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For a few months, Sorare have been teasing the reveal of their World Cup plans. On the 10th November 2022, this was announced and it was received with great support from Fantasy Football Fans from all over the globe. This new Free to Play game is released the same week that Lionel Messi was unveiled as Brand Ambassador. What a week! Take a look at his lovely National Series card, front and centre.
What is the Sorare: Global Cup 2022 game?
The Sorare Global Cup game is a free to play game mode, that Sorare have introduced to be played during the World Cup. This is the first ever World Cup based around NFT’s, and Sorare are crushing it with this new game mode. TL;DR, the basics of the Global Cup is:
- Completely Free to Play. Instead of paying thousands for a Lionel Messi card, you can guarantee one for free.
- Collect officially licensed digital NFT cards, featuring your favorite club and national team players
- Build lineups from the cards in your collection and enter them into The Global Cup 2022
- Score points based on the real-life performance of the players in your lineup
- Your player cards earn XP when you compete in a tournament with them, making them more powerful
- Compete for rewards with other fans around the world, and with friends in private leagues
The Sorare Global Cup is a completely level playing field. Managers that have purchased their cards over the last few years have no advantage, as the Global Cup is played exclusively with Common Cards. These cannot be sold or traded with other managers.
There are some deisign differences within the Common Cards, but the utility is the same across the board. It’s a completely level playing field, and the best managers will win.
Global Cup 2022 Prizes: Once in a Lifetime Rewards
The first thing that you’re going to want to see is the rewards, so let’s start with the exciting part first. When I first read these, it had me on the edge of my chair. Let me explain why.
There are rewards on offer for various things. Private Leagues, Beat Sorare and Overall Leaderboards. There are some pretty impressive figures on offer here, such as 23 ETH being offered by Sorare, for the top managers.
However, the one that I am most interested in is the ‘Zidane Experience’. This is a very rare reward, but the top 5 managers will receive a pair of tickets for a meetup with Zinedine Zidane. That’s right, a fantasy football tournament will lead you to meeting Zizou, not only a world-class footballer, but an elite manager.
You won’t only meet the man, but you’ll be playing in a 5-a-side football match at the Z5 facility, in Marseille. All expenses are covered, and you can even bring a guest of your choice.
If you narrowly miss out on the top 5 places, you’ll receive a pretty good consolation prize. 6-10th place will receive 2 VIP tickets each, for a Football Match of their choice. 17 ETH is also split across the Top 10 managers on the platform.
The rest of the managers that make up the Top 100, will win a random signed Football jersey.
There are weekly rewards also on offer, such as 100,000 National Series Cards from competing players in the World Cup. To bolster this, there are also 5,000 Limited Cards & 6 Ethereum worth of prizes for the Top 3 Managers. All participants in this tournament will receive Common National Series Cards, so everybody will get at least one free NFT!
For the first time ever, Sorare are opening up Private Leagues. In these, participating managers will be drawn to win more prizes, such as random jerseys.
To put the cherry, on the icing of the cake, 10 Managers that beat ‘Sorare HQ’s matchday score will be entered into a draw to win more signed kits and Sorare branded gear.
Building Your Squad for the Global Cup
Your first task is to choose 8 players that you will be using throughout the Global Cup. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be as easy as picking the 8 best players. There’s a ‘transfer budget’ as such, where you can’t exceed 100 points.
You will select two players for each position; Goalkeeper, Defender, Midfielder and Forward. You cannot use more than two players from the same National Team either.
Sorare have pre-calculated the points value for each player. This has been pre-determined using their typical performance in real-life and the chances of that National Team progressing to the knockout stages.
You won’t be using all 8 players for every Matchday though! Managers have to select Five players, from their squad. This adds to the strategy, do you build an all rounded team, or 5 powerhouse players?
Composing your lineup for the Global Cup
The lineup rules are very similar to the typical S05 game mode, with 5 players required. Goalkeeper, Defender, Midfielder and Forward. Your extra slot can be any outfield player.
Choosing the extra player will bring the same tactical battle. Do you chance a Striker, or opt for a Solid Midfielder that should score a good base score?
Once you have completed your 5 man lineup, your next tactical challenge is to select a Captain. It’s a no brainer for us, Mbappe.
Can I buy more players for my team?
