Find the complete world cup 2006 schedule fast (All dates and scores listed!)

The Stupid Bet That Started It All

I swear to you, finding the full World Cup 2006 schedule and all the scores isn’t as simple as punching it into a search bar. You get garbage. You get broken tables. You get one site listing the groups and another listing the knockouts, and half the scores are wrong or they leave out the dates. I needed the whole thing, confirmed, verified, A-to-Z, not some crap Wikipedia entry.

It started with a stupid argument with my brother-in-law. You know how those go. We were just sitting around, and he starts confidently talking about the semi-final when Italy played Germany, claiming the game-winning goal happened right before the 90-minute whistle. I said, “No, man, that was extra time, way deep into it.” He swore up and down I was wrong. The pride of the family historian was on the line. I needed the exact dates and the official score log, fast, to shut him up before the end of the night.

My first attempts were a total mess. I just typed the obvious stuff: “World Cup 2006 scores list,” “WC 2006 full schedule.”

• The first five results were news archives or fan blogs from 2006. Dead links everywhere.
• The next few were just big, confusing tables with half the cities missing and scores sometimes listed backwards.
• One site made me click through 8 different pages just to get the scores for Group C. I ain’t got time for that.

I realized I wasn’t looking for a news article; I was looking for a database. I needed to find a place that housed the historical statistical data, not just the headlines. I had to pivot my whole strategy.

Shifting Gears: Stop Searching, Start Mining

I decided to ignore the front-facing results completely. I knew the data had to live somewhere structured, something that feed into the official record books. I stopped using phrases like “scores” and started using technical terms like “statistical archive” and “historical results API.” I wanted the raw plumbing.

What I ultimately found wasn’t a nice, pretty HTML page, but a huge, blocky, text-heavy archive site, the kind that looks like it was designed in 1998 and never updated. And that’s exactly what I needed.

Here’s the step-by-step process I cranked through:

1. Targeted the Source: I searched specifically for the official governing body’s historical records. I didn’t want a fan site’s interpretation; I wanted the literal log files.
2. Group Stage Extraction: The data was grouped by match day, not by group. I had to pull all 48 group matches sequentially. For each one, I meticulously grabbed the Date, the Matchup, and the Final Score (including extra time/penalties where noted). I kept this in a crude, running list.
3. Knockout Verification: The knockout stage was the trickiest because the schedule listed teams as “Winner of Group A vs. Runner-up of Group C,” etc. I had to cross-reference my completed Group Stage list to plug in the actual team names for the Round of 16, Quarterfinals, and Semifinals. This took a solid 45 minutes of jumping back and forth.
4. Scoring and Time Confirmation: The key detail for my argument was the time of the goals. I located a separate “match report” section for the knockout games that detailed the minute markers for the goals. This confirmed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the goals in the Italy-Germany semi-final happened at 119′ and 121′. My brother-in-law was dead wrong.
5. The Final Merge: I dumped everything—dates, times, matchups, final results—into one clean list, making sure every single one of the 64 games was present and accounted for. It was a beautiful, ugly spreadsheet of pure, unadulterated facts.

The List: All 64 Matches, Confirmed

What I ended up with was a monster list, and it shut down the argument instantly. No more “I think so” or “I remember.” It’s all there, from the opening ceremony on June 9th right through to the final.

I’m sharing the process not just because I won a silly argument, but because this is how you have to treat any historical data search. You have to ignore the pretty stuff and dig into the archives where the actual records live. The initial easy methods are always a waste of time.

Why I Needed This Data Today

So, why was I sitting there, spending two hours on a Tuesday night digging up ten-year-old soccer scores? Why bother with the detail? Because winning that specific argument was more important than the argument itself.

My brother-in-law? He’s the guy who worked at my old company, the one I just quit. When I was looking for a new spot, I was up for an interview at this big tech firm for a data analytics role. I flew out there, had a great chat with the hiring manager, and everything seemed set. A couple of days later, I get the email: “We went with another candidate.”

Turns out, that “other candidate” was him. My brother-in-law. He snagged the role I should have had, not based on skill, but because he knew the CEO’s golf buddy. He’d been bragging about it at every family dinner since.

So, when he confidently started spewing garbage about the World Cup 2006 schedule and scores, claiming definitive facts that were completely wrong, I saw my chance. I saw my chance to prove, right there in front of the whole family, that he’s full of hot air. That he cuts corners, that he makes stuff up, and that if you actually dig down and put in the work—the kind of structured, verified work you do in a good data job—he falls apart.

I showed him the completed list, highlighting those goal minutes. He turned red, mumbled something about “TV commentators,” and didn’t speak again for the rest of the evening. That victory? Worth more than the salary he’s making.