FotMob Match & Player Stats

Purpose

Given a free-text query (team / fixture / player name), find a specific football match on FotMob and return:

Team match stats — possession, expected goals (xG), shots, passes, defence, duels, discipline, etc., as home/away pairs.
Per-player match stats — every player's rating, minutes, goals/assists, passing, duels, physical metrics, plus shotmap, for that single match.
Player general stats — a player's current-season league summary and full per-season/per-competition breakdown, recent matches, career history, traits and bio.

Read-only. Never follows, subscribes, or posts. The fast path uses FotMob's public search API and server-rendered page data (no auth, no anti-bot); a browser fallback covers the minority of match pages that defer their data to a client-side, token-signed request.

When to Use

"What were the match stats for {home} vs {away}?" — possession, xG, shots, cards.
"How did {player} play in {match}?" — single-match player rating and stat line.
"Give me {player}'s season numbers" — appearances, goals, assists, rating per competition.
Bulk/automated harvesting of match or player statistics where you'd otherwise scrape FotMob HTML.

Workflow

FotMob serves no anti-bot challenge on these surfaces — a bare cloud session (no --verified, no --proxies) and plain HTTP fetches both work. The recommended path is hybrid: pull search results and player data with cheap fetch calls, and pull match stats from the match page's embedded JSON, dropping to a browser only when a given match page ships an empty shell.

Step 1 — Find the match (and player IDs) via the search API

GET https://apigw.fotmob.com/searchapi/suggest?term=<url-encoded query>&lang=en

Returns JSON (no headers/auth needed; CORS-open). Read:

matchSuggest[].options[].payload → id (the numeric matchId), homeName, awayName, leagueName, leagueId, matchDate, homeScore, awayScore, statusId.
teamSuggest[].options[].payload → team id + name.
squadMemberSuggest[].options[].payload → player id + name + teamName (use this to resolve a player by name).

Pick the matchId you want. A two-word term (e.g. arsenal paris) narrows multi-fixture rivalries; a bare team name returns that team's recent/upcoming matches.

Step 2 — Get match stats + per-player match stats from the match page

Resolve the canonical URL — https://www.fotmob.com/match/<matchId> issues a 308 redirect whose Location is https://www.fotmob.com/matches/<slug>/<code>. Fetch that canonical URL and parse the <script id="__NEXT_DATA__" type="application/json"> blob:

Match metadata: props.pageProps.general → matchId, matchName, leagueName, homeTeam, awayTeam, finished, matchTimeUTC.
Team match stats: props.pageProps.content.stats.Periods.All.stats[] — an array of groups (Top stats, Shots, Expected goals (xG), Physical performance, Passes, Defence, Duels, Discipline). Each group has stats[], and each entry is { title, key, stats: [home, away], format, type }. (Periods also has FirstHalf, SecondHalf, FirstExtraHalf, SecondExtraHalf.)
Per-player match stats: props.pageProps.content.playerStats is an object keyed by playerId. Each value is { name, id, optaId, teamId, teamName, isGoalkeeper, shirtNumber, usualPosition, stats: [groups...], shotmap: [...] }. Each stat group's stats is an object keyed by label → { key, stat: { value, total?, type } } (e.g. Top stats → "FotMob rating" → {value: 7.26}, "Accurate passes" → {value: 88, total: 95}). Players who did not play have stats: [] — skip them.
Also available: content.lineup, content.shotmap, content.momentum, content.h2h, content.matchFacts.

Pre-render caveat (important): match __NEXT_DATA__ carries content only for pre-rendered matches (popular/recent fixtures). For deferred matches the blob is just { fetchingLeagueData: true, fallback: {...}, translations: {...} } with no general/content — the app loads the data client-side. Detect this (missing props.pageProps.content) and switch to the Browser fallback below.

Step 3 — Get the player's general (season/career) stats from the player page

GET https://www.fotmob.com/players/<playerId>

Always server-rendered (200, no redirect). Parse __NEXT_DATA__ props.pageProps.data:

mainLeague → { leagueId, leagueName, season, stats: [{ title, value }] } — current-season summary (Matches, Started, Goals, Assists, Minutes played, Rating, cards).
statSeasons[] → per season, tournaments[] with { name, tournamentId, entryId, hasDeepStats }.
playerInformation[] → height, shirt, age, preferred foot, country, market value.
primaryTeam, recentMatches[] (each carries that match's matchId, minutesPlayed, goals, assists, rating), careerHistory, trophies, marketValues, traits.

recentMatches[] is a handy shortcut: a player's recent single-match stat lines are already on the player page, so you can often skip Step 2 when you only need a player's line for a recent match.

