RBFA for Home Assistant

English · Nederlands

Follow your Belgian football team in Home Assistant: the match calendar, the next and the previous match, the series with its ranking and fair play standings, and the squads of every team in the series. The data comes from the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) website, which serves Voetbal Vlaanderen and ACFF.

It works for every team that has a page on rbfa.be, from the first team down to the youngest youth teams.

Contents

• What you get
• Installation
• Configuration
• Entities
• Attributes
• How and when data is refreshed
• Youth series: no ranking, but fair play
• Example cards
• Updates
• Troubleshooting
• Releasing a new version (maintainers)

What you get

📅 Calendar	Every match of the season as a calendar event, with location, series and (when published) the score. Usable in the calendar panel, in calendar cards and as an automation trigger.
⏭️ Next match	Start and end time, home and away team with club logo, location, series, referee and the RBFA match ID.
⏮️ Previous match	The same set of sensors for the last match, including goals and penalties when RBFA publishes them.
🏆 Ranking	The ranking of the series as an attribute: position, team, logo and matches played.
🤝 Fair play	The fair play percentage of every team in the series.
👥 Squads	Players (with matches played and goals) and staff (with their function) of every team in the series.
🧑‍⚖️ Referee	The referee of the match, when one is assigned.

Everything is read-only: the integration never changes anything on rbfa.be and needs no account.

Installation

HACS (recommended)

Or manually:

1. In Home Assistant open HACS → menu (⋮) → Custom repositories.
2. Repository: https://github.com/Maffiow/RBFA, type: Integration → Add.
3. Search for RBFA in HACS, click Download and restart Home Assistant.

Already using another rbfa integration? Remove it in HACS first (or delete /config/custom_components/rbfa), then install this one. Your existing configuration and entity IDs are kept.

Manual

Copy custom_components/rbfa to /config/custom_components/rbfa and restart Home Assistant.

Configuration

Settings → Devices & services → Add integration → RBFA

Field	Description
Team	The number after ploeg in the URL of the team page. For https://www.rbfa.be/nl/club/1932/ploeg/378177/overzicht that is 378177.
Alternative name	Optional name for the calendar (default: club | team, e.g. EENDRACHT MECHELEN A/D MAAS | U10 A).
Duration	Match duration in minutes including the break; used for the end time of calendar events and to decide when a match is over.
Show ranking	Fetch the ranking, the fair play standings and the squads of the series.
Show referee	Fetch the referee and create the referee sensors.

All settings except the team can be changed later via Configure on the integration. To follow several teams, add the integration once per team.

Team IDs change every season. If you get "Team … not found" in the log after the summer, remove the integration and add it again with the new ID from rbfa.be.

Entities

Each configured team gets one calendar and two sets of sensors: one for the upcoming match and one for the last match.

Entity	State	Notes
Calendar	on while a match is being played	Named club | team or your alternative name. Holds every match of the season.
Start time	Kick-off (timestamp)
Finish time	Kick-off + duration (timestamp)
Home team	Team name	Entity picture is the club logo.
Away team	Team name	Entity picture is the club logo.
Location	Address of the ground, on three lines	Empty until RBFA publishes it.
Series	Name of the series	Entity picture is the logo of the organiser. Carries the ranking and the squads.
Referee	Name of the referee	Only when Show referee is on; unknown when none is assigned.
Match ID	RBFA match ID	Handy for a link to https://www.rbfa.be/nl/wedstrijd/<id>.

Good to know:

• Sensors are disabled by default. Enable the ones you need under Settings → Devices & services → RBFA → entities.
• Entity IDs follow your Home Assistant language. In English you get sensor.home_team, in Dutch sensor.thuis. The examples below use the Dutch IDs.
• Two sets, one suffix. Both sets share the same names, so Home Assistant gives the second one a _2 suffix (sensor.thuis and sensor.thuis_2). Check the tag attribute to see which is which: upcoming or lastmatch.

Attributes

Every sensor has:

Attribute	Meaning
baseid	The team ID you configured.
tag	upcoming or lastmatch.

Home team and Away team add:

Attribute	Meaning
id	RBFA team ID of that team.
goals	Goals scored, when the score is published.
penalties	Penalties scored in a shoot-out, when applicable.
position	Position in the ranking of the series.
entity_picture	URL of the club logo.

Series adds:

Attribute	Meaning
ranking	List with one entry per team: position, team, id, logo, matches (played) and fairplay (percentage).
squads	Players and staff per team, keyed by team ID (see below). Not stored in the recorder.

squads looks like this:

"378177":
  players:
    - name: Jan Janssens
      matches: 8        # matches played according to the match sheets
      goals: 0
  staff:
    - name: Piet Peeters
      function: T1      # T1, T2, Officiële Team Afgevaardigde, ...

Privacy. Squads contain the names that RBFA publishes on the public team page, which for youth teams are the names of children. The attribute is kept out of the recorder database. Think twice before sharing screenshots or exposing it outside your home.

How and when data is refreshed

• Everything is refreshed every 30 minutes.
• Requests are spaced one second apart; the RBFA website blocks clients that fire bursts.
• The location and referee of the next match are refreshed on every update. Other matches are looked up once, a few per update, nearest first.
• Squads are refreshed at most every 12 hours, one request per team in the series.
• If RBFA is unreachable or blocks a request, the previous data is kept and the update is retried on the next cycle.

