football mad

A friend of mine is looking for some help - he wondered if any of you might chip in - here's what he's after:

We need to find the best football related websites in the world. Where do people go if they are into football? They can be manufacturer brands, TV channel brands, website brands, blogs, fanzines, magazines, newspapers, content providers – anything that you think is worth looking at if you’re into football.

Anyone got any suggestions? (And we mean football as in soccer, not as in gridiron). One randomly selected commenter will win a reasonably desirable football-related prize.

thanks for this.

Comments

[doug]

for a fans perspective, try rivals.net - they host unofficial fansites for most (all?) professional (and some non-league) clubs in England

[henry lambert]

try: http://www.arseblog.com/WP/index.php
also the CP FC BBS is meant to be good: http://www.cpfc.org/

[Rodney Tanner]

A bit obvious, but a good place to start. It takes you to all the teams. Good chat forums and instant commentaries.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/default.stm

[Clay Parker Jones]

Yesterday on NPR's Fresh Air, there was a report about YouTube becoming a place where football/soccer nuts go to pass their hours.

[Guscasas]

I’m a Brazilian so when the subject is football, we just can’t help ourselves.
Football is much more then a sport here, so I think is very useful to you know our point of view. This is great places to get football information, especially about Latin America.
Ps: I’m afraid that the major number of then are in Portuguese
So I’m also posting here a website translator, I hope this can help! http://www.systranbox.com/systran/box?id=AOL

Media:
http://www.lancenet.com.br/index.htm in Portuguese
Brazilian newspaper only about sports (95% football)
http://www.ole.clarin.com/ in Spanish
Argentine newspaper only about sports (95% football)
http://www.as.com/futbol/index.html in Spanish
Spain newspaper only about sports (80% football)
http://www.trivela.com/default.asp in Portuguese
Magazine about football
http://globoesporte.globo.com/ESP/Home/0,,4274,00.html in Portuguese
The Globo television (one of the biggest media holdings in Brazil) show about sports

Blogs:

http://cyresinc.blogspot.com/ (this is Portuguese but there is option to translate to English)

http://globoesporte.globo.com/ESP/Home/0,,6190,00.html in Portuguese

http://www.lancenet.com.br/blogs/blog_brasileirao/ in Portuguese
(Only about Brazilian championship)

http://www.spfc1935.blogger.com.br/ in Portuguese
(About the best team ever and he’s one of the few here in Brazil who works his name as a brand)

http://globoesporte.globo.com/ESP/Home/0,,6190,00.html in Portuguese

Gooooooooooolllllllllllll

[tw]

I know many people in the US read the Guardian's coverage - I've never even heard mention of the other papers for online football coverage.
http://football.guardian.co.uk

More prosaically, there's http://www.soccertv.com, which is invaluable.

[Jorge]

These are two (worth reading) soccer blogs
http://www.valechumbar.com/
( from Argentine)
http://www.notasdefutbol.com/
( from Spain)

[Oakie]

How about these?

www.eatfootball.net
www.football365.com
www.4thegame.com

[simon darwell-taylor]

Far from being the best in the world but this year, for the World Cup Finals Big Picture created stattostatto http://simonandrews.typepad.com/stattostatto/

as a place for football fans to find out where to go to watch games with an expat community in London.

I mention it because it was a very different type of offering and was created for and by fans of football. Obviously only ran for the duration of the finals

[Organic frog]

Some French ones:

http://www.sofoot.com/
http://www.lequipe.fr/
http://www.eurosport.fr/
http://blogs.tf1.lci.fr/blogs/ppraud/infos/
http://www.sofoot.com/blog/gol_do_brasil/

[j]

asiaplate.com

Live football without the sky subscription.

The 'programs' only work on PC though.

I wrote something about it sometime ago

http://adsareboring.blogspot.com/2006/09/watch-more-tv.html

[MW]

In Sweden I would recommend:

Svenskafans.com
Fantv.com

[Matt Bunk]

I think this is an awesome site. Not about pro leagues, but really shows the spirit of the sport. I don't belong to this club, but I wish I did.

http://chinatownsoccerclub.com/

[beeker]

http://lrblog.typepad.com/

John Lancaster for London Review of Books.
Best football writing I've read. It was specifically for the World Cup, but still up.

[James]

I found http://www.SoccerBlog.com a few months ago and liked it so much that I've contributed a few posts. It's a great source for us impoverished North American fans of the beautiful game.

[Julian]

I am partial to ESPN's Soccernet site:

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/

It has good coverage of the Premiership, Serie A, Bundesliga, etc., as well as the European Cup and the Champion's League. I'm an Arsenal fan, and have found its team coverage pretty extensive (at least as much as I need it to be). And it's also US-friendly -- we're a country that doesn't fully comprehend any sport where you're not supposed to hit people all the time, and this site makes soccer a bit more approachable.