⚽ World Cup 2026 Companion

An Arabic‑first, open‑source companion site for the FIFA World Cup 2026 — live‑style results, group standings, official FIFA match stats & physical data, automatic match highlights, AI match reports, a free predictions game, private leagues, stickers, daily trivia, leaderboards, bilingual auto‑posting to X, and a fast installable PWA.

⭐ If you find this useful, please give it a star — it really helps the project grow!

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🆕 What's New

The platform now goes well beyond scores — official data, rich media, and full automation:

Every player now has a full technical profile — official photo, rating & percentile breakdowns.

• 👤 Full player technical profiles — every player has a profile with their official FIFA photo, a tournament rating, an overall radar (Attacking · Creation · Line‑breaking · Defending) and per‑category breakdowns (passing options, pressing, set pieces…) — each metric shown per‑90 with percentile bars vs same‑position players. Bilingual AR/EN. (See player.php.)
• 🖼️ Official FIFA player photos — real player photos from FIFA's Digital Hub across every squad, shown on match player cards, the physical explorer, and the new profiles — refreshed automatically as new players and substitutes appear.
• 📊 Official FIFA match stats (PMSR) — every finished match shows FIFA's official post‑match data in the site's own identity: possession, shots, passing, phases of play (build‑up, press, blocks), team physical output, and a tap‑to‑expand card per player (distance, sprints, top speed, line‑breaks, crosses). Pulled straight from FIFA's official reports — automatically.
• 🏃 Physical data explorer — a sortable, searchable leaderboard of every player's running numbers across all matches (total or per‑match average).
• 🎬 Automatic match highlights — official broadcast highlights are matched to each match via the YouTube feed and shown on the match page within ~30 min of upload — hands‑free, with a safe single‑name fallback.
• 🖼️ Unified bilingual share cards — one royal‑blue identity for every shareable card: group standings, final results (with AR + EN stats), next‑24h fixtures, and discipline (yellow/red) — tuned for X & WhatsApp with Arabic + English hashtags.
• 🤖 End‑to‑end automation — FIFA reports auto‑extract hourly → auto‑deploy to the live site → result tweets post within ~2 min of full‑time, with a run‑lock that guarantees no duplicate posts.
• 📱 App‑like mobile navigation — a fixed bottom tab bar (Home · Matches · Predictions · News · Stats) for a native feel on phones.
• 🥉 2026‑format accuracy — best third‑placed teams table + FIFA‑compliant tie‑breakers (head‑to‑head), plus match‑start reminders and security hardening.

📜 Full history in CHANGELOG.md.

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🌐 Live Demo

Try the site live: https://wcup2026.org/index.php?lang=en

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🔌 Free Public API

A free, CORS‑enabled JSON API (no key) — matches, live scores, match details (goals, cards, official FIFA stats), top scorers, standings and per‑player physical data. Use it straight from a browser, mobile app or backend:

https://wcup2026.org/api/data.php?action=scorers
https://wcup2026.org/api/data.php?action=match&id=12

📖 Full reference & all endpoints → API.md · plain‑text football.txt export too.

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📸 Screenshots

Live demo: wcup2026.org

Home

Get in the Game

Prediction Game

Player technical profiles

Every player gets a full profile from official FIFA data — official photo, tournament rating, an overall radar (Attacking · Creation · Line‑breaking · Defending) and a per‑category breakdown (with per‑90 values and percentile bars vs same‑position players). Bilingual AR/EN. See it live →

Auto‑generated share card (also used as the social preview & in this README, rendered live by the site):

