The first slate is upon us for Euros. An afternoon kickoff for most, and it should be a great match to get us started. This is the first of several free articles over the course of the next month. While I won’t completely dive into the slate, I will touch up on important things to consider during lineup construction and hopefully contribute to someone taking the top prize. This article will be going over some simple things that many may already know, but will be important to go over a little bit.
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ITALY (-200) vs Turkey (+650)Â
Both Teams To Score: +135
Game Location: Rome, Italy
Lineup Construction
Showdown is fun for soccer, but very reliant on a couple things as is any soccer slate, but even more critical on slates like these. Getting the goalscorers (shocker) and clean sheets.
Gianluigi Donnaruma will be highly owned due to Italy’s CS odds and also aligns with the best correlation for shipping tournaments. The 5-1 build with one or two Italian defenders paired with their goalkeeper will be a fairly chalky build as the clean sheet points really add up in the end and if a scoreline as chalky as 2-0 hits, it likely fishes the winning build.Â
Turkey are a very respectable side and have attacking talent, an intriguing tournament play would be Buruk Yilmaz who’s price and match up will dissuade many, but a goal from him would hinder a potentially 40+% owned Donnarumma and put those lineups in the driver’s seat. Buruk Yilmaz though is only +390 to score and has less favorable odds than several of those below him making him strictly a tournament play and can not be paired with Donnarumma.Â
Many builds will likely contain two of Italy’s attacking studs. It is very unlikely that all three players of Domenico Berardi, Ciro Immobile, and Lorenzo Insigne will manage to be optimal together. In the event that the score-line ends 1-0, there is a chance that just one of the three would be optimal and hope the one in the captain spot is the goalscorer. However just know that a majority of the builds will have one of the studs at captain with one other in utility as the builds are dictating presumptuously followed by Donnarumma.
The ole set piece pairings is never a bad idea. Domenico Berardi and Lorenzo Insigne will be taking sets for Italy while Yusuf Yazici and Hakan Calhanoglu will take sets for Turkey. For tournaments, pairing these with low owned center back options like Girorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci for Italy and Caglar Soyuncu and Merih Demiral for Turkey is always on the table for large field tournaments if you need the salary, or want to combine target clean sheet points as well on the Italian side of things. These things aren’t that common, but do correlate, and any correlation is good for taking down tournaments.
Manuel Locatelli will be a popular option for Italy in the mid-tier price range and cheap enough to where people will fall on him. There’s not a ton of reasoning against him. Nico Barella has better odds to score but is also over 2K more expensive on DK. Leonardo Spinazzola tends to get forward and contribute to the attack far more often than Alessandro Florenzi which is reflected in price. Similar to Turkey with Zeki Celik getting forward more than Cengiz Umut Meras.
FANDUEL
FanDuel heavily weighs shots and goals more than DK. Where strikers are valued a bit more. Defenders are also scored entirely differently on FanDuel as well. Underdog CB’s are usually the most successful defenders to play as they are able to rack up clearances, blocked shots, and other various stats.Â
Guys like Soyuncu and Demiral will be popular for good reason. Going an Italian defender is not a bad idea if you see contribution to the attack or foresee a clean sheet. A popular build will likely be 4 Italian forwards / midfielders with a Turkey defender. FanDuel made pricing relatively soft and allows the three Italian studs to be in the same lineup. Having two could be primal, but on DK it’s so much harder to fit all three, while on FD it logically will be better in cash games to take all three without a doubt.Â
This likely means that a guy like Yilmaz and Calhanoglu will go more underowned than you’d think even without a goalkeeper position.
The lack of the goalkeeper position on FD for Showdown does give the slate a bit more flavor there. The chalk on DK is obvious, but on FD you can get creative by only playing two Italian studs and mixing it up a bit after that.
GOOD LUCK EVERYONE SEE YOU TOMORROW FOR 100K TOP PRIZE!