The free-to-play Amateur competitions on Sorare allow you to play with the biggest names in club football. There are 6 league specific competitions in total for the top 5 European leagues + MLS. As a player, you get to choose which cards you want for your team, so if you want Erling Haaland and Bruno Fernandes in your team you can have them. However, there are some limitations to make it a bit trickier such as only two players allowed from one team.

All the Amateur Competitions are highly competitive with 200 prizes available for anywhere between 120k and 160k entrants. So, to have any hope at a prize all 5 of your players in your line-up need to have a good game! With limits on how many cards you can swap per week, a poor draft can have you struggling for a competitive line-up on a weekly basis.

If you haven’t signed up to Sorare and fancy giving it a go, sign up via this referral link and earn a free limited card when you collect five cards via New Card Auctions.

The Draft Format

Before you can enter a line-up into an amateur competition you need to draft your squad of 8 players. You’ll be able to select players from any licensed team in that league – in some leagues that may mean a couple of teams are unavailable (such as Inter Milan in Serie A Amateur). There are a few rules of the draft to be aware of

• You must select two players from each position (GK, DEF, MID, FWD)
• Maximum of two players from any one team.
• Players are priced based on the L15 scoring average.
• Players who’s L15 is under 40 are priced at 40.
• The 8 players must fit within a 400 point budget.
• Any budget not spent is saved for future swaps.

In-Season Swaps

Once you’re drafted your team and got playing you have the option to swap players to keep your team competitive. When you choose to swap out a player you will be refunded the price you paid for them and can use any saved budget to replace them. There 2 free trades on offer every week, but you can purchase extra from the club shop.

One thing to bear in mind when you’re deciding to swap; players will lose any experience (and therefore card boost). If you swap that player back in that boost will not return with them!

How high are we aiming for?

The scores needed for success in the amateur competitions are pretty huge. I’ve looked at scored for the the five European leagues from February to April to get an idea of what we need for a reward and to win. I’ve excluded May as there are some teams will have less motivation in the final weeks, or may rotate to keep stars fit for Cup finals.

Over that period a score of 420.45 points on average was needed to finish in 200th place and bag a card. Whilst to win a competition a huge score of 475.60 points is needed on average. Even with us maxing the 50% captain score boost that still requires huge scores across the team. Realistically, a single score under 60 will kill any hope of a reward.

Draft Strategy

As I see it there are a couple of ways you can attack the amateur competitions. We’ll discuss both approaches and pros and cons of each. Wrapping up with an example of the approach I’ll be taking for this season. Firstly, though we’ll cover a couple of aspects of draft strategy that are worth considering for both approaches.

Budget Management

How you use your budget can go a long way to determine whether you will be successful in the Amateur Competitions. If you split the budget evenly across the 8 players, this comes to 50 points a player, not terrible by any means but not close to getting an elite option. Given only 5 players can be used each week, spreading your budget is probably counterproductive most of the time. Whilst some weeks the highest cost options won’t be the best plays depending on match-ups – they will have more positive match-ups than the cheaper options on worse teams.

By selecting minimum cost players (40 points each) for your three unused players, you have 280 points remaining for the 5 starters or 56 per player. With some clever budgeting, and knowing keepers generally cost less than that, you can get a couple of star players into your team. Additionally keeping your bench players to the minimum gives you extra flexibility when swapping players in and out. If you don’t spend the full 280 points on your starters, you’ll still have those points in the bank available for swaps during the season.

This isn’t to say you should pick any old player for your bench options. Picking players whose L15 average are artificially deflated can result in you having a strong bench that can be played in the right match-up. The types of players to look out for include;

• Things to look out for are players that are returning from long-term injury so have an L15 of 0.
• Players moving to the league from an uncovered league (again L15 of 0).
• Players moving to a stronger team so likely to see performances improve.

The Value of Stacking

Stacking is a common strategy in all Sorare competitions and refers to ‘stacking’ multiple players from the same team in a line-up. If we take players from 5 different teams, we’ll need to accurately predict how 5 games will go (we typically don’t want our players playing against each other). However, by stacking we can reduce that number and increase our chances. Similar to taking a treble bet rather than a 5-fold accumulator.

By doing this we increase the chances of multiple big scores in the same week and reduce the risk of a poor score. For example, if Erling Haaland scores a hat trick there a decent chance Kevin de Bruyne will have set up at least one of those goals.

In other competitions on Sorare it can be worth stacking the full 5 man line-up in strong match-ups. We can only stack 2 players from a team in the Amateur competitions but there is still a lot of value there, when we know a single below average score is likely to kill our chances of a reward.

Approach #1: Build for Each Game Week

The first approach involves making the most of your weekly swaps to compete as well as possible in each game week. With only two swaps available per week you’ll still need to plan ahead to ensure you have a competitive 5 players each week. Stacking at least one pair of players from a top tier side will help to do that if you can plan for them to have a few good match-ups in a row.

