SofaScore: Football at your Fingertips

We’ve all slowly become quite reliant on our phones to receive football related information at some point or the other. Many of us have searched the darkest corners of app stores for that one app that would bring all of this information together in one place. There are plenty of football related apps out there, but most seem lack some feature if not the other.

Outside of the Boot gets a chance to review SofaScore, powered by www.sofascore.com, an application available in Android, iOS and Windows. Although SofaScore covers an array of different sports, we’ll stick to our favourite game.

Before we get into the features that the app has to offer, we would like to appreciate the neat design it portrays. SofaScore, unlike most other apps, provides a clean design that is primarily, simplistic and easy to use and secondly, easy on the eyes. Thumbs up for the first impression and the UI.

The design and development team involved with bringing the app to market has no doubt put in considerable effort into ensuring a top-notch user experience that appeals to sport lovers everywhere. With a plethora of similar applications available out there today, the complete app experience can often be the point of hit or miss for any given app to thrive in the market. Ample research aimed at the right target demographic has likely fueled the development of this useful new offering. Known as user research (see this for more), it forms an important part of the entire product development process in any company. And SofaScore has pretty much nailed it on all counts!

Now to get to the details that matter more. SofaScore covers the league of over a hundred countries. While this itself may be impressive if you intended to study games all around the world, the app doesn’t just stop at the top tier league of most countries but proceeds to provide information on the subsequent tier leagues as well as cup competitions. An option to ‘pin’ the leagues you would like to prioritize in your feed really goes a long way.

As far as international games go, SofaScore covers every international competition, including the Euros, World Cup and friendly games for women’s football. A feature we at Outside of the Boot appreciate the most is how SofaScore has a subsection titled ‘International Youth’ where information on games of U17, U19, U20 and U21 games can be found, and this isn’t limited to just the major tournaments but includes friendly and qualifiers as well. From #TalentRadar, Kudos!

Once you’ve got down to a specific league, pretty much all the necessary information you need is displayed. Recent few results, date and time (auto-adjusted to your time zone, makes your job easier!) of upcoming fixtures, the option to follow and receive notifications on an upcoming match, standings and top scorers, etc. are all available without any complications.

League Table

SofaScore readily provides data on clubs as well. A simple tap on the name of the club gives you data on past performances, form, recent and up-coming fixtures, current standings in different competitions the club is participating in as well as the entire submitted squad. All this data is easily sharable across mail, message or any other option too! Certainly most people have a favourite club or clubs that they’d want to have as priority in their feed. SofaScore provides the option to add clubs to ‘My Teams’, a feature that helps you give precedence to your preferred club.

As much as football is a team sport, individual statistics are often analysed. SofaScore provides players’ personal information such as nationality, birth date, height and preferred foot as well as team information such as position and shirt number. Statistics such as substitutions, matches started, minutes played, goals scored, scoring frequency and average goals per game, assists and cards are available in all competitions the player has played in.

Player Stats

Now for a match-day experience. For those of you who feel lucky more often than not, betting odds games are shown. If you are looking for a few games across the pond to lay a bet on too, you can also check out websites like https://sportsbettingny.com/ as well as others, so you are ready for any game you feel like taking part in. Each game is a user-based vote as to the outcome of the match that is displayed. In addition, information such as who the referee is, the location of the game, the venue and attendance are all displayed. The app has a 2D football field to stylishly show the line ups of the teams as well as list their benches. Head-to-head information as well as the past and up-coming fixtures of the two contesting teams are available. As the match progresses, a feed shows match events such as goals, cards, substitutions, additional time, etc. Live statistics such as shots, possession, free kicks, fouls, etc. as well as a live league table are really useful.

Match Stats

Given that your attention could expand beyond the sights of just one club, SofaScore is an easy outlet to keep track of all the other fixtures from different leagues, all from your phone. By setting teams or matches as favourites, one can receive notifications about everything related to the game: when the match is about to start, the line ups, goals, cards and so on. This feature is really convenient given that there are plenty of games across different leagues that have matches being played simultaneously.

Considering how smooth the interface is, how easy to app is to operate and how quick the notifications are as well as the plethora of information at hand, SofaScore is arguably one of the best football apps out there in the market.