AnWP Football Leagues Review – The Most Powerful Football (Soccer) WordPress Plugin
AnWP Football Leagues allows you to create football tournaments with standings tables, team squads, brackets, advanced statistics and charts, results matrix, and team formations, to use API import and LIVE scores, layout builder, dynamic SEO options, and automatic user timezone. This WordPress plugin will help you build your own football-related site. For example, like this one – Footballan – Live Scores & Results
WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system. It is a free, open-source blogging tool and content management system (CMS) and powers over 455 million websites.
The platform has over 60,000 free plugins and thousands of premium ones to make your site do anything you want. There are plugins for every task, even for the football (soccer) website.
In this article, you’ll learn about one of the most powerful football (soccer) WordPress plugins – AnWP Football Leagues. It has a free and premium version and can import data from external API – https://www.api-football.com/.
Useful Links
- Free Core Plugin
- Premium Version
- Documentation, Community, and Support Portal
- Free Version Demo Site
- Premium Version Demo Site
- Real Live Scores Website
Competition (Tournament)
The tournament is the basis of the Football Leagues plugin.
You can create any competition type: round-robin, knockout, or multistage with different stages.
The round-robin is a tournament where the participants play against each other one after another. Football Leagues allow you to create any number of groups in round-robin competitions and populate them with teams.
The knockout stage is an elimination tournament, with the round winners proceeding to the next round. When you create this type of stage, you can have only two teams in a group (tie).
Different competition types on the Demo site:
- https://football.anwp.pro/demo-core-premium-1/competition/super-league-2019-2020/
- https://football.anwp.pro/demo-core-premium-1/competition/it-cup-2019-2020/
- https://football.anwp.pro/demo-core-premium-1/competition/ec-2019-2020/
- https://football.anwp.pro/demo-core-premium-1/competition/9965/
Tournament Bracket
A tournament bracket is a table of games in a knockout tournament stage. Such a structure is used most of all in national cups and international competitions.
The plugin can create an automatic bracket layout or manually put games in blocks of your choice.
Game (Match)
Football is one of the most popular sports in the world, with fans worldwide. It follows a set of rules which are simple to understand, and it’s easy to become an expert.
The plugin has a lot of options for setting up a football game: you can set the status, match week, kickoff time and date, stadium, and custom outcome in non-standard situations. You can also enter scores for every half, team and player statistics (premium), referees, game events, missing players, and game formations (premium).
Demo examples
Game Scoreboard with image background
The game scoreboard with an image background and a list of goal scorers is a superb block to display the progress and result of a football game. Recommended to use it as a game header in Layout Builder.
Team Formation
In football, the formation of a team is not only determined by tactics but also by its composition.
This plugin allows you to create and show every formation type. You can use the “drag-n-drop” system to quickly put players to the appropriate positions on the field mockup.
Documentation – How to use Team Formation
Commentary Block
Game commentary block is a list of game events that have occurred in a game with time, icons, and detailed event information.
Recommended to use this block in Layout Builder to create pages for the Finished and LIVE games.
Team (Club)
In football (soccer), a team is a group of players representing their club in matches, which are the main part of the game.
In Football Leagues, you can create a team easily with different fields: city, country, stadium, abbreviation, address, website, social pages, and logos. You can even add any custom fields you want.
Team Roster
The team roster for a football team is the list of players for the specific season. It is a skeleton of every club.
In Football League you can create custom roster for every season. There is possibility to set player number and status.
There are several squad output layout in the plugin. It can be easily changed in the Customizer.
Team Statistics
Team Statistics is a premium shortcode. Can be used in Layout Builder on the team page.
https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/1362-club-stats
Club Trophies
A team trophy is a physical representation of a team’s success.
To show club trophies and cups use a special metabox on the Club Edit page – “Trophies”. Add the title, image, and a number of honors, and then publish changes.
Player
The plugin has a wide variety of fields for the football player: full name, short name, weight, height, nationality, position, current club, national team, date and place of birth, photos, and social pages.
The statistics of the player are calculated according to played games. However, the plugin also has the possibility to enter statistical data manually.
The Player page has many useful blocks such as Total Statistics, Latest Games, Upcoming Games
The premium version has a special player statistics output in which you can show even custom statistics.
Referee
A referee is an official who enforces the rules and maintains the order of the game. They are considered one of the most important people in football as they significantly influence how well a game flows.
Football Leagues WordPress plugin has a special referee page built with sections: “Upcoming Games”, “Finished Games” and some referee-specific shortcodes (in premium version).
Upcoming Games
In that section, you’ll find all upcoming referee games.