Youth series: no ranking, but fair play

For the youngest age groups (7 to 12 years in Flanders) the football federations deliberately do not publish scores or a ranking. RBFA still returns the list of teams, so for those series:

• position is simply the order in which RBFA lists the teams, not a real standing;
• goals stays empty;
• fairplay is filled in. After each match the person filling in the match sheet rates both teams on five points: players, supporters, coaches, team delegate and fair play parent. Teams averaging over 80% receive a fair play certificate. More about the fair play standings (Dutch).

In these series the team names from RBFA also end in a short code such as A 2, as in E. Mechelen a/d Maas A 2.

Example cards

All examples are Markdown cards and need no custom cards. Replace the entity IDs with the ones in your installation.

Match card

<table width="100%">
<tr><th colspan=2>{{ states('sensor.reeks') }}</th></tr>
<tr><th colspan=2>
<a href="https://www.rbfa.be/nl/wedstrijd/{{ states('sensor.wedstrijd_id') }}">{{ as_timestamp(states('sensor.start')) | timestamp_custom('%d-%m-%y om %H:%M uur') }}</a>
</th></tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><img src="{{ state_attr('sensor.thuis', 'entity_picture') }}" width="64"></td>
<td align="center"><img src="{{ state_attr('sensor.uit', 'entity_picture') }}" width="64"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">{{ states('sensor.thuis') }}</td>
<td align="center">{{ states('sensor.uit') }}</td>
</tr>
<tr><td align="center" colspan="2">{{ states('sensor.locatie') | replace("\n", ", ") }}</td></tr>
<tr><td align="center" colspan="2">Scheidsrechter: {{ states('sensor.scheidsrechter') }}</td></tr>
</table>

Ranking card

Uses the ranking attribute of the series sensor and the baseid attribute (your team ID) to print your own team in bold:

type: markdown
title: Ranking
content: >-
  {% set sensor = "sensor.reeks" %}
  **{{ states(sensor) }}**

  {% for item in state_attr(sensor, "ranking") or [] %}
  {{ item.position }}. {% if item.id == state_attr(sensor, "baseid") %}**{{ item.team }}**{% else %}{{ item.team }}{% endif %}
  {% endfor %}

Fair play card

Sorts the teams of the series by fair play percentage:

type: markdown
title: Fair play
content: >-
  {% set sensor = "sensor.reeks" %}
  {% for item in (state_attr(sensor, "ranking") or [])
     | selectattr("fairplay", "number")
     | sort(attribute="fairplay", reverse=true) %}
  {{ loop.index }}. {% if item.id == state_attr(sensor, "baseid") %}**{{ item.team }}**{% else %}{{ item.team }}{% endif %} — {{ item.fairplay }}% ({{ item.matches }} matches)
  {% endfor %}

Squad card

Lists the players and staff of your own team. Use another team ID instead of baseid to show an opponent, for example state_attr('sensor.thuis', 'id').

type: markdown
title: Squad
content: >-
  {% set sensor = "sensor.reeks" %}
  {% set squad = (state_attr(sensor, "squads") or {}).get(state_attr(sensor, "baseid"), {}) %}
  **Players**

  {% for p in (squad.players or []) | sort(attribute="matches", reverse=true) %}
  - {{ p.name }} — {{ p.matches }} matches{% if p.goals %}, {{ p.goals }} goals{% endif %}

  {% endfor %}
  **Staff**

  {% for s in squad.staff or [] %}
  - {{ s.name }} ({{ s.function }})

  {% endfor %}

Automation: reminder before the match

alias: Match reminder
triggers:
  - trigger: calendar
    event: start
    entity_id: calendar.rbfa_378177   # your RBFA calendar
    offset: "-02:00:00"
actions:
  - action: notify.notify
    data:
      title: "⚽ {{ trigger.calendar_event.summary }}"
      message: "Kick-off in 2 hours at {{ trigger.calendar_event.location | replace('\n', ', ') }}"
mode: single

Updates

New versions are published as GitHub releases. HACS checks for them automatically and shows an update in Settings → Updates.

Install updates automatically

HACS creates an update entity for the integration (e.g. update.rbfa_update). This automation installs new versions at night and restarts Home Assistant:

alias: Auto-update RBFA
triggers:
  - trigger: time
    at: "04:00:00"
conditions:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: update.rbfa_update
    state: "on"
actions:
  - action: update.install
    target:
      entity_id: update.rbfa_update
  - delay: "00:01:00"
  - action: homeassistant.restart
mode: single

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause and fix
"Team … not found on rbfa.be"	Team IDs change every season. Look up the new ID in the URL of the team page and add the integration again.
"request blocked by the RBFA firewall"	The RBFA API sits behind a firewall that blocks requests that do not look like they come from the website. The integration sends browser-like requests and limits itself to a few calls per update; it retries automatically. Open an issue if it keeps happening.
Sensors are missing	They are disabled by default; enable them on the integration page.
position looks alphabetical, goals is empty	That series has no published ranking or scores, see Youth series.
squads or ranking is missing	Show ranking is off, or the first refresh after a restart is still running (squads take one request per team).
Location or referee is empty	RBFA has not published it yet; it is picked up on a later update.

Debug logging:

logger:
  logs:
    custom_components.rbfa: debug

Releasing a new version (maintainers)

1. Change the code.
2. Bump version in custom_components/rbfa/manifest.json (e.g. 1.2.0 → 1.2.1).
3. Push to main. The Release workflow creates tag v1.2.1 and a GitHub release with generated notes; HACS users then see the update.

License

MIT