« Dirty China | Main | Two Perspectives on Genocide » Fantasy Soccer?27 Aug 2007 08:42 am A skeptical Ann Friedman links to a Guardian article proclaiming the "feminization" of the internet: Forget the 20-something man playing online fantasy football and selling motorbike parts on eBay. The internet has a new user. When a British newspaper writes "football" they mean "soccer," right? But do people really put together fantasy soccer teams? The whole fantasy sports concept seems heavily dependent on the availability of statistics, and soccer doesn't seem to me to have enough. Comments (34)
I actually know some people who do play fantasy soccer. My understanding (and granted I was very drunk and not caring too much when it was explained) of the way it works is that newspaper writers give every player a score of 1-10 based on how well they played that game. Besides goals this is the primary statistics used to detrmine fantasy points. 
Well, the first google result for fantasy football is one about UK soccer, and UK papers run the competitions frequently: they seem to work. There are plenty of statistics that can be used. Wikipedia seems to think that the American variant is rather older, and I suspect that it works better.
I don't know why people feel the need to insult anything they don't understand/appreciate. Football/soccer has been around for a long time so I'm sure there might be quite a few statistics there. You might not care for them, but that's a different matter.
Yahoo Fantasy English Premier League involves tackles, fouls committed, fouls won, successful crosses, shots on goal, goals, assists, cards, etc. Each of these is assigned a particular weight. You have 100 points to spend on your eleven man roster, and the value of a player goes up or down depending on the demand for him. (For instance, Thierry Henry's value the last few years was well over 20, a pretty hefty price to pay, but the guy was enormously productive.) There are plenty of stats in soccer, but most of them don't make it into the Premiership box scores I as an American generally look at. (By which I mean BBC Sport, whose coverage is woefully shallow.)
Actually there are lots of different leagues, with very different systems. Some are much more focussed on goals (scored, assists, conceded for defenders etc), some like jhupp said involving fouls, passing stats etc. The big difference to American fantasy football is that you play against the world, not just 11 buddies. There's no rule against one player being on multiple teams. The limit on your team is usually a budget (with star players having higher 'salaries') not availability of players. I think this is somewhat more fun than American style fantasy, but I guess both have plusses and minusses.
No, Matt is right. The original fantasy sport was Rotisserie-league baseball, which works so well because virtually every aspect of the game is quantifiable. Fantasy football followed and works ok, as many aspects of the game are quantifiable. Soccer has very few metrics to describe the course of play and, as a result, fantasy soccer is primitive at best. As best I understand it, all players are awarded points for appearances and goals/assists, forwards for team goals, defenders/keepers for clean sheets, and midfielders for both.
My 14 year old son has gotten me into soccer, particularly the English Premiere League and MLS here, and I have grown to absolutely love it. One of its best aspects is the continuous play, lack of television time outs, and precictability of game length. If you watch a game on TV or go to a game live, you know it is going to be a slightly less than two hour commitment. Jeffrey -- regular season games are not decided on penalty kicks and scoreless games are not that common. I've been to a couple of MLS games this year in which 6 and 7 goals were scored. But scoring is not really the point -- there is a beauty to the play and strategy in a good game that transcends mere scoring. All that being said, I have no idea how you do this in a fantasy league. My son has a team I know, but I'm baffled at how you measure the many small things that good players do that don't show up on the score sheet.
They have fantasy tennis, golf, NASCAR, etc. Of course they have fantasy soccer. Essentially the rule is if it's a sport there will be a fantasy equivalent.
As Brian Weatherson pointed out, there are different point systems for different leagues (as there are for NBA, NFL, etc.). Under the Premier League fantasy games's rules, you get points for goals (more if a defender or mid scores) and assists and if your defenders/mids/GK keep a clean sheet, saves for a GK, and for being Man of the Match, and you lose points for your defenders and mids conceding and for cards. It's a pretty simplistic scoring system. The wrinkle, I think, is the idea of dynamic player values and the requirement that your team stay under a threshold of player values, meaning that the trick is to find undervalued players.
