I recently discovered Fantasy Soccer. I will admit that for the past year I have made fun of Fantasy NFL Football. I erroneously thought it was some kind of strange imaginary role-playing game. I am not a big fan of role-playing games despite the fact that they are apparently very popular with all age groups and types of people.

However, Fantasy Soccer kept popping up on my radar and I finally gave in and tried it. First, Pierson and I made some MLS teams and Pierson and I really enjoyed how those went. Next I wanted to ‘manage’ some of my favorite players from the World Cup and that required me to search for English-speaking leagues from other countries. For some of the leagues, I use foreign-speaking (native tongue) websites and work to translate it myself. And I am having a great time!

If you are not familiar with Fantasy Soccer, let me explain it briefly. (I imagine that other fantasy sports work about the same way.) The website or host of the game gives you, the manager, a budget to ‘buy’ your players. Of course, the best players command the highest price so you cannot simply roster a team of all-stars. Each week, the players’ performance based on their statistics is given a certain number of points and those points accumulate as a kind of cumulative manager\team score.

Each Fantasy Soccer site and game awards different levels of points for different statistics and some of them even award negative points. I recently had that happen and it is a really unfortunate thing to discover that one of your best players has received a (-5) for the week.

I play free Fantasy Soccer but there are some pay for play websites. I have found that all of them have prizes for the top managers. The pay for play sites have cash prizes in the thousands of dollars but the free websites have things like tickets, hotel rooms, gift cards and electronics like plasma televisions, so even the free websites reward your hard work and success.

I began my Fantasy Soccer too far into the league seasons to actually win anything but I really enjoy the education and excitement. I watch games like EPL Wigan games with a high level of anticipation and excitement. I look for those new players that play only a few minutes, but well, as a way to increase my team budget and value.

I am having a great time but I have noticed that there are virtually no women playing. I commented on that to Peter and he said that sometimes I am just like a guy. I think it is possible that some ‘managers’ are women but are not stating they are women, but I also think women are sometimes afraid to do ‘guy’ things and I think that is ridiculous.

I am doing very well in all of my leagues, and in some of them my teams are #1,2,3, and 4. I play multiple teams in all of the leagues. Am I the only soccer mom that plays Fantasy Soccer, or are there others out there? If there aren't then maybe Peter is right and I have a bit of guy in me.