What is fantasy football?

Fantasy football is a game where you build your own imaginary team out of real players. The matches you watch at the weekend decide your team's score: when a player in your squad scores, sets up a goal or keeps a clean sheet, you earn points too. In short, it adds a light layer of strategy on top of watching football.

The idea is simpler than it first looks. Here are the pieces, one by one.

Squad and budget

Every player has a price, and you have a fixed budget. A star striker eats up a big chunk of it, while an in-form but cheaper midfielder gives you room to balance the books. That is the heart of the game: how you spread the money is the first of many decisions you will make across the season.

When you build your squad you fill quotas for goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and forwards. Most games also cap how many players you can take from a single team, which stops you from stacking one club.

Captain

Each week you pick one player as your captain, and their points are doubled. Getting the right name on the armband in the right week can make a real difference in the standings. If your captain does not play, the vice-captain steps in.

Transfers

You do not ride the whole season on one squad. You move on injured players, ones who lose form, or ones whose fixtures get harder, and bring in replacements. Most games give you a set number of free transfers each week; extras cost you points. When to make a move, who to hold and who to sell, is one of the best parts of the game.

The gameweek loop

Fantasy football is split into weeks. Each week has a deadline: before the matches kick off, you lock in your squad, your captain and your transfers. Once the deadline passes the matches are played, points are added up from how the players perform, and at the end of the week you see your team's total. Then it all starts again for the next week.

How scoring works

The general logic is this: players earn points for good things on the pitch and lose them for bad ones. Goals and assists score; goalkeepers and defenders are rewarded for clean sheets; yellow and red cards cost points. Each position scores a little differently, because a goalkeeper's job is not a forward's job.

You can find the full point table, and the difference between provisional and final points, on the scoring rules page.

How to start

The good news: you do not need to be a stats expert to begin. Build a squad, spread your budget, pick a captain and save your team before the first deadline. After that it is just small decisions each week. It gets much more fun once you set up a mini-league with friends, since the real rivalry is usually less about the global table and more about the people you know.

On Oracle's 11 you can build a free squad for the Süper Lig and the Champions League, and play in English or Turkish.