Lisbon, Portugal will be awash on Saturday evening with fans of two Spanish giants, Real Madrid and bitter city rivals and newly-crowned La Liga champions Atletico Madrid, as the two sides prepare to meet in the season’s grand finale – the Champions League final, and with some of the best players in the world taking to the field it’s sure to be a spectacle not to be missed. Fantasy football managers will have their eyes peeled for any of their players to see how they can contribute to the ultimate fate of this season’s tournament, and with Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale taking to the field for the white half of the City we have two of Europe’s top points-scorers on the pitch.
Ronaldo is actually the second-highest scorer in the entire continent this season, his tally of 695 leaving him just 45 behind Liverpool’s Luis Suarez, while Bale is eighth in the overall list since his record-breaking move from Tottenham last summer. The Welshman did himself wonders in the closing weeks of the season, netting 50 points from two of the last three games, and while team-mate Ronaldo scored 70 in that time he failed to close in on Uruguayan Suarez in the final game, failing to add any points. However, this is understandable given his involvement lasted only nine minutes.
Real goalkeeper Diego Lopez has had a great season, earning himself 400 points – and with a €4.00m valuation, that takes his points-to-value ratio to 100, joint top at the club with striker Alvaro Morata. The forward’s total has been helped greatly by a brilliant 40-point addition to his tally in his last domestic outing of the season against Espanyol – not bad considering he only featured for some 25 minutes of that match! His brace in the final few minutes of that game will give him some massive confidence going into this one – if he is able to replicate that kind of clinical form then the Atletico defence may have a busy time on their hands.
Moving over to the Atletico side of things, any fantasy managers who signed Thibaut Courtois, the on-loan goalkeeper from Chelsea, will have been licking their lips – his €7.00m valuation proved a bargain considering his 550-point season. This means his points-to-value ratio is an impressive 78.6 – the best in the team, though less than a full point ahead of Diego Costa, who stands at 77.7. Costa will be hoping for a good outing in arguably the biggest game of the season – he seems to be heading to Courtois’ parent club Chelsea in the summer, and will want to end his time with Atletico by giving the fans some real memories of his final outing in the famed red-and-white shirt.
On the points-to-value basis, the next best performer this season for Atletico has been defender Filipe Luis, but he has failed to add any points to his tally since 27th April – actually losing 10 in the time since. He will need to ensure a focused performance if he is to help Diego Simeone’s men to an historic double and break Real hearts.
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