as the vast majority of clubs will do all they can to give newbies and fresh faces as much of the pre season period as possible to help them bed in amongst their new colleagues.
This also makes life far easier for fantasy footy players as once squads start to really take shape, far better decisions are capable of being taken when it comes to the usual caveats that most fantasy software has in terms of a strict number of players from individual clubs and then how many players for each unit on a pitch. We all need a filler or two, or maybe three, depending on how many top, reliable but very expensive goalscoring stars you go for, and some of the cheaper, and far less experienced and unlikely to play, players can always be of benefit on that front and balancing the books, even if you never expect them to get off the substitutes bench.
Whilst planning out your squad in advance and divvying up your financial pot and war chest, there are always unforeseen changes in valuations that you cannot account for, so the last thing you want is to then find that a player or two have now moved clubs and your individual squad cap is thrown into disarray, which in turn thoroughly disrupts your plans for the individual on pitch units.
The longer decisions can be left until a point closer to kick off is usually for the better, but of course, that means that you then only have a limited period of time to get all of the admin done so that your preferred fantasy set up is eligible to be counted by the deadline for the opening day.
Then there is the endless game of squad tweaks until the deadline window actually closes, but these things are sent to test us and when you clearly get a leg up on the points because you know your mates have failed to plan appropriately, there are added bragging rights.
