unnamed-1-1If my Twitter feed is any indication, World Cup fever has gripped the U.S. People who wouldn’t ordinarily care about soccer are suddenly wrapped up with newfound love for the game. But there’s one question: what’s the best way to keep up with all the action?

As its name indicates, Onefootball is designed to be a one-stop shop for football fans looking to get information about matches around the world, during and after the big competition in Brazil.

The app, which is available for just about every mobile platform under the sun, provides fans with a wealth of game knowledge from the top leagues, including past match statistics, news reports and a schedule of upcoming competitions.

Onefootball really shines when a match kicks off, though. The app includes a graphical representation of who’s on the field for each side at any given time, and what positions they’re playing. Users can see a list of highlights including substitutions, goals and penalty cards.

unnamed-1One of the features I found most useful is the live text commentary available through the app. It’s great for staying up-to-date with all the action without the distraction of running a live video feed. Users can check in on the live text whenever they want, and check out if they need to focus on the world around them.

The tone of the commentary sets Onefootball apart from apps that only provide snippets of text about match progress. It’s clear that whoever is writing these up-to-the-minute summaries of gameplay is excited about what’s going on, or has at least figured out how to act like that for the reader’s sake.

Listen to this week’s segment below, or via this MP3 file.

Users can add their own thoughts about a match through a built-in social stream. In my experience, the posts are a good way to gauge the raw emotion of fans around the world, but not a great way to understand what’s going on in the match. Still, for people who want to feel like they’re in the middle of a soccer stadium surrounded by hundreds of cheering fans, this functionality provides a close approximation.

If there’s one thing that frustrates me about the app, getting it set up to view World Cup scores is a bit fiddly. Part of that is because Onefootball is hard at work promoting its dedicated World Cup app that carries a sponsorship deal, and part of that has to do with the overall complexity of Onefootball’s interface. That hurts the overall experience of using the app, but I still find it to be one of the best ways to track matches all over the globe.

Onefootball is available for free from the iOS App Store, Google Play Store, Windows Phone Store and Amazon Appstore.

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