A football website where fans check live scores, league tables and every player's numbers. I built all of it, from the screens people use to the server behind them.
01
One place for football fans to follow live scores, deep stats and the stories behind the numbers, without jumping between apps.
02
The whole product: the website fans use, the server behind it, and a caching system that keeps it fast and inside its data limits.
03
A live site covering 732 clubs and 502 players, where a live score is never more than 15 seconds old.
Live numbers from the site, October 2026
That's the site's own tagline. Each highlight below says what it does for a fan, and how it works underneath.
01
The Stat Lab ranks the top 50 players in 12 categories, from goals and assists to expected goals and discipline. Pick a season, league or team, then click any column to sort.
For fans
Settle the argument: who really has the best numbers this season.
Under the hood
One /api/statlab endpoint, cached for 5 minutes and refreshed in the background (stale-while-revalidate).
02
Click any of the 502 players for their own page: club and position, playing-style tags, how they rank against players in the same position, and the trophies they've won.
For fans
See at a glance what makes a player special.
Under the hood
Player data comes from Sportmonks through my own API, so the paid API key never reaches the browser.
03
The scoreboard lists each day's fixtures with kick-off times and club crests. On 3 October that meant 40 FA Cup ties.
For fans
Know what's on and when, without searching.
Under the hood
Match data is cached for just 15 seconds, so live scores stay fresh without hammering the paid API.
04
Club power rankings score every team by points times two, plus goal difference, so form shows up faster than in the league table.
For fans
A quick read on which teams are flying and which are slipping.
Under the hood
Standings are cached for 5 minutes with stale-while-revalidate, so the table loads instantly.
05
A newsroom of the latest football stories from outlets across the game, right next to the stats and filtered by competition.
For fans
Read the news without leaving the stats.
Under the hood
Stories come from the GNews API through the same backend, cached at the edge for an hour.
The football data comes from two paid services that only allow so many requests. Asking them every time someone opens a page would be slow, and the limit would run out fast.
So my server keeps a fresh copy of each answer, like a shop that keeps popular items on the shelf instead of fetching them from the warehouse every time. Live scores are refreshed every 15 seconds; things that rarely change, like the list of leagues, once an hour.
A fan opens a page
React front end
My server gets the request
Node + Express behind Nginx, on Ubuntu
It checks its saved copy first
Disk cache, refreshed when a copy expires
Only if needed, it asks the data provider
Sportmonks and GNews, API keys kept on the server
Most requests are answered from the saved copies instead of the paid services, so the site stays fast and inside its limits, while a live score is never more than 15 seconds old.
