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Best iPhone Apps for Soccer
When we’re talking about soccer in this article we’re talking about the original use of the term and that’s football – or specifically English football, not to be confused with other meanings for football.
So, when you’re looking for an iPhone app for football ideally you’d like one that streams live premiership football matches straight into your iPhone or iPad.
Well, that’s not really going to happen. There are European and South American channels which air live Saturday matches, but whether they can be fed and watched live on your tablet or smartphone is another question. Well, where there’s a will there’s a way, right?!
The next best thing are highlights. You can either go to somewhere like footytube and chance it whether it’s in your language or available to your country, or – try one of the free apps below.
ESPN Soccernet
Price: Free
For world soccer and that includes English football, for a free app, ESPN Soccernet seems to win hands down. Highlights-wise, you’ll have to wait a few days before they’re shown, but when it comes to free push button notifications from the latest score in whatever matches you choose, podcast and global coverage of games, all the news from all the tables, some live commentary and club profiles – ESPN seems to be the most comprehensive app for iPhones and smartphones. The new version of this app comes in Spanish. It gets excellent reviews.
Live Scores – Absolute Radio
Price: Free
With this app you don’t get live streaming coverage of football commentary of individual matches, but you do get live commentary from DJs who comment on snippets of matches as the day unfolds.
You also get the latest team news and all the relevant info from Absolute Radio with Ian Wright, the ex-Arsenal player delivering podcasts.
It does pretty much what its feature page says it does, just limited to the Barclays Premier League – it doesn’t cover international leagues.
Cool interface with minimal ads.
Sports 606
Price: Free
One of the saving graces of the internet and now iPhones and tablets are that sometimes, just sometimes, you can be living 9000 miles away and still have the opportunity to tune into an English football match and listen to live commentary.
With the BBC you have all these “due to contractual obligations" restrictions, but with Sports 606 you don't.
This app doesn’t stream radio but when you are using it and you are getting all the latest updates and scores being fed in from BBC Sport, you have the option to link directly to the 606 website and tune in.
You need to be online obviously, but this is a useful free soccer app.
Eurosport
Price: Free
Recent changes to this app have made it less popular but seeing as it’s free and was once extremely well-regarded, it’s worth a brief review.
Firstly, this app is still of great value even if the latest upgrade has stuck ads in place of where the shortcut buttons used to be. Those were useful, because you could jump around easily.
It does look a tad like one of Facebook's apps, but aside from these grievances, it’s pretty useful.
You get over 30 new videos and stories fed in from this site each day with all the latest sports and not just football.
One plus about Eurosport is it’s allowed to show goals scored in certain competitions which wouldn’t be allowed to screen on the BBC in your own country.
It will be useful also for the upcoming Euro 2012 Championship in Poland and the Ukraine as some matches will run live.
ESPN will also be streaming live matches online so keep an eye out for them.