There’s going to be a lot of managers that are very eager to increase their gallery size, giving them the best chances at having a kick about with Zidane! Thankfully, to keep things interesting, Sorare have no auctions available for these players. It’s a completely Free to Play (F2P) game mode. However, there will be more cards that you can add, during the following dates:
- Before the Round of 16: Nov 29 — Dec 3
- Before the Quarter finals: Dec 3 — Dec 9
- Before the Semi finals: Dec 9 — Dec 13
Matchday Calendar
Managers will be able to add Four new player cards in addition to the chosen eight, on the above dates. Other than that, you can only strengthen your squad by winning the Common Cards in the opening matchdays.
The matchdays are in the graphic above, but if you can’t see that:
| Matchday: | Running Dates: |
| Matchday 1 | November 20th to November 24th |
| Matchday 2 | November 25th to November 28th |
| Matchday 3 | November 29th to December 2nd |
| Matchday 4 | December 3rd to December 6th |
| Matchday 5 | December 9th to December 12th |
| Matchday 6 | December 13th to December 15th |
| Matchday 7 | December 17th to December 19th |
Tips for Building Your Squad
When building your initial squad against that 100 point budget, you’re going to be torn most likely between two strategies. Do you pick Five solid players and have them as a ‘set and forget’ type of team? Or do you pick eight well rounded players, giving you the flexibility of having multiple options? This is the fun of the game, and nobody knows which strategy will pay… quite literally.
What the past has taught us, is that there’s always a bunch of lesser known players that have a stand-out competition. I think we could see a low budget player winning this competition for a manager.
You’re only allowed two players from each country, so if you’re a stacker then you’ll need to find a new strategy. This adds a new dimension to the game mode, because stacking the best team can makes things a little bit easier.
New Card Type: National Series Cards
I’m not sure who designs the cards at Sorare, but they manage to smash it out of the park every single time. I really like the Croatian colour match, it’s probably one of my favourites from the whole set. Germany’s design is also elegant. Which is your favourite?
What makes the National Series Cards iconic is the fact that they are exclusive to the Global Cup. They will never be auctioned, nor will they ever be re-issued in any other format. It’s going to make things really good for collectors, because the only way to collect is to win, or buy them from other managers on the market.
The cards are collectible only, with no utility in any other game mode at present.
Limited National Series Cards
If you’re lucky enough to be on the leaderboards as a top manager, you will win Limited National Series Cards. The top 40,000 managers in the Overall Leaderboard will each win a Limited Card. These are numbered to /1000, and they can be used in the S05 Sorare game modes.
What happens to the cards after the Global Cup?
When the World Cup ends, all of your Common Cards that are selected will be convered into standard Common Cards which can be used to play Sorare S05. This means that you can use these to enter Common Tournaments in the normal game mode.
The National Series commons will be replaced with their Club Equivalent, so a Pedri Common Card will be converted to a Pedri Barcelona Common Card.
If your National Series player doesn’t have a club card, he will be replaced with a similar scoring player in the similar position.
Global Cup Draft Ideas
I thought that it would be useful to provide some team building strategy at the end of this Sorare Global Cup Tutorial. This will help you to define your own strategy, what works for you.
The three strategies I am going to cover are:
- Picking Players that are ‘expected’ to make it to the latter stages
- Going all out and having great players, with filler players that are the cheapest
- Picking a well balanced team, without any stand out performer.
In the first instance below, we’ve played it pretty safe. Choosing players from England, Germany, France & Argentina there should be a team that makes it all the way. However, the flip side of this is that they can’t all make it to the final… so there would be missed points from somebody. In addition to this, there’s no real star in that side, so it wouldn’t be the most entertaining.
The next strategy is to fill your lineup with the best performers. Whilst this has great potential, it’s going to be a highly popular tactic and ultimately, your filler players will be the ones that make all the difference!
I’ve gone with a Croatian stack as my filler, because they’re a decent side and they don’t have a single match where they are expected to get smashed. Belgium are in their group, but that will be a close match.
The final option is to choose an all-rounded team, which I have done so below. It looks alright on paper, but it’s definitely my least favourite of the three.
Final Thoughts
This is an absolutely fantastic tournament by Sorare, which will undoubtedly increase the popularity of the game. I’m also quite thankful that existing cards don’t exist, as this will act as a ‘reset’ and allow all managers a fair chance of winning.
What are you waiting for? Get into the game and choose your cards. Oh and best of luck, it could be you attempting a Rabona on Zinedine Zidane! Only available, in the Sorare Global Cup.
For more information, read this article.
