The Goal Post's Fundamentals of Fantasy 5 - Dream Teams

After the first day of albeit relatively uneventful World Cup Football, it's time for another Fundamentals of Fantasy update. I want to revisit my earlier post on scoring, in light of today's performance. We need look no further for our insights than today's fantasy "dream team," the formation of players that would have scored you the most points on the day:



This chart reveals and clarifies many things, but lets start with the basics:

Five of the players on this dream team are Uruguayans (arguably the worst team on the day; France played poorly, but they still had more chances than Uruguay). South Africa and Mexico, the teams that arguably had the best (and most confidence-inspiring) outings today have only 3 players between them on the Dream Team (though this is partially because both of those teams actually scored goals).

All the points are fairly low for attackers (not surprising for a day as goal-less as today), and there is a clear gradient from the Goalkeeper on down. It should come as no surprise that Goalkeepers and defenders score a bunch of points when their teams kick a shutout. France and Uruguay make up all but one of the six defensive players on the dream team, squeezing in around Mexico's Rafael Marquez and the rare goal he brings to the table. What is surprising is that the highest-scoring forward on the day was France's Sidney Govou, with 5 points from a)playing, and b)a few passes into the area.

Make sure you're sitting down for this next one. Someone in the world of FIFA fantasy football scored 59 points in today's lackluster openers. In case you haven't tallied it, the dream team scored 87. It just goes to show that boring games do not strictly prevent fantasy points. However, this will certainly be one of the lowest scoring dream teams of the Cup.

I can't imagine that many more dream teams will look like this one, with a Goalkeeper-tipped points pyramid, and stocked with the worst-performing teams of the day (if not players, Uruguay's Nestor Muslera, for instance, had an excellent,if somewhat calm, game in Goal). This was an odd and somewhat anticlimactic day. Most of the players took a lot of time to get used to the blindingly bright limelight in this tournament. It's certainly not as enjoyable to watch a fizzle. Hopefully the next groups are up for more of a spark.