July 14, 2026, again in Dallas. This is the first time I go to semifinal. Exciting! This time no kids. I get to see France, and I get to see Spain again.
Spain ended up completely nullifying France who have by far the most impressive attack in the tournament and beat them 2-0. I don’t see how anyone can keep them from winning the World Cup.
Back in Dallas. In what turned out to be a low scoring game between titans, we got to see Cristiano Ronaldo’s last ever World Cup match.
Canada the host faced Morocco for Round of 32 in Houston. They were beaten 3-0. This was a fun one, 4th of July and lots of friends.
July 3 in Dallas, Round of 32. Egypt made it through lead by Mohamed Salah.
Yesterday in Houston. Tight game, Brazil came back from 1-0 deficit to win 2-1 in injury time. Our first Round of 32 match this year was a very good one.
People kept asking me in the last months if I was “ready for the World Cup”.
But I wasn’t.
The polla wasn’t ready. We hadn’t gotten our sticker album… Of course I got “ready” on time. But all the questions made me think of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs so I made this. Share if you feel similarly!
We arrived to this Houston game ready to see Portugal – a favorite to win the tournament. They didn’t look good, especially Cristiano Ronaldo; but the kids got to see him in person which they really wanted.
This marks the end of the first phase for me. At least as far as attending matches in person is concerned.
We attended Sweden vs Tunisia at Estadio BBVA in Monterrey aka the most beautiful stadium in the world home of the best team in the planet. Lots of goals: the game ended 5-1 to Sweden.
I was incredibly lucky to kick off the 2026 FIFA World Cup by attending the opening match on Thursday. Getting to the Azteca was a nightmare. Everything else was incredible: the stadium, the crowd, the company, the cheers, the view, the opening musical show with the exception of the that 🤮 band from Guadalajara. The game itself was alright – Mexico should have scored one more and that undeserved red card to Montes may prove costly; but three points is three points.
Few people know this, but in every single last polla, entering the scores for the matches was a manual process. When I tell this to people, they find it hard to believe.
It wasn’t that terrible. A few friends volunteered to help and were given special access to do that. And it was almost guaranteed that at least one of us was watching every match anyway. No big deal.
But of course, beyond the manual work, it was always a technical challenge for me to be able to automate it. In 2022 I got very close, but didn’t quite finish it.
I am happy to say that for the all-new, microservices-based Polla 2026, Automatic Score Updates functionality was just pushed to the server!
I am using football-data.org to as the data source. The implementation is as simple and stateless as I could make it. Seems right.
Of course, the big problem is that I cannot test it for real before the FIFA World Cup starts. And once it starts, should anything goes wrong, I won’t be able to do anything about it until at least several hours later.
Well, I will be able to pause it, as you can see in the screenshot. This is why I added the ability to pause it.
Hope it goes well. 🤞
