There might be only four teams from which to choose from, but that hasn’t made the task of selecting our World Cup semi-final fantasy football team any easier…
After three weeks of practically non-stop, mostly brilliant and only occasionally dull international football, the list of contenders for the World Cup has been narrowed down to four and we dare suggest that the average neutral would have been happy with a cast of Brazil, Germany, Argentina and Holland if offered it before the tournament.
Unfortunately Neymar will play no further part, nor will Angel di Maria and Brazil’s inspirational leader Thiago Silva will have played his last proper game (we’re not counting the third/fourth place play-off as a proper game) if the Selecao don’t reach the final, but there are still any amount of world class players who can provide this tournament with the fitting finale it deserves.
Willian of the Black Eyed Peas will replace Neymar in Brazil’s team and in our PlayON team for the World Cup semi-finals
As we did for the quarter-finals, we decided to assemble an XI on new Fantasy Football website PlayON, where football fans can put their Fantasy Football expertise to good use and try and win a few quid while they’re at it.
Today PlayON has a £1,000 Guaranteed Pot on offer – you can enter up to three different teams into the game so get picking before the 19.00 deadline this evening at www.playon.co.
Because it’s onto the next stage of the competition, PlayON users can feel free to tear up team sheets from before and start completely anew and that’s exactly what we’ve done here.
Having seen our decision to exclude the great Lionel Messi thoroughly vindicated last time out – we just knew he’d miss that late one-on-one with Thibaut Courtois – Leo returns to our starting line-up this time around, although because of his exorbitant price, we had to cut back in other areas of the pitch, most notably defence. We’re entirely confident he’ll justify our second Messi-related decision in a matter of days, however, so, you know, no pressure there Lionel.
Check our selection and the reasons why we picked them below and if you think you can do better, head on over to PlayON and have a stab at if yourself. PlayON have put 100x £1 one-on-one games up, so the first 100 people can take JOE’s team on for £1 each here.
JOE’s Fantasy Football Team of the World Cup semi-finals
Jasper Cillessen (Holland): Wasn’t trusted for the penalty shoot-out against Costa Rica, but he had kept a clean sheet for 120 minutes before that so he must be doing something right.
Dante (Brazil): Thiago Silva’s loss is likely to be Dante’s gain and the Bayern Munich defender would rather let hell freeze over than concede an easy goal to the German attackers he’ll be very familiar with.
Bruno Martins Indi (Holland): A beast of a defender, who helped marshall the Dutch defence superbly during the defeat of Costa Rica. Will likely have more problems against Messi and company but we think he’ll be up to the challenge.
Martin Demichelis (Argentina): Unfairly lamented during what was actually a decent season for Man City last season, Demichelis has lost his ponytail but maintained the excellent run of form he was in at the end of City’s Premier League-winning campaign.
Mats Hummels (Germany): A goalscoring defender is priceless so we had to make room for Mats Hummels in our side.
Georginio Wijnaldum (Holland): There are bigger names in the Dutch side than the PSV midfielder, but don’t be surprised if he makes a name for himself against Argentina with a big contribution in the semi-final.
Willian (Brazil): He’s no Neymar but he is a very, very good player and will be beloved by his compatriots for life if he can compensate for the loss of Brazil’s talisman with a goal against Germany. He’s well capable of delivering it.
Enzo Perez (Argentina): Likely to come in for the injured Di Maria and keep the supply line flowing in the direction of Messi and Higuain. Decent chance he’ll come up with an assist against a Dutch defence that can be leaky.
Toni Kroos (Germany): Wasn’t great against France, but Kroos isn’t one of the most highly sought-after midfielders in Europe for nothing and we expect him to show just why he’s so highly rated against Brazil on the biggest stage of all.
Lionel Messi (Argentina): With four goals so far, he’s the biggest threat to James Hernandez for the Golden Boot and after having a bit of a breather against Belgium, he’ll be Argentina’s go-to man against the Dutch. We’d nearly put our house on him hitting the back of the net.
Miroslav Klose (Germany): He might be getting on a bit but somehow we think it’s destiny that he’ll end up breaking the World Cup goalscoring record against the team and in the country that the previous holder Ronaldo represented so well for so many years.
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