API-Football to MCP: Drive API-Football from any AI Agent

💡 No install? Use cloud.anythingmcp.com directly. Sign in, click Connectors → API-Football, paste your credentials, mint an MCP API key and you're done. No Docker, no git clone, no local server.

API-Football

Let your AI follow football with API-Football: live scores and match events, fixtures, league tables, team and player statistics, lineups, injuries, transfers, head-to-head records, match predictions and bookmaker odds for leagues and cups worldwide. With an API key from your API-Sports account.

Setup

1. Create a free account at dashboard.api-football.com. The dashboard shows your API key once you are signed in. The free plan is enough to try the connector.
2. Paste the key into API_FOOTBALL_KEY and install the connector. It is sent to API-Sports as the x-apisports-key header. Use the key from the API-Sports dashboard: a key bought through an API marketplace uses a different header and does not work here.
3. Call af_status first. It shows your plan, the daily request limit and how many requests you have used, and it does not count against the quota.
4. For any analysis, start with af_analysis_playbook. It makes no API call and returns the ordered list of tools for the request type: match preview or prediction, post-match report, team form, standings, top performers, player scouting, squad, injuries, transfers, odds or live tracking.

Names become ids first: almost every tool needs numeric ids, and the AI should never guess them. It looks up a competition with af_leagues and the search filter (for example the Bundesliga, id 78, or the World Cup, id 1), which also lists the seasons available, and a team with af_teams. af_fixtures with the team id and next set to 1 returns the next match and its fixture id, which af_predictions, af_fixture_lineups, af_fixture_events, af_fixture_statistics and af_fixture_players need. Players come from af_players with team and season, or from af_player_profiles to search by name.

Seasons and times: season is the 4-digit year in which the season starts: 2025 means 2025/26, and the 2026 World Cup is 2026. Dates are YYYY-MM-DD. Times are UTC unless the AI passes timezone with a value from af_timezone.

Daily quota: every call to a data tool is one request to API-Sports and counts against your plan's daily quota. The connector's instructions assume the free plan, which allows 100 requests a day; paid plans allow more. af_status and af_analysis_playbook cost nothing. A complete match preview (prediction, odds, lineups, team statistics and injuries for both teams, top scorers, player stats, head-to-head) takes around a dozen calls, and paged results such as af_players cost one request per page, so precise filters (league, season, team, date) go a long way.

Predictions and odds are data, not betting advice: af_predictions returns API-Football's own win, draw and loss percentages, advice and a form comparison for one fixture. af_odds_prematch and af_odds_live return bookmaker odds, which the AI can turn into implied probabilities and compare with the prediction. Neither guarantees a result. Odds can be missing for minor or far-off matches; af_odds_mapping lists the fixtures that have odds, and af_odds_bookmakers, af_odds_bets and af_odds_live_bets list the bookmakers and markets.

What the data covers: lineups are usually confirmed about an hour before kickoff. In af_injuries, Missing Fixture means the player is out and Questionable means doubtful. There is no referee tool: the referee only appears on the fixture, often late. Head-to-head records are thorough for clubs and thin for national teams.

Read-only: all 40 tools only read data. Nothing is changed in your API-Sports account, and no tool is switched off at install.

Common errors: API-Football can answer HTTP 200 and still fail; the reason is then in the errors field and response is empty. A token entry means the key is wrong or missing: check API_FOOTBALL_KEY. A plan entry means the season or feature is not included in your plan: upgrade in the API-Sports dashboard or ask about a season your plan covers. Once the daily quota is used up, calls fail until it resets; af_status shows what is left. An empty response with no errors means nothing matched the filters, for example odds that are not published yet or a season that has not started.

The connector does not place bets, does not cover the other sports of API-Sports and does not push live alerts: live scores come in when the AI asks for them. It is also separate from the football-data.org connector, which uses its own token from football-data.org.

Prerequisites: API_FOOTBALL_KEY

Install the connector locally

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HelpCode-ai/anythingmcp/main/docker-compose.quickstart.yml -o docker-compose.yml
printf 'JWT_SECRET=%s\nENCRYPTION_KEY=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Open http://localhost:3000/connectors/store, pick API-Football and paste in the env vars listed under Prerequisites.

Available tools

Example prompts

• "Give me a complete preview of Argentina's next match: win probabilities, bookmaker odds, likely lineups, injuries and the recent form of both teams."
• "Show me the current Bundesliga table and the top 10 scorers of this season."
• "Which Serie A matches are live right now, what are the scores and who has scored so far?"
• "Who is injured or suspended at Real Madrid right now, and which players did the club sign in the last transfer window?"

Next steps

• Connect to Claude
• Connect to ChatGPT