📅 When to hold your fantasy draft? Three options, new for 26/27 ⚠️

The liturgical moment par excellence for every fantasy manager is getting closer and closer. And along with the draft, the first big dilemma of the season is also right on time—the one capable of testing friendships, WhatsApp groups, and vacation calendars: when should you hold the Fanta draft?

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Obviously, the more participants there are, the more finding a date that works for everyone becomes a challenge. But even before trying to fit together the schedules of eight, ten, or twelve people, there’s a fundamental issue to solve: what’s the best time to organize the draft? And this year, from that point of view, we’re facing a decidedly unusual scenario.

And this is exactly where the big news of this season comes in. The traditional September window for international teams has in fact been merged with the October one: that break immediately after the transfer window closes disappears, and in recent years it had almost been a natural dividing line for organizing the draft too.

The summer transfer window will in fact close on Tuesday, September 1 at 8:00 PM. From that moment on, barring exceptions, Serie A squads will be essentially finalized: no more last-minute deals to worry about, no sudden departures, and above all a much clearer picture of who is worth spending your credits on. The problem? This time, the league won’t stop.

For this reason, anyone who wants to organize the draft strictly with the transfer window closed and without missing a single league round will have a very narrow window: between September 1 and 4. Very few days to pull off the feat of getting everyone to agree, but with one major advantage: knowing virtually all the final squads before the start of Serie A Matchday 3, which will kick off at 8:45 PM with Genoa-Como.

The other route goes in the opposite direction instead: bring everything forward and hold the draft before the start of Serie A, scheduled for August 22. It’s a choice that lets you begin alongside the league from day one, while accepting the thrill typical of the boldest fantasy managers: investing in a player and then watching, a few days later, a transfer move completely reshuffle the deck.

And then there’s the option for those who are in no rush at all. If the goal is to leave the transfer market completely behind, have all the time needed to fit everyone’s schedules together and, why not, also wait for evenings a little less sweltering than the ones that have marked this summer, then you’ll have to accept a small sacrifice: skip the first five matchdays of the season.

At that point, though, the calendar suddenly becomes an ally: from the end of Matchday 5, on September 21, until the league resumes on October 17, there will be a full 26 days to find that fateful evening. If you want to get ahead of the game as early as September 18, when Matchday 5 begins, that even becomes 29. At that point, finding a date that works for everyone will no longer be a problem. Or at least, it should be.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.