Smart Alerts watch live matches and fire the minute something happens on the pitch. Pre-match alerts work on the other side of kickoff. Instead of live stats, they look at what's known before a ball is kicked — Goal Guru's own prediction, each team's recent form, the head-to-head record, and the bookmaker odds — and pick out the upcoming matches that match your conditions.
A typical pre-match alert reads like a sentence: "the model gives over 2.5 goals at least 60%, and both teams have scored in at least 70% of their last 5 matches." Every match that meets every condition lands in your alert.
Four Kinds of Conditions
- Goal Guru prediction: match result, both teams to score, over/under 0.5 to 3.5 goals, first- and second-half goal lines, team goal lines, first team to score, and expected goals.
- Team form: the last 3, 5, or 10 matches — either all of them, or only those at the same venue as this one. Rates (wins, draws, losses, over-goal lines, both teams scored, clean sheets, failed to score) and averages (goals, corners, shots, shots on target, dangerous attacks, possession, xG, xG conceded, yellow cards, fouls).
- Head to head: all previous meetings, or only the ones at this ground — win, draw, and loss rates, clean sheets, failing to score, both teams scored, over-goal rates, and average goals.
- Bookmaker odds: match result, double chance, draw no bet, both teams to score, total goals, team total goals, and the first-half result.
Each condition can point at the home team, the away team, the favourite, the underdog, either team, or both teams, and uses "at least", "at most", or "between". You can combine up to five conditions in one alert, and a match only fits when all of them hold.
Choose When You Hear About It
Each alert has one schedule, so it's always clear when it reports:
- Daily summary: at a time you pick (in 30-minute steps), one notification lists the matches of the next 24 hours that fit.
- Before kickoff: a reminder 3 hours, 1 hour, or 30 minutes before each matching game starts — useful when lineups and late odds moves matter to you.
Start From a Template
You don't have to build an alert from a blank page. Templates cover the patterns people look for most often, and each one is a normal alert you can edit afterwards:
- Goals expected and High expected goals — the model expects over 2.5, or 3 or more, goals.
- Both teams to score — the model likes it, and both sides have been scoring and conceding.
- Favourite in form, Underdog with a chance, and Home fortress — form and the model pointing the same way.
- First-half goal, Corner-heavy teams, and Tight, low-scoring game.
- Head-to-head goal fest, Draw-prone rivalry, and Head-to-head dominance — built on how the two teams' meetings usually go.
See Which Matches Fit Right Now
While you edit an alert, you can ask Goal Guru which upcoming matches fit it at that moment. It's the quickest way to tell whether your conditions are too strict (nothing fits) or too loose (half the weekend fits) before you save.
Where the Matches Show Up
Matches picked by a pre-match alert appear in your alerts inbox, which now holds every kind of alert in one list with a filter by kind. They also show in the Smart Matches strip on My Matches for 24 hours, each with the alert that picked it, and inside the match's own details screen, so you can see which of your pre-match alerts flagged it.
Three Kinds of Alerts, One Inbox
- Smart alerts watch every live match for your conditions.
- Match alerts watch one match you pick — open a match, go to its Smart Alerts tab, and tap "Alert me for this match".
- Pre-match alerts look at upcoming matches before kickoff.
Pre-match alerts and match alerts are part of the Guru plan, with no limit on how many you keep — see Pricing for the full comparison. For a step-by-step walkthrough, read our guide to pre-match alerts.