If you’ve been curious about Sport.Fun but haven’t wanted to commit any money yet, the World Cup game is the perfect place to start – completely free to play, available everywhere and with $30,000 in prizes on the line.

If you’ve never played before, you might be a bit unsure what’s going on at first, so let me walk you through it and share my squad choice with you.

The basics

To start off, you get a starting budget of 2,800 Gold (the in-game currency) to build your squad and you’re faced with a choice – build your own or go with a random pick. Personally, I prefer to pick my own players but if you’re in a rush you can always take what’s offered to you and amend it later on.

To build your initial squad, you need to pick two players from each position. But before you dive in, it’s useful to understand a little bit about how the game works…

On the surface, the concept is straightforward. You build a squad and submit a lineup of 5 Picks for each round of the World Cup. The 5 Picks are made up of:

• Goalkeeper
• Defender
• Midfielder
• Forward
• Flex (any position)

You’ll be picking within a salary cap (just like in any other fantasy game) so you can’t deploy all the top players at the same time.

Players score points based on their real-life performances (obvious actions like goals and assists but also their wider contribution in the match). You can pick a captain who will scores you 1.5x points (so think about a big hitter for that). Score more points than other people to climb the leaderboards. Simple enough!

But there’s an important strategic layer that isn’t immediately obvious from the onboarding. There is a dynamic player market in the game and prices move as other managers buy and sell – this means you’re not just thinking about the players that will score well in the next match, you’re also thinking about which players will be desirable in future rounds.

A player who starts brightly may suddenly become one of the most popular assets in the game. If you’ve already got them, you’re in a much stronger position.

Or a player from a big nation might sit on the bench for the first two games before coming on in the final match to take them through to the next stage. If you don’t already have that player, you may find yourself priced out by then.

So the aim is to build a group of players that gives you options as the tournament develops, not just the best players for the first week.

Doing well in the group stage is going to be particularly important though. Everyone starts in the same Picks division initially but then this splits after the groups and only the best managers will join the top divisions, where the highest prizes can be found.

A few other things worth noting:

• You can lineup a maximum of two players from the same team in your Picks lineup – so consider that when building your squad.
• You need a minimum of 100 shares in a player for them to be fully eligible in Picks (less shares means they count as a ‘loan’ which carries a penalty).
• Picks has ‘rolling locks’ so you can change your lineup as much as you like until your player actually steps foot on the pitch. This means DNPs shouldn’t be a factor and you can start playing whenever you want – don’t worry if you miss the first games.
• You can join a maximum of 10 leagues – worth doing as some will have additional prizes.

And really importantly – as well as your Picks lineup, Sport.Fun gives out Gold rewards for the five best players in each position each tournament (best three for goalkeepers) – so your unused squad players can help you build a war chest for future rounds. These rewards are split between all the owners of the player, so if you’re holding a relatively obscure player who makes it onto the podium, you’ll get a bigger payout than for holding one of the popular choices – so think about your underdogs and differentials.

Fancy an extra 200 Gold?

One other thing worth doing before is completing the two onboarding tasks:

• Join a league
• Enable notifications

Doing both increases your starting budget from 2,800 Gold to 3,000 Gold. That might not sound like much, but it’s enough to improve a player, add depth to your squad or give yourself more flexibility later in the tournament. And it’s free!

My initial squad

My overall approach was to balance players who I think can score well immediately with players who could become more valuable as the tournament progresses.

Goalkeepers picked themselves – Pickford because you can always rely on England for clean sheets, Kobel because Switzerland have a relatively easy group so I think he’s undervalued.

In defence, Porro is a bit of a question mark for me as I’m not 100% sure he’ll play but I’ve got Kimmich as the alternative and both have great opening matches.

Bruno is my luxury pick in midfield – he’s expensive but I know he can rack up the points in this game so is a good captain choice. I expect Argentina to meet Spain in the final, and I expect both Enzo and Olmo to play key roles for their teams if this happens.

Upfront, Haaland is a no-brainer for the first game against Iraq. Oyarzabal is a budget pick but I think he’s massively underpriced in the game – on penalities for the team expected to score highest in the group stage.

And yeah, that’s 9 players because I claimed my extra 200 Gold – and I think it looks pretty solid… although time will tell!

Final thoughts

What I like most about the way Sport.Fun have approached the World Cup is that this game doesn’t require too much heavy-lifting – there isn’t too much to learn, no chips to play. It gives everyone a chance to experience the game without spending a penny, and you can compete for prizes along the way.

I’ve been enjoying the Pro version of Sport.Fun for a while now and I’ve been absolutely smashing it at Picks. I’m currently sitting at 2nd in the Elite division – the top division in the game – which maybe my proudest achievement yet!

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. And if you are going to give it a go, why not join my World Cup league: https://app.sport.fun/football/join?invite_code=L71KPI5&utm_source=league-invite (or code: L71KPI5) for some extra competition!

Good luck and have FUN.