Data Sources & Methodology
Last reviewed: 12 October 2026
Teams, pots & seeding
The 36-club field and four seeding pots are taken from the official 2026/27 league-phase draw (held 27 August 2026 in Monaco) and cross-checked against UEFA.com plus several independent football outlets before publishing. If those sources ever disagreed, we would not publish until it was resolved — as of this review, none did.
Fixtures & results
Real fixtures and match results are pulled from football-data.org's free public API. An automated job checks for updates around UCL matchday kick-off/full-time windows and again the following morning, and only commits a data refresh when a score or match status actually changed — so "last updated" timestamps reflect a real change, not a fixed schedule. If a club name from the API doesn't match our internal team list, that fixture is logged and skipped rather than guessed at.
Standings & tiebreakers
Standings are computed from real results only (never from a visitor's own predictions, except as a local override for that visitor). Teams level on points are separated using UEFA's own tiebreaker order — see the full tiebreakers guide. One honest limitation: criteria 9 (disciplinary points) and 10 (club coefficient) are not modelled, because neither can be derived from a scoreline — there's no card data or coefficient feed behind this tool. In the rare case two clubs are still level after goal- and opponent-based criteria, they're shown in a deterministic alphabetical order rather than a fabricated one, matching UEFA's own in-progress tiebreak rule.
Squads & player photos
Playing squads and player headshots are sourced from Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia and cached locally (so pages load fast and don't depend on a third party being up). Photos fall back to a plain initials avatar for any player without a usable public photo, rather than showing a broken image or a stock placeholder.
Club profile facts (founded, stadium, honours)
Where shown, a club's founding year, home stadium, capacity and major honours are sourced from that club's English Wikipedia article, read and cross-checked individually rather than bulk-imported. This is a slow, incremental rollout — not every club has this section yet, and we'd rather a team page be missing it than show something unverified.
What this site does not claim
Team-page and matchday scenario text only states things directly computable from the current standings — current rank, zone, points, next opponent — never a permutation claim like "a win guarantees top 8," which would require correctly simulating every remaining combination of results. We'd rather publish less than publish a wrong qualification claim.
Corrections
Spotted a wrong score, a missing fixture, or a squad error? Email contact@swissformatsim.com with the club and matchday and we'll check it against the sources above.