Table of Contents
For the European Championship edition of Telegraph Fantasy Football, we have a team of fantasy football fanatics ready to bring you expert advice from fellow managers that live, sleep and breathe TFF.
Today’s writer, Andrew McGill, is a Bristol City fan and experienced fantasy football manager with numerous top finishes in both regular season and international tournament games.
Telegraph Fantasy Football 2024/25
Keep your eyes peeled early next week for the launch of the new game ahead of the start of the Premier League.
Telegraph Fantasy Football Euros Edition: expert review
So the wall charts are being taken down and the flags have been folded neatly away for another two years. The Euros are over.
While the tournament ultimately ended in disappointment for England and Scotland, it brought many their first glimpse of new superstar Lamine Yamal, whose incredible goal in the semi-final against France will live long in the memory.
As a baby, Yamal famously starred in an advert with Lionel Messi, with some pondering whether the Argentinian’s greatness had somehow rubbed off on him. Perhaps, with a view to the future, it is time for the home nations to start dispatching our former greats to maternity wards for a bit of luck?
For Telegraph Fantasy Football managers, it was a tricky tournament to navigate, with many of the stars fancied pre-tournament failing to deliver their expected points. You would have had very long odds on Kylian Mbappe, Romelu Lukaku and Cristiano Ronaldo scoring only one goal between them in the whole tournament.
With goals scarce, initially it seemed that loading up on defensive players was where the points lay – the top six players in the game were all goalkeepers or defenders. However, with only two clean sheets from the quarter-final stage onwards, even that source of points ultimately proved unreliable.
Successful TFF managers were those who used their generous 50 transfer allocation to its fullest and held defenders from Spain, England and France in the early stages of the competition. Those who loaded up on Germany players ahead of their opening 5-1 victory against Scotland will also have got themselves off to a flying start.
Going forward, it was England superstar Jude Bellingham who picked up the most points with 31, just ahead of Fabian Ruiz of Spain and the Netherlands’ Cody Gakpo.
The surprise package of the tournament was arguably Georgia, whose dangerous forward Georges Mikautadze picked up three goals, a share of the Golden Boot, and 26 points in TFF.
In the overall TFF leaderboard, it was an incredibly tight finish that went right to the wire. In the end, just two points separated the top two teams.
Visit the Telegraph Fantasy Football Stats Centre for all player points. >
Telegraph Fantasy Football Euros Edition: the champion
Congratulations to Ahmad Abdul Ghani for claiming the top prize. Here are a few words from this summer’s champion.
“The simple strategy across all five entries, in the beginning, was to include players from all the big teams, as many as possible. Crucial to this was to identify one low-valued player, in my case Georgia’s Giorgi Kochorashvilli, as an «enabler», in order to fit all other high-valued players.
Interestingly, from the start of the round of 16 through to the quarter-final matches I was on a road trip to the Scottish Highlands and Islands. It simplified my strategy even further. The aim was to include starting goalkeepers and defenders for Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France and England, consecutively for the two stages.
Before the start of the semi-finals, it dawned on me that I was in contention for a top-10 finish with 13 transfers in hand. I decided to only change the five non-playing players, all from Germany, to make up three each from Spain and France in my team. Another climb up the leaderboard together with a change in performance from England swayed me to use another five transfers for the second semi-final to replace the three French players.
In third place before the final, six and three points respectively adrift of the top two, I was prompted to look back at the leaderboard and realised I had the momentum with three transfers left. Hoping for a scoring final, to negate the clean-sheet points, the decision was to include all 11 playing players starting for the final. In order to achieve that I had to replace Kane, Trippier and Konsa with my final three transfers. Being unable to fit Yamal into my team, I settled for Nico Williams. He scored and so did England, so my wish of no clean-sheet bonuses came true. The second Spain goal didn’t do too much damage fortunately and I still won it by two points.”
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