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✨ Features

• Matches, groups & knockout — schedule, live‑style status, results, standings, bracket.
• 2026-accurate standings — 12 groups, best third-placed teams table for the Round of 32, and FIFA-compliant tie-breakers (head-to-head among level teams).
• Official FIFA match stats (PMSR) — possession, shots, passing, phases of play, team physical output, and a per‑player card (distance, sprints, top speed, line‑breaks, crosses) — pulled from FIFA's official reports, auto‑extracted.
• Player technical profiles — official FIFA photo + rating + radar & percentile breakdowns (attacking, creation, line‑breaking, passing options, pressing, defending) — per‑90, vs same‑position players, bilingual AR/EN.
• Physical data explorer — sortable, searchable per‑player running leaderboard across all matches (total or per‑match average).
• Automatic match highlights — official broadcast clips matched to each match via the YouTube feed and shown on the match page.
• Bilingual share cards — one unified royal‑blue identity for standings, results (with AR/EN stats), next‑24h fixtures and discipline — tuned for X & WhatsApp.
• Automated X posting — pre/post‑match, results, standings & news, fully hands‑free with a run‑lock that prevents duplicate posts.
• Predictions game — predict scores, earn points, climb a global leaderboard. No login required (cookie identity) or full accounts via MySQL.
• Private Leagues — create a league, share a code, compete with friends/family.
• Quick 1X2 vote on every match card (community polls).
• Match-start reminders — opt-in local notifications before kickoff (no server/push keys).
• Stickers album, daily trivia, and a heartbreak roast — gamified engagement.
• AI match previews/summaries (Arabic, dialect‑aware) via Claude — optional.
• News aggregated from public RSS, stadiums & host‑city map, fan guide.
• PWA — installable, full offline mode, works on slow networks.
• Bilingual AR/EN with full RTL/LTR, SEO (canonical, hreflang, Open Graph, JSON‑LD), sitemap.
• Full‑page micro‑cache + single‑fetcher data layer → handles big traffic on cheap shared hosting.

🧱 Tech stack

• Plain PHP 8.0+ — no framework, no build step, no Composer required.
• No database needed to run: data comes from the free public openfootball dataset and is cached on disk. MySQL is optional (only for user accounts).
• Vanilla JS + a single CSS file. Works on any PHP host (Apache / LiteSpeed / Nginx + PHP‑FPM).

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🚀 Quick start

Option A — Docker (no PHP needed) 🐳

git clone https://github.com/salah23222/worldcup2026.git
cd worldcup2026
docker compose up        # → open http://localhost:8080

Option B — PHP / XAMPP

# 1) Get the code
git clone https://github.com/salah23222/worldcup2026.git
cd worldcup2026

# 2) Create your local config from the template
cp includes/config.local.example.php includes/config.local.php
#    (edit it only if you want optional features — it runs fine empty)

# 3) Run it (built‑in PHP server, served from the project root)
php -S 127.0.0.1:8000
#    → open http://127.0.0.1:8000

XAMPP / served from a subfolder? Put the folder in htdocs/ and set 'SITE_URL' => 'http://localhost/worldcup2026' in config.local.php so the CSS/JS load with correct paths.

The site works immediately with zero keys using the bundled fallback data (data/worldcup_fallback.json) and the public openfootball feed. Everything below is optional.

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🧑‍💻 For developers — use the data in any language

This project is built in PHP, but its data is plain JSON over HTTP, so you can build on it in any language (Python, JavaScript, Java, Go, Rust, C#, …). A public, CORS-enabled, key-free API is included:

curl "https://wcup2026.org/api/data.php?action=today"

import requests
matches = requests.get("https://wcup2026.org/api/data.php?action=today").json()["matches"]

const { standings } = await (await fetch(
  "https://wcup2026.org/api/data.php?action=standings")).json();

👉 Full endpoint reference & response shapes: docs/API.md. Raw datasets live in /data — worldcup_fallback.json, rankings.json, referees.json.

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🔑 Third‑party services & keys

All secrets live only in includes/config.local.php (git‑ignored — never committed), or as environment variables of the same name. You must obtain your own keys from these providers; none are bundled.

