Goal.com Mobile - Football

Summary

For anyone that knows me it’s a known fact that I happen to be a hardcore soccer fan. I have to admit that I invest a lot of time in my obsession with the sport. Growing up in the Sates, I wasn’t always able to find people who shared my passion for the beautiful game. There are surely readers out there that couldn’t care less about the sport, but given the fact that European soccer season is in full swing and the MLS is wrapping up soon, I thought it would be a great time to review a soccer app.
Goal.com has come out with an app version of the popular soccer website. Read on to discover some of the advantages of this app.

Goal.com offers you a huge news archive for anything even remotely soccer-related. It also provides you with a built-in live scoreboard for the most important European leagues, including the UEFA Champions League and the Europa League.
You can access news and live scores for the following leagues:
England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and USA. Champions League and Europe League are also included. I shouldn’t forget to mention that the South American Copa Libertadores.

News Feed:

The news displayed is well written and always up-to-date. Goal.com is obviously the information source. Most news is displayed with a small photo, which you can choose to turn off if you’re saving on data traffic. I can send or share any article directly via the app. You’ve got your usual communities and sharing options via email etc.

Live Scores:

In this section you can keep an eye on live soccer action sorted by your favorite leagues. Besides keeping up with the actual score, you are updated on cards, substitutions and fouls. It’s amazing what a great resource Goal.com really is. Just click on any player to view his jersey number, position, height, weight and nationality. That’s a lot of detailed information for a phone app. For every game, it tells you the local time, date and stadium name.
My only problem with the live scores is that there aren’t any live notifications during a game. I have to keep the live scores screen open in order to follow the score of a particular game. So as soon as I close the app, I stop receiving any notifications about a game. I find that to be really unfortunate.

Featured:

I find this section to be for advertisement purposes only. All you can do is download random apps from that screen. I find this section to be a bit weird and I don’t feel like wasting more time on it.

Club News:
Here your news feed is divided according to clubs and countires. Depending on which version of the app you select (English UK, English America or International), you’ll be able to look at news about Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and the US National Team. Unfortunately, you can’t customize your selection according to your favorite national teams or clubs.

More:

Here you’ve got news as far as the eye can see. This time around you it’s actually sorted by league and competition.
Here you can look at all the supported leagues as well as extra sections like the Transfer Zone, Daily Deal, My Teams and Saved News.

Once I’ve selected a specific league, I can view any relevant news as well as current results and standings. By clicking on Save, I can save news articles and live scores. By going to My Teams I can select my favorite clubs and see all of their latest results, which can be sorted by month. Unfortunately, the app would display results from way back in May 2010 for some inexplicable reason. That should be fixed pronto.

The little things are what make this app superior to other apps of this kind. I am free to adjust the text size at any time. I can download all the latest news with one click and read them offline. All the ads are embedded into the app.
A big problem: Not everything seems to be getting updated regularly. When I tried looking at team news about Bayern Munich, no news items were listed. I tried getting an explanation from the developers, but I didn’t receive any response from them.

Bottom Line:

Goal.com makes a really good first impression with its amazing selection of soccer info. Unfortunately, the app is still a little rough around the edges in some respects. It’s disappointing considering how good the app is otherwise.

The app is well laid out and easy to use. Obviously, it’s hard to keep all leagues and teams under one roof and Goal.com does a really job of it. The app also includes a neat little widget for your home screen. I found it a bit surprising to have “World Cup 2010” greet me at start-up. That’s a thing of the past now. I tried contacting to developers about the issue, but yet again nobody replied.

Bottom Line:
The layout of the app along with the widget deserves nothing less than 5 stars. The whole thing is well-designed and extremely functional.
 

Nothing to complain about here. The news loads instantly even with a slow mobile internet connection, although some of the photos may take a little more time. The app didn’t crash single time while I was using it on my Milestone.

Goal.com is available for free from the Android market.