My love of football (soccer) had its roots in the 1994 World Cup, which we (the USA) hosted. I have been following it since, largely through the World Cups since, and have been watching the Premier League since the 2008 World Cup. I've got my wife hooked on it now as well. It is indeed the beautiful game, and those who lambast the scoring (or lack thereof) and/or penalty kicks need to pay more attention to the game than that. It is the epitome of both individual and team skill. While often referred to as 'pansies' or 'gay' (typically by those noted above), I'd venture that these players have the most endurance and the highest fitness level of most any other sport. There is a reason that the rest of the world loves it, and it took me awhile to realize why. I tried to watch NFL this weekend and, while a hugely devoted fan since I was a child, I know look at it as do most other people around the world--slow, too many commercials, not enough action. But that is not meant to lambast the NFL; I see these sports as two wholly different games. Which they are. But I am now more apt to refer to 'soccer' as football, and 'football' (NFL-style) as, well, I don't know. I mean, how often does the foot actually touch the ball? I'd wager less than 0.05% of the time. I do love both, but now I am much, much more of a football (soccer) fan than I am a football (NFL) one.
My 14 year old son has gotten me into soccer, particularly the English Premiere League and MLS here, and I have grown to absolutely love it. One of its best aspects is the continuous play, lack of television time outs, and precictability of game length. Unlike watching an NFL game on television, which is an endless array of commercials for cars, beer, life insurance and limp-dick drugs, interrupted by occasional brief bursts of actual play.
Damn Americans, Yes, there is Fantasy Football (and by football I don't mean the moronic 'sport' in which big men jump into each other like crazies.) Bloody Americans. You'll never understand football and that is good; it really is saving the sport from being transformed by your moronic notion of sports, which means needing to slow down and kill every single game with ads and time-outs until it becomes a mind-numbing exercise to watch it. Please, stick to your 3-hour commercial watching that are interespersed with a few seconds of fat men hitting each other, and leave the rest of the world to enjoy their sport without your constant nagging about how you should be good at it, but since you're not, it must be bad.
Essentially the rule is if it's a sport there will be a fantasy equivalent. Even fantasy bull riding.
I love the EPL. My handle is meant to be read as go Giggs, after Ryan Giggs of Man U. I tried fantasy soccer with some friends for a couple years and it wasn't to my liking. My main objection was the fact that the same player can be on multiple teams in the same league, which, aesthetic considerations aside (I like my guys to be my guys), means that once a guy gets into first place he can hold off the second place team simply by mirroring any moves the second place team makes. You can't make up any ground if the team ahead of you has all the same players you do. Also, I enjoy a live draft much more than I enjoy everyone seperately picking names off a list.
gogiggs, There are many different variants of fantasy football. Traditionally, as you say, players are chosen by each "manager" from a list, so two teams may have the same manager. But there is another way! It's also possible to play fantasy football via an auction system, whereby all you manager friends get around a table in the pub and auction players off. Each player is only auctioned once, if at all, so there is no player sharing. You can play this kind of game here: http://auction.fantasyleague.com/Promo.aspx Also, Ryan Giggs is one of the best players ever to grace the EPL, but did you know that he used to beat his wife? Puts everybody off the guy!
Correction - "two teams may have the same PLAYER"
Jimbo, you need help. Seriously.
My league uses the following scoring system. Pretty simple, but lots of fun: Action Points
Jimbo, As I think this thread demonstrates there are quite a number of us who have developed a real love and appreciation for soccer. I actually took my son to two EPL games last year and we are planning a trip to Barcelona for spring break to see what the Ronaldino and Henry combination will be like once it has had a chance to jell. There is a whole generation of young Americans who grew up playing the game now and they have a great deal of knowledge about it on a truly international level. Unfortunately, the lack of commercials, which is its great virtue in my eyes, may be somewhat limiting in terms of getting broad network exposure. Whether that will hold the sport back in the US remains to be seen. Fantasy tennis -- and I say this as a big tennis fan -- doesn't Federer just win each and every time? What more can there be. Alright, throw a game onto clay and then Nadal wins.
" Essentially the rule is if it's a sport there will be a fantasy equivalent." Many people play fantasy horse racing. How well you do depends on where your horse finishes. Some people just play for one race, others will play a set of races during one day.
