25 January 2025 , 18:19
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A 15-year-old student from Bristol says it "feels surreal" to have topped the worldwide fantasy football league.
Charlie, a Year 11 pupil at Bristol Grammar School, topped the league for a gameweek and is now third in the world.
Fantasy Premier League, known as FPL, is extremely popular and played by around 11 million players across the globe.
Charlie said: "My school mates didn’t believe me so I have so many screenshots of my name at the top of the table!"
Charlie said he has played fantasy football for a while but really got into the game during the Euro 2024 version last year.
He said: "I’ve always started seasons playing the game but often forgotten about it.
"This year, I kept saw my rank going up. So, I spend a lot of time looking at players and stats but also enjoy watching games.
"It’s really hard to stay high up but top 1,000 would be a nice to finish the season.
"I’m trying to remain calm about being so close to the top even though every decision is nerve-wracking!"
’Impressive’
Fantasy Football is a game where you choose a team of real football players from different teams and win points according to how well the players play each week.
BBC commentator Alistair Bruce-Ball, who presents the BBC’s Fantasy 606 podcast, said: "It’s an incredibly impressive achievement particularly as we’re now more than halfway through the season.
"Even more so given how many more engaged FPL managers there are in the game who read the articles, consume the content and understand the strategy required to be successful.
"It used to be that to be considered a consistently good FPL manager you would aim for a finish in the top 5,000 or even top 10,000, but now the top 50,000 is considered a decent achievement as the game is so much more competitive.
"I speak as someone who is currently outside the top million in what is my 19th season of playing FPL so I take my hat off to Charlie and wish him lots of luck for the rest of the season."