Finished Games
The “Finished Games” section shows you all referee games with card statistics.
Referee Statistics (blocks)
The Referee Statistics shortcode displays single referee stats (cards and fouls) in an attractive way – fluid blocks.
It adds the possibility to display the average per-game value and filter games by different options. This shortcode can be used on the Referee page in Layout Builder.
Referees Statistics
The plugin has a unique shortcode to display a list of referees in an interactive table filtered by a league, club, or competition. Such a table will have cards and foul statistics with an average per-game value.
You will find all available shortcode arguments here – https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/2298-referees-stats
Live example with Referee statistics – https://footballan.com/serie-a-2022-23-referee-statistics/
Shortcodes
Shortcodes are designed to provide practical functionality without having to write custom PHP code or a template tag. Shortcodes are used by millions of WordPress sites today, making them the easiest way to add functionality to your site quickly.
Essentially they act as building blocks that can be combined in different ways to produce complex functionality with just one shortcode and no programming knowledge required.
Football Leagues has 40 shortcodes (16 core + 24 premium).
core shortcodes
16
premium shortcodes
24
The plugin has a special Shortcode Builder to help you generate proper blocks. More details about it here – https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/156-how-to-use-shortcodes
Core Shortcodes
- Cards
- Club
- Clubs
- Competition Header
- Competition List
- Last Match
- Next Match
- Match
- Matches
- Player Card
- Player Data
- Players
- Referee
- Squad
- Staff
- Standing Table
Premium Shortcodes
- Birthdays
- Bracket Layout
- Calendar Slider
- Charts: Team Default Stats
- Charts: Team Goals per 15 min
- Club Stats
- Head to Head Matches
- Head to Head Team Stats
- MatchWeeks Slides
- Matches Horizontal Scoreboard
- Missing Players and Cards
- Player Stats Panel
- Referee (Single) Statistics
- Referees Statistics
- Results Matrix
- Standings
- Stat :: Players (Single Stat Value)
- Stats :: Clubs
- Stats :: Players
- Stats :: Players (Custom)
- Suspension Risk
- Tag Posts
- Timezone Switcher
- Transfers
Standing Table
A standing table shows a team’s ranking and basic statistics of the tournament.
Automatic Calculation
Football Leagues can automatically calculate the Standing table according to selected ranking rules.
The core version has only a limited number of ranking rules: Points, numbers of Wins, Goals Scored, and Goals Difference.
Advanced Ranking Rules
The premium version has almost all the rules used in the most popular competition: Away Goal Difference, Away Goals Scored, Away Wins, Head To Head Goal Difference, Head To Head Goals Scored, Head To Head Away Goals Scored, Head To Head Points, Head To Head Wins, Played Games (Ascending), Less Yellow Cards, Less Red Cards.
Initial Points and Initial Standing Data
Sometimes you need to enter initial standing points or even initial standing data. You can do this easily with the help of our plugin.
Standing Table Colors based on the place or team ID
Do you want to add some color to 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place or highlight any team’s row? You can do it without any problem.
Conference Support
More info – https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/27-conference-support
Manual Data entering into Standing Table
The premium version supports manual data filling. Set the “Automatic data filling” parameter to “No”, and you will be able to edit every cell.
Arrows – Dynamics of Ranking changes
Layout Builder
The layout builder is one of the most helpful features in the premium version that allows you to create custom layouts for the Player, Game, Competition, Team, Referee, and Stadium pages. It will enable you to drag and drop different plugin blocks onto the page and rearrange them until they fit your design preferences.
For example, you can create a custom layout for the upcoming game and another layout for the finished game. Or you can build a special output for the national cup and another for the regular competition.
The real power of Shortcode blocks in Layout Builder is the ability to use dynamic variables. The list of them depends on the layout type.
Useful tutorials
– How to Use Layout Builder
– Group Number and Stage Number
– Shortcode Block in Layout Builder
API Import
The plugin support API import from https://www.api-football.com/
You should get an API key and then set up the import configuration. Some of the most popular leagues have automated wizards that will help you to speed up that process.
The plugin will allow you to import teams, players, squads, and games with all events, formations, transfers, stadiums, injuries, predictions, and odds. You can also activate and schedule LIVE data import.
LIVE import dashboards help you to manage and schedule different tasks for current active tournaments. You are able to schedule automatic updates to fetch finished games, kickoff times, predictions, lineups, injuries, and LIVE data.
Calendar Slider
The Calendar Slider allows you to display grouped games by date on the home page. It has many game filters and some useful display options.