Browser fallback (universal — required for deferred match pages)

When a match page's __NEXT_DATA__ has no content:

Create a bare session: browse cloud sessions create --keep-alive (no stealth/proxies).
browse open "https://www.fotmob.com/match/<matchId>" — let it follow the redirect.
browse wait timeout 3000 — the app fetches matchDetails (with its client-generated x-mas header) and hydrates.
browse get text body — the rendered text reliably contains the full stat tables (possession, xG, shots…) and the per-player ratings table for both teams, regardless of pre-render state. Parse the labelled values from it. (You can also re-read browse get text script#__NEXT_DATA__, which may now be populated.)
For the player page, the same browse open https://www.fotmob.com/players/<id> + browse get text body works, but Step 3's plain fetch is normally sufficient.

Do not use browse snapshot/click to read stats — FotMob is heavily JS-driven and snapshot returns empty/error. Navigate by URL and read body text or __NEXT_DATA__.

Site-Specific Gotchas

No anti-bot on these surfaces. Bare session + plain fetch both succeed; the pre-run probe and live runs needed neither --verified nor --proxies. Don't add stealth/proxies — they only slow it down.
apigw.fotmob.com/matchDetails and /playerData are a dead end without the x-mas header. Both return 404 when called directly (the token is generated by FotMob's obfuscated client JS per request). Confirmed across multiple attempts. Use page-embedded __NEXT_DATA__ (or the rendered body in a browser, which generates x-mas for you) instead — do not waste time trying to forge x-mas.
Old www.fotmob.com/api/... paths are gone. www.fotmob.com/api/matches, /api/searchapi/... etc. now 404 (handled by the Next.js app, not the API). The live API host is apigw.fotmob.com; only searchapi/suggest (and searchapi/search) are usable unauthenticated.
Match __NEXT_DATA__ is populated only for pre-rendered matches. Verified live: the CL final (/matches/arsenal-vs-paris-saint-germain/377nyb, matchId 5205834) returns 8 stat groups + 46 players; the semifinal (/matches/paris-saint-germain-vs-arsenal/3775bz, 4737577) returns an empty shell (fetchingLeagueData: true, no content). Always check for props.pageProps.content before parsing; fall back to the browser otherwise.
/match/<id> is a 308 redirect, not the page. A plain fetcher that doesn't follow redirects gets a 54-byte body whose payload IS the canonical path (/matches/<slug>/<code>). Either follow the redirect or read that Location and fetch the canonical URL.
playerStats is keyed by playerId, not an array, and bench players who didn't appear have stats: []. Resolve your target player by name/id and skip empty stat lines.
Stat values are positional [home, away] pairs under content.stats.Periods.All.stats[].stats[].stats. Map home/away using general.homeTeam/general.awayTeam. xG values come as strings ("1.72"), most others as integers.
Search ranking ≠ relevance you want. matchSuggest may surface a related fixture (e.g. the semifinal before the final). Disambiguate using payload.matchDate, leagueName, and homeScore/awayScore before committing to a matchId.
In a browser, navigate by URL — never rely on browse snapshot/click. FotMob is fully client-rendered; the accessibility snapshot is empty/unreliable. Tabs (Stats, Lineup) can be reached by clicking the tab via browse eval if a screenshot of a specific view is needed, but data extraction should use browse get text body / __NEXT_DATA__.

Expected Output

{
  "success": true,
  "matchId": "5205834",
  "matchName": "Paris Saint-Germain vs Arsenal",
  "league": "Champions League",
  "matchDate": "2026-05-30T16:00:00Z",
  "home": "Paris Saint-Germain",
  "away": "Arsenal",
  "matchStats": {
    "Ball possession": [75, 25],
    "Expected goals (xG)": [1.72, 0.51],
    "Total shots": [21, 7],
    "Shots on target": [4, 1],
    "Touches in opposition box": [42, 16],
    "Big chances": [3, 1],
    "Accurate passes": [809, 196],
    "Corners": [11, 3],
    "Fouls committed": [11, 17],
    "Yellow cards": [2, 4]
  },
  "player": {
    "id": 267365,
    "name": "Marquinhos",
    "teamName": "Paris Saint-Germain",
    "matchStats": {
      "FotMob rating": 7.26,
      "Minutes played": 105,
      "Goals": 0,
      "Assists": 0,
      "Accurate passes": { "value": 88, "total": 95 },
      "Chances created": 2,
      "Distance covered": 10442
    },
    "seasonStats": {
      "league": "Ligue 1",
      "season": "2025/2026",
      "matches": 14,
      "started": 11,
      "goals": 0,
      "assists": 0,
      "minutesPlayed": 1049,
      "rating": 6.88,
      "yellowCards": 0,
      "redCards": 0
    }
  },
  "error_reasoning": null
}

Failure / not-found shape:

{
  "success": false,
  "matchId": null,
  "error_reasoning": "No match in searchapi/suggest matchSuggest matched the query 'foo vs bar'."
}

find-stats