It started in 2006, with a group of friends who played weekly football matches together — the original Fusssballians — who wanted a prediction pool unlike any other.
Between one after-match beer and the next, the rules took shape. The pool would factor in each game’s odds, so harder results to call were worth more points, with bonus points layered on top for other achievements. And crucially, predictions could be amended right up until kickoff.
That first pool ran on an Excel spreadsheet. The catch: the organiser had to stay glued to their inbox, since predictions arrived by email, manually updating the sheet with every score line and sending it back out. It worked, but it was relentless.
The frustration led the Fusssballians to write a PHP script to handle it, after spending a summer reading a book on scripting. The next major tournament ran far more smoothly — and that script kept the pools going for 18 years, through to its final outing at Euro 2024.
For the World Cup 2026, the Fusssballians rebuilt it from the ground up — using WordPress as the foundation and AI tools to help along the way — turning a simple PHP script into Fussspool, a fully fledged web application.
Same friendly rivalry. Same beer-fuelled rules. Just a lot less manual spreadsheet wrangling.