HAS everyone recovered from the adrenaline caused by those three minutes when both Spain and Germany were going out of the World Cup?
When all was said and done in Group E, Luis Enrique’s side progressed as runners-up behind Japan, sending Die Mannschaft to the airport with Costa Rica.
That gave us the unintentionally funny visual of Kai Havertz having to pose with the Player of the Match award having just been dumped out of the tournament.
The 2014 world champions are biggest team to have been eliminated so far from a Dream Team World Cup perspective.
Tens of thousands of gaffers will now need to dig into their allotment of 30 transfers to replace their German assets.
Let’s see if we can help you out in that regard.
Jamal Musiala is the most-popular player in Hansi Flick’s squad and with good reason, the Bayern Munich midfielder showed why there’s so much excitement around his future, claiming a Star Man award in his farewell outing.
The teenager mustered 13 points in all, a respectable return that could have been better had he not been painfully unlucky in front goal – how many times did he hit the woodwork in the last fortnight?
Frenkie de Jong is the best performer in Musiala’s price range (£3.5m) currently having racked up 26 points thanks mostly to two Star Man awards.
However, the Dutchman generally operates in deeper areas, a role that usually struggles to produce Dream Team points, but he’s done well enough so far so it’s something of a judgement call.
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We reckon Ousmane Dembele (also £3.5m) is the best option to replace Musiala as France have arguably been the best team on display in Qatar – the team that lost to Tunisia was a second-string XI.
Barcelona’s skilful winger will surely return to the starting line-up when Les Bleus take on Poland in the round of 16 and given the nature of the performance Robert Lewandowski’s mob produced against Argentina, it’s hard to imagine anything other than one-way traffic in France’s favour.
Dembele collected eight points from the group stages but if you watched the games you’ll know he was a persistent threat.
Antonio Rudiger is the tenth-most selected defender in the game but his backers were desperately disappointed by the centre-back’s return of minus two points.
Swapping the Real Madrid man for Harry Maguire would not only see you recruit the outright best defender at the time of writing, it would free up an additional £1million to use elsewhere.
England’s No6 has headed his way to 25 points, putting just above Jordi Alba and Alex Sandro at the top of rankings, who are both decent options to replace Rudiger as well.
Got Ilkay Gundogan in your team? Don’t over complicate things.
Simply switch him for Bruno Fernandes, they’re the same price and the Portugal playmaker has two goals and two assists from just two games.
Act quick and you may even get more points from him if he’s deployed against South Korea this afternoon.
Finally, those need to replace Manuel Neuer need not worry about budgetary constraints as the German custodian is the joint-most expensive goalkeeper in the game at £5m.
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Alisson (£5m) kept two clean sheets in his first two group games and Brazil look well-equipped to go deep in the tournament.
Alternatively, Netherlands’ Andries Noppert is dirt-cheap at £2m and the additional £3m freed up from such a transfer could be very useful when enacting improvements in other areas.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
