MOST FOOTBALL portals usually have some coverage of the Champions'League more or less prominently housed somewhere on their site. Onthe best of them the information is just a couple of clicks away fromthe front page, however others call for a good deal more persistence.
At the end of last month, one of the trophy's main sponsors, Ford,launched a new multilingual site specialising in the Champions'League, Destinationfootball.net, that seems to be working just fineand is definitely worth a look for anyone interested in Europe'spremier club competition.
It is powered by Flash technology, which is usually a recipe fordisaster with over-designed pages and pointless graphics adding up tointerminable download times. However, even through the averagetelephone line this site has been turning in some creditableperformances on the timing front, and the design is pleasantly slick.Unfortunately, the overall look and feel are not consistentthroughout the site.
It has been built and hosted by Eurosport, so on the news front,clicking on the `more' button in a story will open a new window onthe very different looking Eurosport.com site. This can appearjarring for the casual browser but, on the whole, there is nothingwrong with Eurosport's site. In fact it is one of the better placesfor picking up Champions' League content. If it is just news,fixtures, results and reports that you want, you are better offbypassing Destinationfootball and going straight to Eurosport, which,on a good day, will load faster than its partner site.
However, if you are more interested in exploring the team andplayer profiles, competition history, online city guides, ticketinginfo, or online interactive games, head for Destinationfootball firstas that's where the content is stored, and trying to access it fromEurosport will result in having to wait for both sites to load.
A similar doubling up of resources is in operation with therecently relaunched Sportal. It focuses on football, including newsfrom the domestic and major European leagues. There is nospecifically labelled Champions' League section, but choosingfootball from the pull-down menu takes you through to the SportingLife general football page, which does have a Champions' Leaguebutton offering quick access to live scores, details about the drawand fixtures, standings, results and reports.
Back on the Sportal side of the equation, there's also a web radioshow in Windows Media format giving hourly sports reports,interviews, and commentary. Ahead of the FA Cup action over theweekend, most of the eight managers involved could be heard holdingforth about their respective chances. At least that's what the siteblurb said. I couldn't verify it because my media player wouldn'tplay the streamed broadcasts with "network problems", the usual baneof anyone trying to listen to online radio, the principal faultaccording to the player's error reports.
Finally, Uefa, naturally, has a portion of its site given over tothe Champions' League. Its match centre has live coverage, with textand stats updated by the minute. The centre comes in two flavours, anenhanced version with live audio and photographs, and a lightmultimedia-free version for those with connections that phonecompanies ought to be ashamed of charging line rental on.Incidentally, the comprehensive separate stats sections arerecommended for those who are that way inclined.
sport@andyoldfield.com
Site Addresses
Destinationfootball.net
www.destinationfootball.net
Sportal
www.sportal.com
Uefa.com
www.uefa.com/competitions/UCL
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