Android Apps
Android gets British invasion of football (soccer) apps
July 27, 2009 | by Andrew Kameka
Free apps
The 2009-2010 season of the English Premiership League begins in a few weeks, and the EPL will have a variety of Android apps available for supporters to follow their favorite clubs. Over the past several weeks, a number of club-centric Android apps have been uploaded to the Android Market. Usual suspects like Arsenal, Chelsea, and Manchester United have apps, but Stoke City, Wigan Athletic, and even Scottish giants Celtic and Rangers get in on the action.
Manchester United has three different apps, some offering news, rumors, and tables for the club. Each app adds on to the list of several apps dedicated to a particular EPL club. FootyFocus.com, UK Android Apps, and Google Phone Apps Devpt are responsible for most of these apps.
Are any of them worth it? That depends. Apps from UK Android Apps cost £0.50 and limit users to only four feeds, which completely defeats the purpose of having the app. Users are better off getting NewsRob, Greed, or another RSS reader and follow our RSS tutorial for getting news feeds. You will not gain anything from this app if you have an RSS reader or FotMob.
However, if you are a Tottenham supporter disinterested in anything not happening at White Hart Lane, apps from Footy Focus are free and may be worth a look. Going to Sky Sports or ESPN Soccernet on your phone typically yields coverage of the top four big name clubs, so these apps can be a good source for gaining more information about a particular club.
Search for your club in the Android Market and a corresponding app may appear. You can also check Android-friendly websites.
It would be cool if these football apps were really good and the paid ones value for money. Unfortunately this is not the case. As an Android Developer I've looked at these apps, most have no real value and just make it more difficult to find quality software.
Andrew Kamata is exactly right when he suggests getting a decent RSS reader, as a lot of these football apps just present RSS information available on the BBC web site, so why pay for that.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a growing market of paid application, but creating cr*p and trying to charge for it really doesn't help anyone.
One of the application publisher mentioned in the article has a list of applications are long as your arm, one for each major European football club, each for 50p and each no doubt presenting information that is more easily and cheaply available elsewhere.
Still waiting for a Leeds one, we have a massive support base and get attendances higher than a lot of Premier League teams
Love the ones from Footyfocus
footyfocus all over
yes, footy focus is easily the best
@Ronnie
Completely agree its a big problem for Android apps as a whole. There are paid for facebooks apps which just open facebook in a browser. WTF!
Check out Soccer Stadium guide – some pretty useful information on there