Underdog World Cup Best Ball Strategy: How to Draft the World Pup Contest
Soccer has officially entered Best Ball world, at least at Underdog where you can play The World Pup and The Free Kick ahead of the 2026 World Cup. In addition to the World Cup being an entirely new 48-team format with teams that rarely play against each other, this is also a new game. Even if you know little about soccer, there's a chance that may not matter if you follow a few basic rules.
Here's the Underdog World Pup best ball strategy for drafting a roster that survives to the final.
Check out our 2026 World Cup hub for full coverage, including odds, lineups and team previews.
World Cup Best Ball Strategy (Quick Tips)
- Build around 3-4 teams with a clear path to the final
- Avoid stacking teams on the same side of the bracket
- Draft at least one goalkeeper from your main stack
- Target high-pass players for consistent scoring
- Prioritize players with secure minutes and set pieces
Draft for the Final
The temptation in a 12-round, six-person draft is to grab the names you know and figure out the rest later. That's how you lose in round one in the World Pup. The payout structure rewards finals teams, and finals teams need to be able to field a full roster, two forwards, one midfielder, one defender, one flex, one keeper, when the final happens July 19.
That means by your third pick, you should already know which side of the bracket you're building. If you took two France pieces, you're in on France and you'd better start thinking about who the fifth and sixth France guys are when Kylian Mbappe, Ousmane Dembele and Michael Olise are off the board.
You can always back-door your way in. There are enough pieces from Spain and France falling outside the top 50 ADP that you don't need to take three of them in the first four rounds. But you still can't go in blind and draft off vibes. Well, you can. You'll just lose.
How to Build Your Stacks
If you go into a draft with no strategy, you'll probably end with an uncorrelated team that isn't going to win. According to the odds, France, Spain, England, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Germany and Netherlands are the top eight teams. Personally, I don't think Germany or Netherlands can do it, and I'll likely be fading Brazil if possible.
Also, being the first 48-team World Cup, it's important to consider a possible lack of big upsets in group stages. That means most of the favored teams will probably win their groups, at least ones like France and Spain. That being the case, it'd be wise to not stack two teams that could meet in the semi-final.
Spain is in Group H and France is in Group I, and if both win their respective groups, they'd potentially play in the semi-final.
Go into drafts knowing the three or four teams you want to back, and make sure you know where they'd fall in the bracket if they win their groups.
Given that there are a limited number of teams worth stacking, there's going to be little to separate teams in the final round. The winner could come down to a random player off the bench bagging a goal in the final. The winning team will likely need all six starters being in the Final.
For a deeper look at each team, see our 2026 World Cup group previews with predicted lineups and key players.
We previewed the Underdog World Pup when the game was released, and most of the strategy discussed will be useful leading up to the World Cup.
Goalkeeper Strategy: Build From Your Stack
I realized quickly in my first draft that fading goalkeeper wasn't the move. Given that there are maybe eight teams at maximum that could win the World Cup, you need a goalkeeper from one of those teams, if not two of them. If your goalkeeper loses in the quarter-finals, that's a two-game hole you could have in your team.
The starting point with goalkeeper and your roster should be correlated, if the cards fall your way. If you're stacking Spain, then you'd want Spain's starting goalkeeper (Unai Simon) because you're not going to win best ball if the team you stack doesn't make the final. And similarly, backing that goalkeeper only makes sense.
Value Plays: The Backdoor and Pass-Volume Guys
The thing this scoring system rewards that DraftKings does not is passing. Every completed pass is .02 at DraftKings compared to .05 at Underdog. Point totals can grow quickly when Pedri is rolling 120 of them against Cape Verde. That's a six-point floor before he does anything else.
That's why guys you'd never consider to be top floor plays, could have more value than you think, especially ones on favorites like Pedri, Elliot Anderson and even defenders like William Saliba. They give you a floor in matchups that most rosters can't generate from the same positions. Defenders also get the added boost of clean sheets, so high-passing center-backs shouldn't be ignored.
Pair that with the locked-in starters on weaker teams who should play 90 minutes no matter what. Christian Pulisic is the cleanest example. He has a monopoly of set pieces for the United States and shouldn't come off the pitch. James Rodriguez for Colombia, when healthy, the same. Martin Odegaard and Hakan Calhanoglu are a few others that can be had in the later rounds.
Injuries and Roster Uncertainty
As the World Cup draws closer, rosters will be finalized and after league play concludes, there shouldn't be any more big injuries. At least that's the hope. If you're drafting more than two weeks before the World Cup, you have to be mindful of injuries. Hugo Ekitike and Xavi Simons were a couple new injuries keeping players out, while Lamine Yamal suffered a hamstring injury that will push his return up to the World Cup start.
For now, build for the Final, lock a real keeper, and don't waste your last round on a defender who isn't guaranteed to start. Staying on top of minutes is key, so review the latest World Cup predicted lineups before drafting.
