Fooball — Arne Noori

Overview

I lose too much money betting on soccer with my friends, and the 2026 World Cup is the biggest one yet: 48 teams, 104 matches, three host countries. I wanted a way to play all of it together without anyone actually putting money down, so I built Fooball. You fill out the group stage and the full knockout bracket before the tournament kicks off, then watch it score itself live as the games happen. The whole point is the group chat. Everyone locks in their picks, the leaderboard updates in real time, and you get to be insufferable about the one upset you called.

The Challenge

Under the hood it's a correctness problem. There are 104 matches across three time zones, and a knockout bracket where one result reshuffles everyone's later picks. Scores and standings have to update the second a game ends, the scoring rules have to be applied the exact same way for every person, and the phone can never be trusted to do that math. Get the numbers wrong even once and the whole game loses trust, so the bar is basically zero mistakes.

My Approach

I built it native-first in SwiftUI with Swift 6 and strict concurrency, and used Swift Charts for the standings so they feel like part of the OS instead of a web view bolted on. The backend is all Supabase: Postgres for the data, Sign in with Apple for auth, Realtime to push score changes to every device the moment they happen, Edge Functions for the logic, and pg_cron running the scoring on a schedule. Every bit of scoring lives on the server, so each client reads the same source of truth and nobody can fake a result locally.

The Solution

Fixtures and live scores come from football-data.org, cleaned up on the server into our own shape before any client sees them. The upset bonus is wired to Polymarket's win probabilities, so the games the market says you're wrong about are worth the most points. Call one of those and you eat. The iOS app is where you make picks and follow along during matches, and foo-ball.com is the front door on the web.

Technologies

Outcomes

It's live on the App Store ahead of the 2026 tournament. Free, no ads, no real money on the line, just your group chat and a leaderboard to fight over for a month straight.