UCL Fantasy Matchday 1: Tips, Captain, Picks & Team

The fantasy Champions League returns for the 2025/26 season. We have a lot of talk about regarding the first matchday of UCL Fantasy.

Feel free to JOIN our UCL fantasy league using our league code RCHvrq . We are looking forward to competing with you!

Let’s dive into our UCL Fantasy Matchday 1 Tips with players to pick, odds, captain, and team selection.

1. Fantasy Champions League Tips for Success

As in the previous season, I decided to put together a few tips for UCL Fantasy success, so we will start with them. Tips are basic, but I hope they are helpful. Anyway, you can read my UCL Fantasy tips for success here.

2. Matchday 1 Tips and Strategy

a) Let’s recap some basics

• Just as last season, there would be 2 matchdays with unlimited transfers – one after the group stage and one after the knockout round playoffs.
• Scoring is the same as last season (points for balls recovered, goals outside of the box, MOTM awards remain as they were in the previous season)
• 2 free transfers between matchdays as usual in the group stage and between playoffs
• 3 + 5 free transfers during knockouts
• 2 chips: wildcard + limitless wildcard
• deadline on the first kickoff
• In the league phase, there are an astonishing 18 matches each matchday (in comparison to 10 in the Premier League and 16 in old UCL format), which means fantasy points will be flying around. There is just no way you can catch them all – you can have only 15 players in your squad, and there will be many indifferent options to build up your team. You must accept that you will miss some points, but that is okay when your players get you points as well.

b) You must pay BIG attention to which day each team plays.

• In the old format, it was strict on which teams played on Day 1 and Day 2 of each matchday. From the 2024/25 season, it is different. For example, there are teams that have 6 fixtures on Day 1, and only 2 fixtures on Day 2, others have 4 fixtures on Day 1, 4 on Day 2, others 3 on Day 1, 5 on Day 2, and so on… basically a complete chaos
• For the same reasons, finding captaincy rotations and goalkeeper rotations (that play each matchday on a different day) is difficult

Finding rotating fixtures

c) Do not overlook “weak” teams

• Each team has opponents from each of the 4 pots, which means that even weaker teams (pot 4) will have 2 easy fixtures against two pot 4 opponents. This is an opportunity to pick cheaper players from weaker teams in a fixture where they can actually score points.

d) Plan your captaincy changes into the future matchdays

• Matchday 1 will have 3 playing days (so we can change the captain 2 times)
• Matchday 2 – 7 will have 2 playing days, as usual (so 1 captaincy change)
• Matchday 8 will have just 1 playing day, all matches will start at the same time, so we will know all lineups of MD8 before the deadline. However, there will be 0 captaincy changes and 0 substitutions available for this matchday because of that

e) Usual team management tips you should not forget

• bench players who play on Thursday, so you can sub them in for players who blanked
• try to have goalkeepers who play on different days so you can use subs if your first goalkeeper does not keep a clean sheet
• captain player who plays on Tuesday and if he blanks, change your captain on Wednesday to a player who is yet to play (and then if he balnks, change it to Thursday player)
• Do not forget to check the first lineups of first two matches before the deadline

f) Plan your chips strategies

• We will have unlimited transfers before playoffs and before R16, so no need to save wildcard for these matchdays
• In the last season, it was a good idea to use all chips in the group stage, and we think it is going to be the same for this season as well

Wildcard

• use it in the group stage, during the fixture swing
• or in MD8 when we will know all lineups before the deadline.
• Or in MD7 as it is played in January – after a big Christmas break,  so there could be injuries and new transfers so it could be difficult to deal with that with just 2  free transfers

Limitless Wildcard

• do not use it in MD8 where all fixtures are played at the same time so you cannot use substitutions or captaincy changes (because the power of the limitless is that you can have a bench full of 8-11 million players, which really increases the odds of having good matchdays thanks to the substitutions).
• Do not use it in playoffs where top teams will be missing – so many heavy hitters will be missing.
• Do not use it in the elimination rounds, as our budget increases by 5 million after R16, so the impact of limitless will be smaller, and whipping boys (weaker teams) will be missing in elimination rounds
• Use it in the group stage during MD where many top teams will play against whipping boys. Matchday 2 and Matchday 7 seems to be full of good fixtures of top teams against weaker ones.

Read more: Chip strategies for UCL Fantasy 2025/26

3. Fixtures to target in Fantasy Champions League MD1

Let’s use our Odds to probability calculator to find out which fixtures we should target in MD1 according to bookies odds.

Tuesday fixtures

• Benfica vs. Karabach: Benfica 81 % to win, 49 % to score 2.5+ goals
• Real Madrid vs. Marseille: Real Madrid 73 % to win, 48 % to score 2.5+ goals
• PSV Eindhoven vs. St. Gilloise: PSV 54 % to win, 30% to score 2.5+ goals

Wednesday fixtures

• Olympiacos vs. Pafos: Olympiacos 68 % to win, 31 % to score 2.5+ goals
• PSG vs. Atalanta: PSG 67 % to win, 42 % to score 2.5+ goals
• Liverpool vs. Atletico: Liverpool 61 % to win, 32 % to score 2.5+ goals

Thursday fixtures

• Sporting vs. Kairat: Sporting 89 % to win, 61 % to score 2.5+ goals
• Man. City vs. Napoli: Man. City 58 % to win, 30 % to score 2.5+ goals
• Frankfurt vs. Galatasaray: Frankfurt 47 % to win, 26 % to score 2.5+ goals

Find 2.5+ goals odds for all teams in our article: Champions League Over 2.5 Goals Odds.

