MDS 2026 World Cup Pool Dashboard

A web dashboard (index.html) that shows live standings, the pool leaderboard, each player's squad, group tables, fixtures, and the scoring rules. Live scores come from football-data.org via a small Vercel serverless function (api/scores.js); the browser computes all the pool maths.

What it does

• Overview – current leader, top-3 podium, key stats, and the full pool leaderboard (total / group / knockout points, teams still alive, predicted pool winner).
• Teams & Picks – a card per player with each of their four teams, group record, points contributed, and an In / Out / Champion status.
• Group Tables – all 12 group standings (P, W, D, L, GD, Pts) with the pool owner of each team.
• Fixtures & Results – live and upcoming matches plus recent results, with owner tags.
• Scoring Rules – the pool's point system.

Scoring is automatic: group win = 1, draw = 0.5, loss = 0; knockout win bonuses of +1 / +2 / +3 / +4 / +3.5 / +5 for R32 / R16 / QF / SF / 3rd place / Final. Picks are matched to teams by ID, groups are derived from the fixtures, and knockout winners (including penalty shootouts) are detected automatically by who advances.

Deploy to Vercel (via GitHub)

1. Get a free token at https://www.football-data.org/client/register (free tier: 10 req/min, World Cup included).
2. Create a GitHub repo and add both index.html and the api/ folder (api/scores.js).
3. Go to vercel.com, Add New… → Project, and import the repo. Framework preset: Other; leave the build command empty and output directory as the repo root.
4. In the Vercel project: Settings → Environment Variables, add FOOTBALL_DATA_KEY = your token, then Deploy.
5. Vercel gives you a URL like your-pool.vercel.app to share with the team.

To update later, edit the files and push to GitHub; Vercel redeploys automatically. The token lives only in Vercel's settings — never in the code or repo.

Editing the pool

• Players / picks – edit the ROSTER array near the top of the <script> in index.html. Each team is referenced by its TheSportsDB team ID (already filled in and verified).
• Penalty shootouts – the bracket resolves automatically. The only case that can't be inferred is the Final or third-place match decided on penalties. If that happens, add the winner to the PENALTY_WINNERS object (instructions are in the comment above it).
• The page caches data briefly and auto-refreshes every minute; the Refresh button forces an update.

Data source

Primary: football-data.org (free tier), FIFA World Cup competition WC, season=2026, proxied through api/scores.js. The function maps football-data teams to the dashboard's roster IDs, labels group matches, maps stages/statuses, and normalizes everything to the shape the page expects. It's edge-cached (~60s) so the upstream API is hit at most ~once/min — well within the free 10/min limit. The token is read from the FOOTBALL_DATA_KEY environment variable.

The proxy checks the upstream HTTP status instead of assuming success: on a rate-limit (HTTP 429) or restricted/error response it serves the last good data and reads football-data's throttling headers (X-Requests-Available-Minute, X-RequestCounter-Reset) to back off automatically, rather than silently returning an empty feed.

Venue enrichment: football-data's free tier returns no venue/city, so the proxy fills each match's venue and city from TheSportsDB (joined by team-pair, cached ~6h). That's what lets the Next kickoff card show the venue-local time alongside the viewer's local time.

Fallback: if the proxy or token is unavailable (e.g. opening the file locally), the page automatically falls back to TheSportsDB direct via its season feed (eventsseason.php, free, no key) — the season feed carries live scores, whereas the per-round feed does not. If everything is unreachable, it shows the last cached data and keeps retrying.

Diagnostics: open /api/scores?debug=1 to see the upstream HTTP status, the rate-limit headers, raw (matches received) vs count (kept), dropped, venued, and an unmappedSample of any team names that failed to map.

Notes:

• Free-tier scores can be lightly delayed (not second-by-second), which is fine for a pool.
• Live (IN_PLAY) matches are supported, so the "live now" indicator does light up.
• "Matches played" counts against a fixed tournament total of 104 (72 group + 32 knockout), not however many fixtures the feed has loaded so far.
• If a team name doesn't map (e.g. football-data calls Cape Verde "Cape Verde Islands"), add its normalized form to the NAME_TO_ID map in api/scores.js. The ?debug=1 unmappedSample lists any current offenders.