Double-click on any word and see its definition from Cambridge Dictionaries Online

Have you ever been watching a game and thought - ‘Why on earth did they sign him, he’s useless!’ or maybe, ‘They should never have sold that striker’ or even, ‘They need a more creative midfielder’? These are thoughts we all have – usually about our favourite teams – but the truth is that Have you ever been watching a game and thought - ‘Why on earth did they sign him, he’s useless!’ or maybe, ‘They should never have sold that striker’ or even, ‘They need a more creative midfielder’? These are thoughts we all have – usually about our favourite teams – but the truth is that only one man gets to make those decisions: the manager. Or is it? In the real world, maybe so, but in the world of Fantasy Football, we can all be the manager of a top football team – and find out how hard it really is!

Fantasy Football was dreamed up over fifteen years ago in Britain, for a radio programme in which celebrities from the football and entertainment worlds were invited to select a team  of players from the Premiership – or Division One – as it was then called. Every week, the guests would come into the studio and find out how their players had performed that week, in a league table of the fantasy teams. It was so popular that it quickly became a TV show in England, and soon it was not just celebrities who were involved; everyone could play – with competitions run in newspapers and on the internet. Today there are hundreds of different Fantasy Football competitions, and the concept has been applied to a whole range of other sports – Fantasy Cricket, Basketball, Formula One, and American Football to name a few.

The idea behind the game is simple. Although different games have different rules, the basic idea is to choose your own team from all the players available in the league. So you would pick two strikers, four midfielders, four defenders and a goalkeeper, for example. Often, limits are placed on the number of players you can have from each real football team, or on the amount of money you can spend to build your team – this is to stop everybody choosing the entire Chelsea or Arsenal team! Your team scores points based on how all your players perform in the real world every weekend. For instance, if you have Wayne Rooney and Thierry Henry as your strikers and they both score hat-tricks, you’ll get a whole load of points. Similarly, defenders and goalkeepers can earn points by keeping a clean sheet. Every week your fantasy team’s points are added up and you will move up or down the fantasy league made up of other fantasy teams. In most games you can buy and sell players throughout the season to improve your team’s chances of success.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the game is the fact that you can play against your friends and workmates or schoolmates to see who the best manager is. On the Internet, you can also play against teams from different countries. Here at the British Council, we’ve organised a Fantasy Football league of teams chosen by Thai schools and English schools – check out www.virtualaccesscentre.com/fantasyfootball to see who’s leading the table. Our Euro 2004 fantasy football game was won by Satthasamut school in Bangkok. They were presented with a trophy by Alan Shearer and received a signed Leeds United shirt.

In other fantasy football games there are some huge prizes to be won, and literally thousands of websites dedicated to the games and to talking about them – obviously some people take this very seriously! One on-line game, for example, offers a prize of £50,000 to the best manager over the season – that’s over three and a half million baht! Still, for most of us the best we can hope for is to finish above our friends and colleagues at the end of the season!

However, the drawbacks for true football fans who manage a fantasy football team are obvious. Can you imagine yourself cheering for the opposing team against your favourite team when watching the Premiership on a Saturday night. Surely not! How could this happen? Easily enough when the opposing team’s star player is also in your fantasy football team! You may think you shouldn’t have those players in your team, but I’m sure even Alex Ferguson would sign Henry if he had the chance! So where do your loyalties lie? With your real world favourites, or with your own creation – the fantasy eleven?  For me, I think I’m just about managing to stay faithful to my real team, but it’s been close a few times! So a word of warning – be careful with Fantasy Football, it can change your life!

Activities

If you would like to practise your English, try the following activites:

Decide if statements about the text are True or False

Match words and phrases from the text to their definitions

Your turn

What do you think of this article and the things it mentions? Send us your opinion.