Best Fantasy Soccer Sites for 2024

How to Play Daily Fantasy Soccer

While participating in competitions is straightforward, you will need to get familiar with the specific rules before you opt in because there can be dramatic differences. Starting is easy. The first step is to sign up on a fantasy sports site you know you can trust, then select a contest and confirm your participation.

Claiming a bonus can give you a kick-start but is not instrumental to winning. Instead, you should focus your attention on your lineup. Be mindful of the salary cap and try to put together a balanced team that has its star performers but also does justice to under-the-radar picks. To make positive progress, your picks should perform well in real life. This is how they earn you points.

The Draft

The draft is where competitions are won or lost. In this stage, you need to select your initial team lineup. If the league has a re-draft rule, you will be able to pick a new team at the start of every season. Typically, drafts take place before the season starts officially, so you have some time to pore over team news and think.

When you think of the draft, you need to remember that you must choose substitutions as well. Those are the players that will carry your team through hard times when your top guns are unavailable. For your standard fantasy soccer lineup, you will need:

• 2 Forwards
• 2 Midfielders
• 2 Defenders
• 1 Goalkeeper
• 1 (Substitution)

Scoring Formats

There are various scoring formats. In some competitions, points are awarded for defensive plays, while in others, only a clean sheet is rewarded. You can find all sorts of twists, but one thing is for sure: points are accumulated based on the performance of your players in certain categories. Here's one of the common scoring formats for fantasy soccer:

• Goal – +10
• Assist – +6
• Shot - +1
• Shot on goal – +1
• Crosses – +0.7
• Assisted shot – +1
• Fouls drawn – +1
• Fouls conceded – -0.5
• Tackle won – +1
• Passes intercepted – +0.5
• Yellow card – -1.5
• Clean sheet – -1.5
• Red card – -3
• Shootout goal – +1.5
• Shootout miss – -1
• Saves – +2 (Goalkeepers)
• Goal conceded – - 2 (Goalkeepers)
• Clean sheet – - +5 (Goalkeepers)
• Penalty kick save – +3 (Goalkeepers)
• Shootout save – +1.5 (Goalkeepers)

Besides the basic categories we outlined above, other actions might contribute to point-earning. We are talking about statistics, such as shots on target or saves, for the goalies. Also, you need to know about the actions that will deduct points from your total. Those are usually yellow and red cards, as well as missing a penalty kick.

Before Gameday

One of the mistakes rookies make is not being ready for matchday. To stand a chance to win, you must have made the allowed number of transfers (if possible) well in advance and have your team optimized a couple of hours before kick-off.

Here are some things to keep an eye on before the start of matchday. Confirm that all starting positions are filled with players who are available. If someone is injured or on international duty, there should be an icon next to their jersey indicating that. Needless to say, you should choose the players with the best current performance for each position.

Stay well informed of current events and schedules. There might be in-between matches that were postponed from an earlier date. Review your team to ensure that you are making the right adjustments each week if you are in a standard re-draft league.

The Waiver Wire

This feature is an effort to give participants a fair crack at picking up unrostered players and strengthening their teams. If a player is "on waivers," that means they can't be claimed immediately, but rather, all contestants have a chance to add them to their team. Who ends up claiming that the rules of the league determine the player.

It's no secret that the rules usually favor the participant with the poorest records. In this capacity, the Waiver Wire rule is an effective way to change the balance of power in the league. Another benefit of having the rule enabled is that it helps participants substitute underperforming players on their team or replace non-active team members.

Player Trades

Playing on fantasy soccer sites also involves closing player trades. Depending on the rules, you will either have to exchange players with another team in your league or purchase from a pool of players after selling the one you no longer want. In either case, a trade occurs when you swap one player for another that wasn't on your team originally.

When buying a new addition to your team, always keep in mind what you need to achieve with that trade. Are you covering for an injured player, or do you need a scoring machine? In any case, the salary cap will be another limiting factor that will constrain the range of choices you have.

Fantasy Soccer League Types

A great thing about fantasy soccer apps and sites is that you can always find a league that caters to your preferences and strengths. Understanding how this all works is necessary to experience the game fully. Imagine that you can make a transfer, but you are not taking advantage of it because you aren't familiar with the rules.

Or how about having a wildcard available, but you didn't know about it? The scoring system is another instrumental difference between league types. Choosing the right competition can be crucial to the player experience you will get for playing, so we explained in a few words each of the common types.

Draft

In a draft league, players take turns to select players before the start of the season. Once a player is selected, they cannot be chosen by another team. This stage is all about getting the players you think will need for the duration of the contest.

Draft Only

Leagues that are "draft only" don't allow further trades or waiver wire transfers. The draft is where everything is decided in these competitions. In the context of daily fantasy soccer, this is completely fine, but if a contest lasts more than one matchday, you will need strategic thinking to pick the right lineup.

Best Ball

In the Best Ball league, your team performs without your management. The best-scoring players are automatically selected each week to form your lineup for the upcoming matchday. Not being able to make any fine-tuned changes reminds a lot of how draft-only contests are played.

Custom Scoring

In these leagues, commissioners can show creativity in making the scoring rules. This may result in different aspects of the game being prioritized, depending on what statistic will end up being the highest point earner. For example, scoring a goal might not earn a standard 10 points but eight instead. That is why it's always wise to check the scoring rules before opting in.

Dynasty

In Dynasty leagues, your entire team, or at least most of it, stays unchanged from season to season. This puts the focus entirely on the draft stage, where you build your lineup. When thinking about which players you should pick, you will need to take into consideration not only the current, but the seasons to come as well.

How to Pick the Best Fantasy Soccer Sites

To recommend a platform with daily fantasy soccer, we need to know it has the makings of a reliable platform. The sites we selected for this overview have functional mobile apps that are updated on a regular basis and become better with every update. The same can be said about the security measures and bonus offers, where we always look for improvement.

The selection of sports on a platform is important, especially during periods where there isn't much soccer happening. Whether you want to play daily fantasy baseball or even fantasy esports, most platforms should include them in their roster. Payment methods are another very important selling point and we strictly check every time. The top fantasy soccer sites must have instant deposit banking solutions.