People often ask me, ‘how much money do I need to start on Sorare?‘

Obviously, you should only ever put in what you can afford to play with (and potentially lose) but the figure to be competitive and enjoy the game has changed over the last few months and especially recently with ETH surging to new all-time highs.

In this post, I’ll start with a fictional £1,000 budget to see if I can put a small squad together to compete for the threshold in Global All Stars Rare division.

Why am I going for a Rare team?

You could definitely start out on Sorare with much less than £1,000. There are plenty of Limited cards selling for less than 0.02 ETH so even with the cost of buying a goalkeeper you could build a Limited team for around £500 if you wanted to.

Unless your budget is really restricted though, and you just want to play for fun, I wouldn’t recommend the Limited scarcity for new managers. We’ve seen a bit of a price correction on Limited cards in recent weeks which I don’t think is completely over yet and I can see prices dropping further. The Limited divisions are getting more and more competitive and there’s no threshold to aim for so if you miss the reward places, you miss out altogether, and with the market so saturated with cards, it’s more difficult to flip cards for profit.

Rare cards are also not that much more expensive that Limited cards, unless you’re looking at the top end players. As you can see from the graph below, the vast majority of Rares are <0.050 ETH and there are some good cards in there (alongside a lot of DNPs and substitutes of course!)

For those reasons, I’m going to stick to recommending Rare cards for now, at least until we see some changes to the game or a serious influx of new managers that would help to stabilise the market.

Rules for this challenge

I’m working with a budget of 0.3 ETH, which is more or less £1,000 (allowing for fluctuations in the price of ETH).

I’m going to avoid leagues that are about to end and those that are likely to be less familiar to new managers – so that means I’m sticking to the European leagues, even though I could definitely pick up players cheaper in the Asian leagues or MLS right now.

I want to have at least four players that can play in the next full gameweek (Gameweek 220) plus a spare in each position to cover injuries and absences.

I don’t want any players that are about to retire – the ability to sell on/trade up is important to grow the team.

I’m assuming I’ve got a Common goalkeeper to fill that spot – the challenge is near impossible without that as you’d need at least another 0.2 ETH to make up the team.

All images/data is courtesy of SorareData – an absolutely vital resource for Sorare managers.

Defence

My first pick is Leandro Cabrera for Espanyol. This guy is a solid defender, a regular 90-minute player in a mid-table LaLiga team. He’s unlikely to get many decisive scores but his all around contribution to the game should bring him up to the 45 point mark most gameweeks, which is the minimum we need for this challenge. His current best offer is 0.055 ETH but I’d be confident to pick him up for around 0.050 ETH or less with a direct offer.

For my second defender I’m going to go for Dirk Abels of Sparta Rotterdam. Again, he’s a solid 90-minute player and has the ability to post some decent all around scores which can pull his overall score up above 50 points. He’s also a good age and I’ve no doubt there is some resale value there. His price is suppressed at the moment because Sparta have been so poor and his short term scoring has been inconsistent. The current best offer is 0.034 ETH but I think I could snap him up for around 0.030 ETH with a bit of negotiation.

I also considered Jordi Amat, Reinildo, Harold Makoudi and Rubén Duarte for the defender positions.

Midfield

My first midfield slot goes to youngster Dean Huiberts at Zwolle. He’s missed a couple of periods due to injury but he seems to be a permanent fixture in the team now. His recent SO5 scores are a little inconsistent but I’m hoping some of that was down to fitness. He has scored a couple of decisive points in the last few games and has shown that he can hit >60 point scores on all around scoring alone, which is promising. His current best offer is 0.042 ETH but the last sales were 0.036 ETH so I think you would be able to pick him up for around that mark.

My backup midfield position goes to Yvan Neyou of Saint-Étienne, who is currently out with an ankle injury. Buying injured players is always a risk but he’s expected to be out for only a month or so and this could be the ideal time to pick him up at a lower price. He’s a starter in the team hit a good run of form before his injury. It’s worth noting that Saint-Étienne are looking like relegation candidates this year so you’d either want to flip him at some point on his return from injury or hope he gets a move if they do go down. His current best offer is 0.046 ETH but I think 0.040 ETH is a realistic valuation for him and should be achievable.

I also looked at Mat Seuntjens, Sven Mijnans, Bryan Smeets, Jens Cools and Arne Maier for the midfield slot.

Forwards

Picking up reasonably priced forwards is more difficult than filling the other positions.

My first slot goes to Michiel Kramer of RKC Waalwijk. He’s Waalwijk’s top scorer so far this season and is generally starting and managing at least 60 minutes per match. He’s had some decent SO5 scores in recent weeks but will usually need a decisive action to hit more than 45 points, which isn’t unusual for forwards. His best offer is 0.084 ETH at the moment but I think an offer of 0.080 should be more than enough to get him, based on previous sold prices.

The backup forward position goes to Rubén Sobrino of Cádiz, really because that’s all my remaining budget can stretch to. To be fair, he’s generally starting games and playing at least 60 minutes per match, he’s just not really been in the mix for any goal contributions this season, which is holding his price back. If that was to change, he could be a decent player for the price, but he really does rely on decisive points to move his score above about 40 points. He’s on offer for 0.065 ETH but I wouldn’t expect to pay more than about 0.058 ETH for him, maybe even a little less.

There were very few other options in my price range for the forward position but with a little bit more ETH I might have taken a closer look at David Okereke and Mohamed El Hankouri.

Potential return on investment

My key target with this squad is the threshold payments at >205 points (0.01 ETH or £33-ish) and >250 points (0.02 ETH or £66-ish). My Common goalkeeper will start me off with between 20 and 30 points most weeks so it’s up to the rest of the team to make up the difference, so ideally I need each outfield player to score >45 points each gameweek.

This small squad should allow me to put out a team each weekend at least and hit the 0.01 ETH threshold more often than not and hopefully the 0.02 ETH threshold from time to time. An occasional card reward would be nice but probably unlikely unless I get really lucky. At a push, I’d expect to have earned back the cost of this team by the end of the season, although realistically it might take until this time next season to do that.

I could speed up my progress by investing more in players who are out of form or injured and flipping them for profit when their price recovers. Obviously having a larger budget would enable me to put out more teams and target favourable fixtures, so sticking to such a tight squad is definitely doing things the hard way – but it is doable.

The caveat to all of the above is that any changes to the game will impact on a team like this. If Sorare removes the threshold rewards (which they have indicated that they will do at some point) then the ability for my team to compete for rewards will depend on whatever the replacement is. I’d still be confident that any possible replacement would support an entry-level team like this because it’s in Sorare’s interest to ensure that these teams still have value, whether that’s some sort of threshold reached over a longer period of games or a new division that targets and rewards average scoring cards like these.

Remember that the benefit of buying Rares over Limited cards is that the market is more liquid for the seller so I would expect to be able to sell these players on at some stage to be able to recoup most if not all of the money I paid for them (so any rewards earned become profit).

So what do you think? Can you build a better squad for 0.30 ETH? Let me know if so as I’d be interested to see who you choose.

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