Feature	Provider	Where to get the key	Config key
Match data (required, free)	openfootball	No key — public domain · https://github.com/openfootball	—
Live scores & cards	API‑Football	Free 100/day · https://dashboard.api-football.com	APIFOOTBALL_KEY
AI previews / summaries / roast	Anthropic Claude	https://console.anthropic.com	CLAUDE_API_KEY
User accounts & predictions	MySQL	Your host / local	DB_*, DB_ENABLED
Newsletter emails	SMTP (any)	e.g. Hostinger, Gmail app‑password, Mailgun	SMTP_*
Telegram bot	Telegram BotFather	https://t.me/BotFather	TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN, TELEGRAM_WEBHOOK_SECRET
Admin panel	—	Set your own password	ADMIN_PASS
Search verification	Google / Bing	Search Console / Webmaster	GOOGLE_SITE_VERIFICATION, BING_SITE_VERIFICATION

🔒 Security: never put keys anywhere except config.local.php (or ENV). If a key ever leaks, rotate it at the provider. Make sure your server returns 403 for /includes/config.local.php and the /data/ & /cache/ folders.

Enabling optional features

• AI content — set CLAUDE_API_KEY. It also has a date gate AI_ACTIVATE_FROM (default 2026-06-08); AI stays OFF before that date to avoid cost.
• User accounts — set DB_ENABLED => true + DB_*, then open /install.php?token=YOUR_INSTALL_TOKEN once to create the tables, then delete install.php.
• Live scores — set APIFOOTBALL_KEY (during the tournament only).
• Email digest — set SMTP_*, then schedule php cron/digest.php (e.g. daily cron).

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🌍 Deployment

1. Upload all files except config.local.php (create it on the server) and the runtime folders' contents (data/*, cache/* — they regenerate).
2. Make cache/ and data/ writable (e.g. 755).
3. Force HTTPS at the host/edge. Confirm /includes/config.local.php, /data/, /cache/ return 403.
4. (Recommended) add a cron to keep data warm and send the digest.

Works on shared hosting (LiteSpeed/Apache read the bundled .htaccess). On plain Nginx, replicate the deny rules for config.local.php, /data/, /cache/ and the .json/.md/.log files in your server block (Nginx ignores .htaccess).

💡 Recommended hosting

This project runs great on inexpensive shared hosting. I personally recommend Hostinger — it runs LiteSpeed, reads the bundled .htaccess out of the box, includes free SSL, and supports PHP 8 + MySQL, so the whole site works with zero extra setup.

ℹ️ The Hostinger link above is a referral link — using it supports this project at no extra cost to you. 🙏

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📁 Project structure

includes/      core: bootstrap, config, DataService, Auth, Predictions, ... (service classes)
templates/     header / footer / match_card  (shared UI)
assets/        css, js, images, vendor
api/           JSON endpoints (predict, poll, league, contact, ...)
cron/          scheduled scripts (digest)
data/          seed data (fallback fixtures, rankings, referees) + runtime user data
cache/         runtime cache (page cache, fetched data) — auto‑generated
*.php          pages (index, matches, match, groups, knockout, teams, predict, leagues, ...)

Architecture in one line: page.php → includes/bootstrap.php → DataService (cache + fetch) → openfootball JSON.

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⭐ Star History

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🤝 Contributing

PRs welcome. Please keep the project dependency‑free (plain PHP/JS), escape all output with e(), protect state‑changing endpoints with CSRF, and never commit secrets.

🙏 Acknowledgments

• openfootball — all match fixtures, results and schedules come from this excellent public‑domain (CC0) open‑data project. Sincere thanks to its maintainers and contributors — this site is built on their work.
• API‑Football, Anthropic Claude, and public RSS sources — optional integrations powering live scores, AI previews, and the news feed.

🛠️ Built in PHP — but usable from any language. The data is plain JSON over HTTP, so you can build on it in Python, JavaScript, Java, Go, Rust, C#, … — see For developers.

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📄 License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Disclaimer: Unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by FIFA. “FIFA” and “World Cup” are trademarks of their respective owners. Match data from the public‑domain openfootball dataset.