For players new to the Sorare or those with smaller galleries this approach keeps you invested each week with a hope at a reward. It also gets you used to the kind of research you’ll need to do to make smart purchases and winning line-ups with blockchain cards.

Approach #2: The Long Term Approach.

This is the lower work approach on a week-to-week basis. Essentially, you should look to pick two stacks of players from elite teams in the league and rotate your final player as required. By picking two elite stacks, we can feel confident there are going to be a few weeks in a season where both teams win big – think Barcelona and Real Madrid in La Liga or Bayern and Dortmund in the Bundesliga.

With this approach we know we aren’t going to win every week, but there will be weeks where we can. The benefit of picking and holding four players is they will build up some solid XP levels compared to other peoples cards.

This approach is a bit less work on a weekly basis and realistically you aren’t going to win consistently regardless. However, the weeks where it does succeed the experience built up could be enough to push you up a prize tier or two.

My Approach

I’m going to take the long term approach to Amateur leagues this season. Last year, I tried taking the week-to-week approach and across everything it earned me just the one reward. I think the benefits of increased experience in this approach could be really powerful especially later in the season. Hopefully it’ll help me sneak a couple more rewards and maybe push up to the higher tiered rewards.

I’m going to take the same approach across all Amateur competitions. I think the time investment to alter week-to-week isn’t worth it when I have 5-7 line-ups with limiteds and rares to plan each week. In terms of player profiles I’m taking the learnings from the scoring matrix articles you can find in the Sorare Beginners Guide. To try and find players with a reasonable chance at 80+ scores I’ll be following these guidelines;

• Across all positions we’re looking for players with solid AA scores and the potential for goals and assists. Set-piece takers are a big boost!
• They should all be playing for teams that have plenty of the ball and dominate lower half opposition.
• Defenders: I’m looking for attacking full-backs or wingbacks that see plenty of the ball in the attacking third.
• Midfielders: Attacking central players or wide players.
• Forwards: Players who get involved in the build-up rather than

To illustrate how my approach, I’ll take you through my plan for Premier League Amateur. After accounting for 3 minimum cost bench players, we’ve got 280 points to spend across the five starters. Assuming there are no injuries or surprise transfers this will be the two stacks I’m going for.

First off I’ve gone with stacking outfield players only. Whilst there is some benefit to stacking a goalkeeper with a defender with clean sheet points, I think this adds more of the explosiveness needed for peak scores. For the teams I’ve gone with Arsenal and Liverpool as teams that control possession against weaker teams and score plenty of goals.

Arsenal were really great last year before a late season slump that cost them the title. I think they’ll bounce back this season and have been buying well. Liverpool went the other way, a strong finish couldn’t quite make up for a slow start. They’re improving their midfield well this summer and should be more consistent this coming season.

The Arsenal duo are both heavily involved in the build-up player and have plenty of goal potential. Between the two of them they take plenty of the free-kicks and corners plus Saka gets some penalties as well. Both are nailed on starters and more than capable of max scores.

On the Liverpool side, Robertson doesn’t get as many set pieces as Trent on the other side. But he still takes some corners and has the potential for monster scores at a cheaper L15 price. Salah is obviously a great forward and takes penalties plus some direct free-kicks as well.

Using the Soraredata concept builder we can look at how these four would have performed last season. This gives us a good way to sanity check that the players can score highly together in their pairs. As well as confirming there is enough peak opportunities to be in the running for a couple of rewards over the season.

By plugging these four into the Concept Builder on Soraredata.com we can get an idea of how many weeks we could be in the hunt for a reward. I’ve set this up to show just the raw scores with no Captain bonus or card boosts applied. Overall we end up with 4 scores above 300 and one very close (293) which I think has us in the hunt for a card.

If we can find a keeper with a clean sheet we can add ~65 points and can expect around the same again for the captain bonus and card boosts if we get the captain right. Overall that should have us at 430+ points at a minimum 5 times over the season. Given Liverpool were very up and down over the year I actually think we could get more than 5 usable weeks this season.

In total those four players come to 227 points, leaving 53 available to find a starting goalkeeper on a weekly basis. Even that isn’t enough for some of the highest cost Premier League GKs, but there are still the majority of teams to choose between each week. I’ll be looking for the best chance of a clean sheet each week, and if there’s someone with a good run of games I’ll go there to build some experience on the card.

Overall, with this approach I’m hoping to win two cards from each European Amateur competition over the season. When the two stacks work, there will be weeks I get the keeper wrong which will kill a couple of those 5 line-ups mentioned above. There’s also the possibility of a big week coming when the scores needed for a prize are above average. On rare occasions it can require 460+ points just to get in the prizes.

If you haven’t signed up to Sorare and fancy giving it a go, sign up via this referral link and earn a free limited card when you collect five cards via New Card Auctions.