I’ve been having fun on Sorare. But it is a different type of fun to what we may get on a game where we can easily own the global stars of world football like FI. 

I would liken my experience so far to “old school Football Manager”. When I was a kid, I used to take pride in starting FM from the equivalent of League Two, taking my lowly team all the way through the divisions until one day, Leyton Orient were European Champions.

Early on, you’d be signing pretty much pub team level players with massive weaknesses but a few major strengths and just working with what you had to claw your way up the leagues.

I would scoff at my “casual” friends who insisted on starting with Manchester United. That was easy mode as far as I was concerned.

And I think this is an appropriate mindset – because if you are playing this game for value and to win rather than collecting – you will just not be doing it with the big names. 

You will have to be scrapping for the dregs of world football to find relatively unknown players who are perfectly capable of matching pace with Mbappé and Haaland and yet come in at a fraction of the price.

And to enjoy Sorare right now from a competitive/value perspective as many people from FI tend to have, you’ll need to enjoy that aspect and embrace it.

I do.

It won’t quite give me the connection to the big match days that FI did. But I also actually enjoying scouring Leagues like the Belgian Jupiler Pro and the MLS for targets. (What does this say about me?)

Let’s start with a few thoughts on strategy that sprang to mind as I worked through some analysis.

Moneyball

If you haven’t seen the Brad Pitt 2011 film Moneyball, I’d recommend it just because it’s a good film. This was based on a true story around the Oakland Athletic baseball team, who wanted to compete on a limited budget.

Using statistical analysis, they built a successful team from an assortment of misfits and apparent losers – players who most professional coaches and scouts would reject for some perceived flaw such as “not looking right”. 

To translate this to Sorare, the way the scoring system is set up has zero respect for the importance of the game. So a player knocking in hatricks in the MLS or Russian Premier League is scored just the same as Mbappé or Kane. 

So there is a huge diminishing return from holding big name players in terms of raw scoring. A rare Mbappé may be north of €18k but players who can score equally well can be had for a fraction of this, 10% or less. 

So, to get value, we will want to regularly rotate through the best value lesser known players according to form and fixtures, and if I am lucky enough to land an Mbappé or other popular player from the prize pool – I’d likely be selling them immediately to one of the “collectors” who see long term value or just plain satisfaction in holding these cards. 

So, whilst the prices can seem alarming if you look for popular players, it is well worth being aware that competitive sides can be assembled for far, far less, certainly for low 4 figure sums rather than 5 figure sums. Even 3 figure sums might be possible if we really stretched.

And this is with Ethereum in a bull run (although that is slowing right now). 

It isn’t easy though, and what we may lack in cash we must make up for in strong analysis.

Fortunately, just like in FI, the general perception of which players are good or not seems poor, and most people’s research seems to extend to the average of recent scores, or to a basic reading of just historic goals and assists. So there is scope for a good analyst to exploit those gaps to find value.

Timing

Timing is everything when deciding on strategy. So if we are playing “moneyball” then before we decide which players to pick exactly, we need a good idea in mind of the area of the market we are targetting.

Just like in FI, there is a natural flow to the calendar that will change the trends at various times. Seasons starting and ending, or having winter breaks. All very familiar. But the difference is in Summer we’ll have some Leagues still in action, mainly the MLS, J League and Korean League. 

Other Leagues are winding down, and the Belgian Jupiler Pro League for example has just a few weeks left to run.

So there is a decision here, do you wait, hoping that Belgian league players drop further as the season ends and then pick them up? You’d be waiting all the way until the start of next season for your players to see action, but very likely to see a market shift back towards them when it comes.

Or do you target MLS players, who get their season started in less than a month?

Those who have read my strategies over the years will know that I tend to like working ahead of the trend. See the trend coming. Spot the best player. Buy them early whilst others are distracted by shorter term things. Sell them just when you see people on social media and chat groups talking about this “new trend” widely. 

So you might think I’d be drawn more towards the approach of picking up value in the Belgian League and waiting it out. But no.

On this platform, that is a long time to wait until the new season. And if I want to store money in crypto I’ll just put it in Bitcoin or Ethereum. 

I also want to play the game. Gain more experience and maintain my interest. Without active games, I may get bored and there is no surer way to lose control than to stop caring about what you hold.

So an MLS and J-League based strategy would suit me better. However, joining the game at this point – we are also way behind the pace here for my taste. The articles highlighting the “new” trend in MLS players etc are already well underway and hitting social media and chat groups. And if that’s true – you know a lot of the value is already gone. It’s simply too obvious a trend. 

This should have been done weeks ago. But we are where we are.

Fortunately, there are gaps to be exploited. Whilst the obvious big goal scorers and assisters from last season in the MLS have relatively high prices – there are still lesser known competitive players available cheaply. And a new season brings new faces who may well be next seasons top scorer but have no previous record from last season. These can fly under the radar.

So, locating that kind of value would seem to me to be the optimal play at this point. 

And I think we should be more ambitious than just “eth grinding”. We could go for a team that just meets this threshold score of 205 and 250 for a small amount of Eth. 

But it should be possible to create a team on a budget that gets over this fairly low bar and gives us a decent chance to card wins too. 

Our time, like money, is a resource. And if we want to really reward our time we are going to have to give ourselves a good chance at winning cards, and any threshold wins we pick up on the way I’d consider just a bonus.

Transfers and Youth

An alternative strategy would also be to care a lot less about winning the current tournaments, and instead, target players who may transfer to a big team later and become more desirable.

Again, a very familiar pursuit for us on this site. And you don’t even have to worry so much about a new scoring system as we aren’t trying to win.

So, ferreting out some future high scorers with a credible chance of a big Summer move and holding them until they can be sold for a substantial profit is attractive. 

But, this is likely something I look to do a little later, after I had settled on a competitive team to compete in tournaments with. I’ll cover this more in future posts, most likely.

Next, let’s pick out some practical examples of players we might go for if using a budget “moneyball” strategy.