Detailed documentation is here – https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/1150-calendar-slider
A live example can be found here – https://football.anwp.pro/demo-core-premium-1/shortcode-calendar-slider/
Results Matrix
This list of football games in a results matrix will give you an overview of the current tournament status.
You can select the Result Matrix type (default or symmetrical) and change the horizontal and vertical label’s style in FL+ Configurator.
Matchweek Slides
Documentation – https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/167-matchweeks-slides-shortcode
Dynamic SEO Options
The title and description are two essential factors in SEO.
The title will be seen on search engine results pages. The goal of a good title is to summarize the web page’s content in a clear, concise manner that attracts people to click on it.
A good description should provide enough information to entice someone to click through so they can explore your website further.
Football Leagues WordPress plugin allows you to generate unique titles and descriptions for Player, Game, Competition, Club, Referee, Staff, and Stadium pages. It has many dynamic variables that are used in a special metabox.
You can learn more about that feature in our dedicated article – https://www.anwp.pro/seo-options-in-layout-builder-title-and-description/
Advanced Statistics
While some might find statistical analysis tedious and not as exciting, it is an essential part of football.
The premium plugin includes advanced statistics functionality and allows you to create simple, time, calculated, or composed statistical fields. These fields will be available on the game edit page.
Charts
Charts: Team Default Statistics
Football Leagues can show team statistics in a neat responsive chart. The stats can be rendered in bar chart format.
Charts: Goals per 15 min. interval
Chart with Goals per 15-minute interval is a very popular metric. This statistic gives a picture of the best offensive and defensive time spans.
Automatic User’s Timezone
Suppose a game is kicking off in a different time zone than the website has. In that case, it can sometimes be confusing to know when the match will start so that the Football Leagues plugin is able to convert times depending on user location automatically.
The plugin has a unique shortcode to render the Time Zone switcher. Detailed documentation will be found here – https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/2382-automatic-users-timezone
Send Game Report by Email
Sending game reports via email to team representatives is now easier with the help of AnWP Football Leagues.
Open the plugin’s Options page and create a custom email template using the available placeholders. Then set the email recipients for the team, and you are ready to send email reports from the games admin list.
Step-by-step tutorial – https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/1470-send-game-report-by-email
Live Scores
With LIVE scores functionality, you can create instant updates on game scores and events on your site.
The plugin supports LIVE updates in several blocks: game header, timeline, and game comments.
You can add LIVE data in two ways: manually or automatically with the help of API Import. The plugin has a special UI for entering LIVE data on mobile devices.
If you have a valid API Import subscription, you can set up and activate automatic LIVE Import.
Card Suspension
Card Suspension can be used for Suspension Risk (shortcode) or automatic player suspension.
To create a new Card Suspension rule, go to “Competitions” > “Card Suspension” and click the “Add New” button. In the next step, select the competition and save it to continue.
Create all required Yellow Card rules. The most common case is shown in the image below.
If you plan to suspend players automatically, activate the appropriate field and add a number of games to suspend after getting a red card ban.
Suspension Risk shortcode shows the players who can be banned after getting a yellow card.
https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/1858-suspension-risk-shortcode
User Roles
The plugin supports game frontend editing by the selected users.
Football Leagues has three dedicated roles: Competition Supervisor, Match Editor, and Club Captain.
The Competition Supervisor can edit all games of the selected competition. Match Edit has the right to edit only one game. Club Captain has the ability to edit all games of a specific team.
P.S.: This functionality will soon be improved and replaced with a more powerful one.
https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2-football-leagues/categories/51-user-roles/articles
Head-to-head matches
https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/775-head-to-head-matches-shortcode
Head-to-Head Team Statistics
Premium shortcode. Has many interesting options. Can be used in Layout Builder on Upcoming Game page.
https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/1323-head-to-head-team-stats
Transfers
Transfers are one of the most critical events in the football world. Whether clubs are buying new players or selling their old ones, deciding who to sell or buy is very important.
The plugin has a special UI for setting transfers. You can set the season, player, club in and out, transferring date, and status. You also have the ability to select the transfer window and fee.
To display saved transfers, you can use the premium shortcode – https://anwppro.userecho.com/knowledge-bases/2/articles/460-transfers-shortcode
It has 3 layouts: player, club, and competition.
Fully Translatable from the Admin Part
Almost all plugin text strings can be translated in the plugin’s admin panel.
Performance
We have been working on the plugin performance all time.
The plugin has a unique inner caching system that saves most complex requests into site transients, valid for a day or a week.
Football League loads many specific libraries (Swiper, ECharts, Flatpickr, DataTables) only on required pages to reduce the load time.