Fantasy horse racing is OTB without real money.
leave the rest of the world to enjoy their sport without your constant nagging about how you should be good at it, but since you're not, it must be bad Hmmm. Best American finish in last 4 World Cups: quarterfinals. Best English finish in last four World Cups: quarterfinals. (And, heck, at least we qualified every year since '90... unlike England.)
It's a bit easier to qualify for you Yanks than for those of us in Europe. The U.S. and Mexico are always a lock to qualify, it's the 3rd and 4th place battles that are interesting in North America.
My friends and I are in the official EPL roto league. It's fun, there aren't too many stats to wade through, and it gives us all an excuse to stay home on weekends and watch FSC. There are even a fair fraction of women in the league. Interesting thing is that both within the global EPL roto league and within our 30-team league last season, the Americans did much better than most traditional soccer powers. Either our experience with baseball/football gives us an advantage, or we have weaker bonds to individual teams/players that make us more rational actors.
I've seen fantasy soccer done with some pretty dodgy stats, but that doesn't really matter. All fantasy sports develop their own measures of success. Marion Barber will be drafted before every QB but four, which doesn't mean he's that great a player. In fantasy, you just need any kind of numbers.
I am participating in the MLS fantasy league at Fox and it works pretty well using the same scoring system that Jordy posted. I've also participated in an NFL Fanatsy League for the last six years, and it amuses me how much the broadcasts of those games have been retrofitted for fantasy leaguers. It's reached the point that I feel like I am watching dog racing at a Vegas Casino. Further down on the spectrum I would say that Baseball actually feels like a game invented by stat geeks. Incredibly dull and drawn out to watch, but chock full of stats.
Soccer is the world's greatest sport, true. Therefore, there are a million fantasy leagues out there, as noted above several times. And I'll echo the sentiment that these days, it is increasingly difficult to sit through gridiron football (or even basketball) on TV, once you come to the realization that it's mostly stoppages and commercials, as opposed to the playing of sport.
On the Site where I play, www.premierleague.com there are 1.2 Million users. The only thing dull about this question is the context. On an average Arsenal : Manchester United game day there are over 1 Billion people watching the game. Now that is a sport. Premierleague.com rules are same as above: Scoring The Points will be calculated using data provided to us by the Press Association. Neither we nor the Press Association will enter into any correspondence relating to the allocation of points to players. We accept no responsibility for the accuracy of this data. Action Points If a player receives a red card, they will continue to be penalised for goals conceded by their team.
To follow up on a point made by jhupp, not only does Yahoo! UK run a great fantasy game, but they have bloggers too! (see the URL on my name)
Heck, there was a weekly 'Fantasy Football League' programme on BBC2 back in the 90s, which wasn't so much about fantasy teams as general silly football talk. And picking a fantasy side is a bit easier when the average club squad (team roster) isn't the size of a small town in Idaho. And Al is right: the general strategy is to pick a goalie whose defence helps him get clean sheets, even if you can't afford the defenders; a defence made up of players that don't get sent off, but score headed goals from corners; a couple of classy midfielders (for assists); and the undervalued cloggy striker who cost Wigan 20p and a packet of crisps.
It seems like a real bias towared the scoring midfielder or defender. So I guess you lay out 30 million pounds for Steven Gerrard and John Terry and call it a day. Time for a pint.
I play in three fantasy (ASmerican) football leagues and one EPL soccer league. Sorry, but the NFL leagues are more fun. P.S. I love me some European soccer and rugby, but American football still hurts worse. Much worse. So ditch the stupid lines about pads and a helmet.
A few things: 1. There's been Football (soccer for the yanks; btw, that IS an insult) Stats based betting for decades, long before there was a "fantasy football" league on the internet. 2. There's a now US Politics fantasy league, a Fashion Fantasy league and a host of other fantasy leagues which have nothing to do with sports. I suspect there'll be fantasy Mormon proselytism eventually...
Comments closed September 10, 2007. |
Search
Subscribe to this blog by Email Books by Matthew Yglesias
Recent Comments
Recent Posts
Weekly Archives
Categories
|
Copyright © 2007 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Not enough statistics?
% of games decided by penalty kicks: 99.44%
score of 81% of games at the time of decisive penalty kick: 0-0
score of 19% of games at the time of decisive penalty kick: 1-1
% of game in which something of interest is happening on the field: .0001%
Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 27, 2007 8:59 AM