Golden Ball, Blank Gameweeks

Tonight at MetLife, Rodri could complete the set: Euro 2024 Player of the Tournament, the 2024 Ballon d'Or, and, if Spain beat Argentina, the World Cup Golden Ball. Now look at what that CV has ever bought you in FPL: a £6.5m holding midfielder whose career-best season is 159 points, and that was a freak year of eight goals and ten assists he has never come close to repeating. The season after he won the Ballon d'Or, he gave FPL managers 74 league minutes. Football's most decorated midfielder has spent his entire career as a fantasy irrelevance, and even FPL's new defensive-contribution points only soften that verdict rather than overturn it. That is not a quirk. That is the trap.

We have run this experiment before. Enzo Fernández was named best young player at the 2022 World Cup; six weeks later Chelsea paid a British-record £106.8m for him. FPL's verdict was rather cooler: by the time the game's own account was celebrating him "reaching over 100 points this season", his price had sunk to £4.7m. The tournament set the transfer fee. It never set the FPL points, because a World Cup tells you how good a footballer is, and FPL has never once paid out for that. It pays for role, set pieces and minutes, at club level, week after week.

When a World Cup does carry signal, it is because the club role already agreed. Alexis Mac Allister flew home from Qatar a world champion and finished that season as Brighton's top scorer with ten league goals, penalties included. The medal and the FPL returns pointed the same way because he was playing advanced and on set pieces. Then Liverpool bought the world champion, moved him deeper, and the same player managed seven goals across 46 games in all competitions the following season. The medal never changed. The role did, and the output followed the role, both times.

Pricing day will land while tonight's montages are still warm, and Argentina's Premier League spine of Dibu Martínez, Romero, Lisandro Martínez, Enzo Fernández and Mac Allister will carry a champion's glow into every preview you read. Fine. Admire it. Then do this: build your draft entirely from last season's club evidence. Who plays advanced? Who is on penalties and corners? Who is nailed for 90 minutes? Let the World Cup break ties, never make the case. If a player's best argument for your squad is what he did in July in New Jersey, he does not make your GW1 fifteen.

That's the gap between tonight's final at MetLife and Arsenal v Coventry on 21 August. The Premier League pushed the 2026-27 kick-off back a full week to make room for it. It sounds generous. It isn't: allow the finalists three weeks off, and the deep-run players from Spain, Argentina and England will walk into pre-season with barely a fortnight of training before GW1. Every draft decision you make this summer sits downstream of that number.

While the world watches MetLife, two daily puzzles are live on FPL Guru. Who Played With? #37 opens with a teammate of Wesley Sneijder at Real Madrid, 2009. Six clues, one mystery man. And Career Path #36 starts somewhere familiar: Sporting CP, 2005. If you know your football history, that's already too much help.

Play both, keep the streak alive, and see if you can beat your mates to the answer at fplguru.com.