Fantasy draft season never ends. It just changes jerseys.

Just when I finished yelling at people about kicker strategy (do not draft one early, I will not be taking questions), the Bundesliga kicks off a new season and the crew over at Bulinews decided to do the thing I love most: they each built a full squad of 10 outfield players for Matchday 1 and put their picks on the record for everyone to see. You can read the whole thing over at Yahoo Sports, and I recommend you do, because opening matchday squads are where friendships go to die.

Matchday 1 just hits different from every other week of the fantasy calendar. It's the one week where nobody knows anything. Last season's data is stale, the promoted teams are mysteries, the big-money signings haven't had a chance to disappoint you yet. You are basically drafting vibes. And I mean that as a compliment.

That's also why I love when writers publish their squads instead of hiding behind generic advice columns. Advice is safe. A squad is a position. Every one of those 10 picks is a writer saying "I believe in this guy enough to look stupid in public if he flops on opening weekend." That takes a certain kind of courage that I respect deeply, mostly because I have to do it every August in our office league and Dave Morgan never lets me forget the year I took a Leipzig defender in round two.

The fun part of a piece like this isn't copying the squads. It's the disagreements. Opening matchday is where you see the widest spread of player valuations all season, because one writer's must-have captaincy pick is another writer's fade, and both of them have real reasons. Someone always goes heavy on the defending champions because the fixtures look friendly. Someone else always takes a swing on a promoted team's striker at minimum price, and that's the guy who either wins the whole league or finishes dead last with zero in-between. I've been both people. The swing is more fun.

And the Bulinews format forces your hand: 10 outfield players, no goalie. That's a constraint that shapes everything. When you can't lean on a keeper as a security blanket, every single one of those 10 spots has to earn its place, and the differences between writers get sharper. You can see who values the safe floor and who's chasing the ceiling. You can see who read the summer transfer news and who clearly went on vacation in July.

I've said this before about the FantasyPros mock draft and I'll say it again: I believe you should draft players you feel genuinely connected to over pure expert rankings. Squad reveals like this are the perfect input for that. Don't copy a squad wholesale. Find the one player two or three writers independently agreed on, cross-reference that with the guy YOU watched torch someone on a random Saturday and can't stop thinking about, and build from there. The connection matters. It's the difference between checking scores and actually caring about them.

Matchday 1 picks also carry this weird emotional weight that late-season picks don't. Whoever you choose for opening weekend, you'll remember them. There's a first-week hero every season, some anonymous winger who scores twice and becomes a legend in a million group chats before September. Nobody predicts that guy. Everybody chases him.

So go read the squads, argue with them, steal the parts you believe in. Then tell me which pick you think ages the worst, because one of them absolutely will, and that's half the reason we do this.