One of the last things you do after picking your World Cup fantasy team is, you select your captain. You look at your list of players and pick the one that you think would have the highest point in a single matchday and then you captain him.
However in the World Cup fantasy game, it’s a little different. You’re allowed to pick a captain and then you can change your pick to another player who plays on a different day if your first pick doesn’t do as well as you want.
Basically, you get as many shots at it, which is great and makes the game a lot more fun. In this article, we’d be looking at some of the best matchday one captain picks for your World Cup fantasy team.
We’d be recommending our picks based on each day. Which means we’d have a captain pick for Sunday, Monday all the way down to the last day of matchday one.
2022 World cup fixture list – matchday one
Before we go in and start recommending our matchday one captains, we first want to take a look at the fixture list; this would help us identify what games and players we want to target.
We all know that the first match of the World Cup is: Qatar vs Ecuador. From a fantasy standpoint that’s not a game where we’d be looking to pick our matchday one captain from.
Rather, we’d be looking to pick our captains from the next day downwards which is when the tournament would be starting for most fantasy mangers.
The best World Cup fantasy captains
1. Harry Kane
From these round of fixtures, you ideally want to target two teams and that would be England and Netherlands. And if we’re being honest you don’t want to waste your captaincy on a player that you’re not sure would do very well in a particular matchday.
Netherlands vs Senegal is going to be a very tough game and so we won’t be recommending players from that game. Rather, we’d be looking at England vs Iran.
That match is a really good one and it’d be the perfect time to give Harry Kane the armband. So, if you have Kane in your team, then he’s one you should captain. If you don’t, then look to captain someone who plays on another day.
If you’re looking to captain someone from the Netherlands, then Dumfries or Bergwijn would be really good options. Dumfries would be good because he’s one that can give you clean sheet points and he could also get a form of attacking return.
2. Mbappe
The next day, you have a lot of really good captain options. As we can see Argentina, France and Denmark all have pretty good fixtures.
Which means you can either captain Messi, Mbappe, Di Maria, Julian Alvarez, Eriksen or Lewandowski. All six players are good options and would make great matchday one captains.
However, we do think that Mbappe or Lewandowski would be better used as 12th man picks this matchday and if you had to choose a player to captain from this day, then Leo Messi is the ideal captain pick.
If you want to know why we think matchday one is the ideal time to play the 12th man booster, then check out our: 2022 World cup fantasy tips: the best time to use your chips & boosters.
Well, if you aren’t looking to play your 12th man booster this matchday, then Mbappe would be a better captain pick than Leo Messi.
The reason why we place Mbappe ahead is because of how Messi plays. We all know Messi is a team player and many atimes you’d see him drop into midfield and look to create chances for his team.
This means he’d be playing further away from goal and that could be a bit of a bad thing, if you look at it from a fantasy point of view.
While Mbappe on the other hand, would be looking to get himself on the score sheet and so we do think because of their style of play, Mbappe is the better choice.
You can find out some other 12th man player picks in this article: The best 12th man players for matchday one-World Cup fantasy.
3. Kevin De Brunye
The 23rd of November which is Wednesday, is another great day to choose your World Cup fantasy captain from. Again there are a lot of really good players to pick from.
You have the likes of Modric, Sane, De Brunye and Batshuayi to pick from this matchday. Just like the way we’ve been doing in previous matchdays, we have to select a player that we think would do really well.
And for us that player is, Kevin De Brunye. De Brunye has been in really good form in the premier league and out of all the options we’ve got, he’s the most in-form player.
He is Belgium’s talisman and he’s the one who is looking to make things happen for his country and so we’d be more than confident to give him the captain’s armband.
If he however, doesn’t live up to expectations, we only have one player to pass the captaincy onto and that’d be…
4. Neymar
Our final matchday one captain would be Neymar of Brazil. This one however, is not as straightforward as it may seem because Ronaldo and Bruno Fernandes of Portugal are also pretty good options and would make good captains as well.
But we personally would be backing Neymar and so he’d be our ideal captain if he had to pick a player from the 24th of November.
The Brazillian man has been in really good form in the league this season, scoring 11 goals and getting himself 9 assists in Ligue 1 so far.
He’s the most in-form out of the other options we’ve got for this day and so he’s going to be one that we’d be captaining.
Well, there are some things we aren’t absolutely sure of, and that’s how many times we’re allowed to switch our captains. Some say you can switch just once after you’ve picked your captain and others say you can switch as many times(you can switch before every single game).
We aren’t sure which one to go with. However, if we’re allowed to change captains before the start of every game, then the best strategy would be to captain a player that plays first and if that player doesn’t perform, you then switch to the one who plays next.
But if you are allowed to change captain just once, then you want to give careful thoughts to whom your original captain is and try not to captain a player like Neymar from the start, because you won’t be able to switch your captain if he doesn’t perform well.
If we had to pick one player as our starting captain, then it’d be Harry Kane, if you don’t have him then one of Mbbape or Messi would be great picks.
If they don’t perform, then you can go for the other players we’ve listed. Always try to select players that play early.
You can check out some of our matchday one team drafts to see how we’re looking to line up: 2022 World cup fantasy matchday one team & player picks: the best MD1 wildcard team.
We’ve also now gone on to create a complete matchday one guide, in that article we put together all the helpful world cup content we’ve done so far this week.
The article would help you identify the best player picks, teams, captains and many other things. Do check it out: World cup fantasy MD1 guide: tips, player picks, rules, teams, boosters and captain picks.
You can check out our blog for more World Cup fantasy tips.
Redeyedrae, is an FPL content writer with years of experience in playing and writing about FPL. He has written for major FPL blogs like ALLABOUTFPL, Fantasytipsters, FF Titans, and nevermanagealone. With his deep knowledge of the game, he has become a trusted source for FPL fans worldwide. His content is well-researched and always up-to-date. He’s passionate about helping FPL managers gain an edge in their leagues by sharing insights and analysis about everything fantasy football on raensports.
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