Welcome to the Football Masters Series, where whims become wins and guesses become successes.
That’s right. The excitement, the anticipation. Everyone more hopeful than a Tottenham Mbappe bid. But with a lot less cruel rejection.
First of all, a very warm welcome to everyone who has joined in the last few weeks. We ran a small test season last year, where we managed to dish out some trophies, iron out the game formats and ready ourselves for this, our first full season.
We think we’re all ready to go, fingers crossed. We’ve got the whole season calendar out, the season-long ranking system is set up. We’ll soon be announcing actual tangible prizes (not big ones, but still).
Most important of all though – the tournaments. We have not one, not three, but TWO live competitions open right this very moment. We’ll dig into both of those in a moment, after this plea:
Tell your friends (even your enemies) about us
There’s never been a better time – it’s the start of the season, everything to play for. Do you know anyone looking forward to the football again? Think they might fancy an extra bit of intrigue and competition every week? Let them know about us! Maybe you’ve got a fantasy football group, or an office sweepstake, or just a bored bunch of friends.
Either way, point them to the Football Masters Series (footballmastersseries.com, or masters.football) and they could be lining up against you before the weekend is over.
We’ve deliberately designed the game so you can pick it up anytime of the year, but it’d be great to have as many people at the starting line as possible. Not least so they can get involved in….
The Tournaments
I know… we don’t have a Champions League-style theme tune yet, but you can’t fault us for banners and logos. First up is a biggy – Freeze: Premier League. So big that we had to source an extra-special ‘slide everything into order’ entry form.
The game itself is simple – before the first Saturday kickoffs in two weeks, you have to guess how the Premier League will finish this season. So this tournament is big in three ways:
- It lasts all year – it’s the first one to open and the last one to finish before our Masters Series Final at the end of the season.
- It’s one of our major tournaments – so winning it gets you automatic entry into that glittering end-season finale.
- As a major tournament, it also gives you a whopping, maximum 40 ranking points towards being the World Number 1.
I’ve been telling people all summer that it’s basically too soon to enter this tournament. But now I’m not so sure. Everyone’s coming back from their pre-season breaks. The Community Shield is next weekend. Harry Kane is right in the midst of transfer confusion. That’s all the proof you need that the season is nearly upon us.
Not only that, if there’s a draw then the team who guessed quickest will win. You’d hate to get to the end of the season, then find that you were five minutes too late to win one of our majors, wouldn’t you? So it’s a balance – you can give it a little longer to see how the teams evolve, but I’m not sure I’d wait too long.
Euro Super League: Spanish Open
Meanwhile, the business of weekly free football predicting games is back upon us. We’re off to Spain for our first regular tournament of the new season – the Spanish Open.
The rules are simple – pick teams that you think will win at the weekend. You get whatever result they get over 90 minutes – so 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, as well as goal difference. You have five teams to choose – we’ve got almost the whole Premier League, some Spanish superteams, the German Community Shield – even Wrexham’s return to the, ahem, big time. Pick five winners and you’ll almost certainly be top of the table, sitting pretty in Madrid City.
We run the competition for three weeks (it’s a ‘Masters’ tournament – majors run for four), then whoever is top of the league is our champion, simple as that! An early chance to get off the board, a chance to snatch that World Number 1 ranking, in our very first competition of the very first season.
It’s exciting times – again, tell your friends, and get predicting – good luck, one and all!