Tom
Are defensive stacks a good strategy?
Updated: Jul 20
The Sorare strategy of 'stacking' isn't new. The American rapper Soulja Boy already did an interesting take on it in one of his songs. I do not recommend it. The song that is, the strategy is good. We'll be talking about defensive stacking. Defensive stacking is a Sorare strategy where you use a goalkeeper and one or two defenders of the same club, in your SO5 line-up. You can also do a full stack of a team, which has the advantage of you always being able to field a complete playing SO5 on a game week.
The reasoning is of a defensive stack quite simple, and I'll explain it like you're five years old. If the goalkeeper gets a high score, chances are so will the defender. They'll both get extra points for clean sheets, giving you better odds of scoring high in the game week. Defenders and especially goalkeepers do not get changed a lot during the game.
There are some proven quality duos that are known, we'll talk about a few of them.
When I start researching a possible new goalkeeper and the accompanying defender, I go to Sorare Data. This wonderful website has an amazing tool to help you with to research this information. It's called of course... stacks. What do I look for in the sea of information: First of all the number of games played they played together. Secondly the % of common points. Because, yeah... common points are the whole thing.
Let me explain the best team in Belgium from the last four years: Club Brugge. David made an extensive report on them in his weekly blog post.
Here we combine two defenders, Stanley N'Soki and Brandon Mechele, and goalkeeper Simon Mignolet. Let me just start by saying that Mignolet has had a very mediocre season, but he did play fantastic playoffs. They played 18 out of the 19 games together in the last 6 months. Here are their stats:

Also interesting and well-documented is this defensive stack from J-League team Tokyo.
Slowik and Morishige.

Another interesting stack is the one from AA Gent. Roef and Ngadeu. We wrote a blogpost about Gent a few weeks ago. You can check our transfer rumours page, to stay up to date on the latest rumors. Ngadeu is currently being linked to teams in Turkey, France, and Saudi Arabia, his contract is ending in 2023. All of the defenders in Gent are currently uncertain.

If you got some money, this is an interesting Sorare stack. If you don't get money, sell a kidney. A kidney goes on the black market for between 10.000 and 50.000 euros. Just make sure you only sell one.
Add the XP percentage multiplier and you got a real high-scoring trio. Buy a proven quality midfielder and striker and your SO5 team is set to compete for the prizes most of the time.

As you can see, defensive stacking in Sorare is a valid strategy. Do we recommend buying these stacks? Well, that's up to you and your strategy... how much money you are willing to spend. How much research are you willing to do? Do you own research as these stacks are, probably, well-known and higher in price. But there are some interesting, yet unknown possibilities. Enjoy!