Scott Yoshonis and I (from the Soccer Fanatics Radio Show) are trying to figure what would b...and cons are.... Can someone enlighten me?
Each fantasy soccer league has its own pros and cons. In order of my preference: 1. Anywhere you can have a LIVE DRAFT with smaller divisions. For MLS, with only 10 teams, I envision 6-8 team divisions. 1.a. I'm looking forward to the DeadlyStrike MLS game. Specifically, we chose the 15 player option that limits the positions to fielding at most 1 GK, 4 Defenders, 5 Midfielders, or 3 Strikers. DeadlyStrike has lots of great features and a good system for drafts, trades, head-to-head matches, etc. It's only con was the option where you could play any 8 of 10 players on your team regardless of position. 1.b. FLMLS or its successor. It's big con was the delays in posting results. As it becomes more internet web based, the concept will improve. Also, not wild about some of the scoring, but that too is tweakable. 1.c. Any other MLS Fantasy Soccer game that allows you to create small divisions and we hold our own draft, discipline ourselves, hold our own internal competitions, and just use the site's features for scoring and player evaluations. 2. Of the regular, inherently non-draft leagues, I prefer MFLS. Features I like: The salary cap and transfer fees. (Of course everyone wants a higher cap, but it makes for good game dynamics.) The new bench size. (This overcomes my objections to the transfer restrictions.) Now, managing your transfers for the season is a major dynamic. This league only allows one team per manager. Six of us want to obtain an exemption to have a Private 6-team Draft League where those teams do not compete in MFLS' overall prize contests, and still have a regular team in the overall competition. 3. The new official MLS Fantasy Game being run by The Sporting News. Fatal flaw: Unlimited transfers to those willing to pay extra. I like TSN's more detailed way of scoring. Defenders have higher relative worth to reality as opposed to some of the games where defenders do not score enough fantasy points. This could be a great game under two of my criteria: a) Have a NO EXTRA TRANSFER league where all the teams agree to not buy extra transfers during the season and/or b) A smaller division where the managers arrange to hold a private draft and agree to competition rules over and above those at the site to where no team has the same players. One other major criticism I have of TSN is concern over their reliability to stay the course. They had a similar game for EPL soccer and quit halfway through the season. 4. What makes most fantasy games fun is the joining of leagues/divisions with common interest. In addition, many enterprising managers have created 'internal' competitions outside the formal game site, just using the features of that game. Horzylam's Brew City FA League and special invitation competitions add a lot to the MFLS game. Horzylam also created the Manager's League using Yahoo's system where it's a combined score from two managers that go in head-to-head competition. Some of the former CYKI managers have create a division with internal competitions, with and without a draft, under fantasy.premierleague.com's fantasy soccer game. (Very Small Rocks is our draft division.) 5. My favorite site used to be the CYKI game. It has evolved into the fantasy.premierleague.com. Next to the detailed scoring of TSN's game, this site has many nice features. If they do an MLS version, count me in. 6. Yahoo's MLS Fantasy Game - It's weakness is the way you can totally change your team every week and it's slow updates of scores after the games are played. Still, it is accessible and is used by some leagues with internal competitions, so I still play it. Hal Manager of the Aviators
Personally, I'm not that interested in game with a draft though I can see how that would be enjoyable with a group of friends. I played the Yahoo! game two seasons ago and then MFLS last year. The silver lining to Yahoo! getting cancelled is that I tried out MFLS and found it far more enjoyable. I don't remember all the details of Yahoo! at this point, but it seems like MFLS uses more meaningful statistics (that it, the points a player earns matches up better with my own feeling of how a player played). Also, I like that you can participate in both a prediction league as well as fantasy team. I like the way that MFLS handles transfers--it rewards managers that look out several weeks in advance to maximize multi-game weeks while also taking strength of opposition and number of home games into consideration. Ill put in a plug for the weekly prediction league (WPL) here on BigSoccer (though I don't know if merely picking scores fits into your definition of fantasy or not...).
My apologies Correction to my previous post. Preston McMurray, not Horzylam, runs the Brew City FA League and competitions in MFLS. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Hal