5. UCL Fantasy Matchday 1 captain

Picking the right captain is an important part of fantasy Champions League success. Because we have matchday divided into three days, the best captain strategy is to select three players with a very high expected output, each one playing on a different day.

When your Tuesday captain scores, great, you leave the armband on him. If he blanks, you move it to the one who is yet to play on Wednesday. And if he blanks as well, you change your captain to a Thursday player.

We always select a reliable player who has an easy fixture as our captain.

Standout captaincy fixtures for Tuesday:

• Real Madrid vs. Marseille
• Benfica vs. Karabakh 

Mbappe is our number-one captain pick for Tuesday. Other captaincy options for Tuesday: Vinicius, Pavlidis

Standout Captaincy fixtures for Wednesday:

• PSG vs. Atalanata
• Liverpool vs. Atletico

Salah is our backup captain for Wednesday if our Tuesday captain blanks. Other options: Hakimi, Mendes

Standout Captaincy fixtures for Thursday:

• Sporting vs. Kairat
• Man City vs. Napoli

Pedro Goncalves is our last captaincy pick if both of our captains from previous days fail to deliver. Other options: Haaland, Raphinha

6. Best UCL fantasy picks for recovering balls

Awarding a point for every three balls recovered is a new feature that UCL Fantasy added to the game before the start of the 2019/20 season. And it completely changed our view on center-backs and defensive midfielders – players who are recovering balls most often.

There are few players in the game, who are constantly recovering more than 6 balls per game. That is an extra two points. And these players cost only around 4.5-6.5 million.

Extra two points per game, that is 12 extra points per all six games in the group stage. 12 points are equivalent to a midfielder scoring 2 goals + 2 points. And which midfielder for 4.5 – 5.5 million will score with absolute certainty two goals in the group stage?

That cannot be easily predicted. Maybe none.

Predicting which players will be recovering balls very often is a much easier task when we have multiple seasons of data available.

You just pick some of these players, play them every week, and do not worry about them. At the end of the matchday, they will likely score 4-5 points (appearance points, potential clean sheet points + balls recovered points) for you without an attacking return.

Some players good at balls recovered from previous seasons:

2024/25

• Hien – 9.13 balls recovered per game in 2024/25
• Singo – 8.83
• Alexsandro – 8.6
• Florentino – 8.11
• Baidoo – 7.86
• Upamecano – 7.45
• Spajić – 7.43
• Rouault – 7.43
• Chardonnet – 7.33
• Pacho – 7.29
• Kashia – 7.25
• De Roon – 7.1
• Otamendi – 7.08
• Vanderson – 7
• Marquinhos – 6.81

Data source: UEFA Player Stats

Read more: Best players at balls recovered from last 5 seasons

7. The MOTM awards

There was a new scoring feature introduced a few seasons ago in Champions League Fantasy. As you know, the player that gets awarded the MOTM (man of the match) will score 3 fantasy points.

The question is, which players have the highest potential of getting these awards?

This feature boosts the points potential of talismans – the key players of teams, like Mbappe, De Bruyne, Wirtz, Palmer, Vinicius, or Griezmann.

8. Bookies odds

As usual, we looked at what bookies think about the Matchday 1 of UCL Fantasy.

We checked the clean sheet odds to determine which teams are most likely to keep a clean sheet in the MD1 and goalscoring odds to determine which players are most likely to score a goal in MD1.

Clean sheet odds for MD1

Bookies favor Sporting, Benfica, and Olympiacos to do well defensively in MD1. You can find the full Champions League clean sheet odds table here.

Goalscoring odds for MD1

Mbappe and Suarez leads the any time goalscorer odds for the first matchday… Find more players in our article: Champions League Goalscoring Odds.

9. UCL Fantasy Matchday 1: Team Selection

Now, it is time to show our scout picks, our squad for matchday 1. Just as we mentioned in the captaincy section, we have three armband contenders in our squad, one for Tuesday, one for Wednesday and the other for Thursday.

The same applies to our bench. All bench players play on Thursday, so we will substitute them in for players who will have blanked on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The first Matchday of the new Fantasy Champions League campaign starts in just a few days. Make an informed decision about your UCL Fantasy team and prepare it for success.

Good luck!

10. Fantasy Champions League Tips

Find more tips, strategies, and picks for UCL Fantasy in these articles:

• Beginner? Read our guide: How to play UCL Fantasy?
• Confused about the rules? Read the Official guidelines of the game
• Do you want to get better at UCL Fantasy? Read our article about Essential Tips for UCL Fantasy Success.