Fantasy Fotbol

I’m not stranger to fantasy sports – I’ve probably been in at least one league a year since 2000 or so, and have had teams for football (obviously), baseball, basketball and I think even hockey one year.  (Let’s not bring up the F1 league run by the Dwyer’s – I’m an embarrassment for 5 years running)

But earlier this week I had a new “first”.  I was walking into the building in the morning with my Italian buddy and he asked I was interested in a Champions League Fantasy Team.  I said yes before we even finished the sentence, but he kept trying to explain
how “fantasy sports” worked to me.  Eventually I had to promise him that I understood that there would not be any actual soccer played by us (although I will start playing sporadically in a weekly game here at work).  I think fantasy sports are still getting going out here – because when I tried to explain to some other folks here at work they couldn’t comprehend what I was getting at.

But now I was faced with a few challenges -

Do I know exactly what a “Champions League” is?  Do I understand how players will score points (even after looking at the rules)? Do I know more than 2 players or 4 teams by name?

NO

BUT – did my sister know more than Tom Brady, Wes Welker or Rob Gronkowski during our fantasy football draft the other night?  Did that stop her from getting into fantasy football, and actual football by proxy?

NO

Am I saying that I am approaching this league like a girl who doesn’t know anything?

Yes…

But I’ve seen how much more fun watching sports can be when previously uninterested parties have a stake in the game.  So I’m in – and so far it has been as weird and euro as I could have guessed.

In football obviously, we are used to picking our teams draft style (more common), or auction style (more awesome).  In either option, only one team gets to have Tommy Terrific on their team. 

Euro-style is different – we can ALL have Ronaldo on our teams if we wanted (no set limits on number of teams either).  The difference is that everyone has a $100 budget, and each player costs somewhere from $4-13 and you need to fill up 15 roster spots (I think).  So if you pick up Ronaldo and Messi (the two players I know by name), that is 25% of your budget.  Thinking about it, this makes sense, the soccer teams here don’t have any type of draft, so that would confuse people.  Not really sure why they don’t do auction style though – that would be sweet.  (maybe I’ll introduce it next year…)

Knowing that I didn’t want to bust my budget on those two guys, I did some quick google-ing and focused on young exciting players, Swedes, Polacks, Swiss and Americans.  This gave me a ton of options (except for the Americans – couldn’t really find any of those).  I then went through and worked out the best roster I could.  I admit, it wasn’t a good sign when my Greek friend looked at my team quickly, he let me know that one of my players broke his leg or something a month ago and will be out for the year.  He then finished looking my team over and looked at me like I was a ringer and asked “how did you know about some of these guys?” - which did make me feel better about it.    

So now I guess I follow the Champions League?  I think they play every Tues or Wed?  I also should probably learn what country some of the teams are in.  But overall this will definitely help me get more into the beautiful game, and I look forward to being the “lady in the office who wins the march madness bracket”….

My team for those interested -