Wow, this is great news from the team behind one of my favorite websites, FootyTube. In a recent article by Steve Wilson of The Telegraph (UK), FootyTube was named one of the top 25 football sites on the web, despite still being in beta. My many congratulations for all of the hard work! It’s finally starting to pay off.

There are of course a couple of other good spots on the list. Two of my other “must read on a daily basis” tips would be Soccernet, closely followed by BBC Football. You can also read what Lee of FootyTube thoughts are on the list, and what he feel was missed.

A site I didn’t know about, which I found through Lee’s post is Footballfilter, it’s sort of a popurls-clone, a mashup but with football sources only. Being a frequent flyer of the iPhone, I have to give Footballfilter credit for the Instapaper integration (hover over an article and check the right-hand side) as well as the use of RPX (OpenID and data portability). This is the way to go and I love it!

About Footballfilter

FootballFilter is a compilation of the best Football* content available on the internet, including news, blogs, forums, pictures, videos and podcasts. All content is updated automatically so you can quickly scan all the latest stories that are appearing on the web. You can read a summary of each news item by hovering your mouse over the text. To read the full article just click on the link.

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Oh and, here you go Lee. Let me know if you need an even ‘better’ one!

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Closed systems are at the mercy of their creator having guessed at the optimal solution.

- Dick Costello

Before I knew about the top 25 mentioning, this post was going to be on openfooty, FootyTube’s own API (featured below) which is currently in a closed beta.

As of now, openfooty promises to be the most advanced completely free football API available. It offers access to much of the data that powers FootyTube on a daily basis; including fixtures, league tables, team standings, player data, team news, and of course, video. From the sound of it, it sounds as if FootyTube will prevail in this space through opening up their data to developers – something I’m of course in favor of.

I hope it won’t be too long until FootyTube shows us what other fans, users, and developers have created with openfooty. Really looking forward to it!

Klas Ingessons kommentar var lika enkel som självklar: “Nu väntar hårt arbete och jäklar anamma”. Jag lyckades även hitta den här störtsköna bilden på Klabbe tillsammans med Guld-Gary och Pär Zetterberg (frisyren är priceless).

Some of you might have remember that I mentioned the footytube 2.0 beta a while back. Yesterday I got a very nice email from Lee over at footytube, inviting me to take the new version for a test run:

Heya,

A little while ago you signed up to the footytube 2.0 Private Beta.

We are delighted to announce that the beta is now ready, and we would be chuffed to bits if you wanted to come in and be amongst the first people to give it a spin.

I think footytube 2.0 was originally set to launch in November if I remember correctly, the message about the new platform has certainly been up there for a while now. Hopefully it means that they’ve not experienced serious complications, but that they’ve considered and tweaked forth and back for the best possible result.

I’ll have to say that I’m really impressed with the new platform and design at first glance. I haven’t had much time to try out the arsenal of functionality, but it looks beautiful! The first you’re met with is a video grid or ‘Zeitgeist’ which shows what footytube users fancy today. It seems that most functionality is driven by Ajax, something that makes the site clean, fast and easy to navigate. Footytube also seem to have glanced one or two times at YouTube (surprise surprise), ‘borrowing’ not only fractions of the name but also certain functionality. The mandatory widget with related, channels and popular videos are all there, what’s more surprising is perhaps the new added features (very cool!) such as the ‘community opinion on team performance’ and ‘nominate a goal for goal of the week’.

Focused on user interaction, easy navigation, and speed – I’ve no doubt that the new footytube will be a big success. A much cleaner layout and design will definitely help. All the best!

In the background of the court case and preceedings against The Pirate Bay, one of the largest sports streaming forums in the world, MyP2P has been up against C More Entertainment AB. C More Entertainment AB is the Swedish company owned by TV4 Gruppen that is behind (among other things) the Canal+ brand in the Scandinavian countries.

So why is this important or even remotely related? MyP2P is according to themselves the best online Live Sports schedule site, something I would be willing to agree with. I’ve used it many times to stream football which I “should not be able to see” because I don’t have the right channel, the right package, the right digital box, or the right subscription. It’s a simple work around so to speak. How else would I be able to watch the Swedish national team play if I live in Ireland or Australia? Taking my own previous experience with this as an example.

So back to the related part. MyP2P also happens to have one of the most active forums in the world, where users post links to streams from channels around the world. These links can be seen as “copyright infringement” as media corporations lose out on money in subscription and advertising revenue. In the same way as The Pirate Bay connects user A and user B via their tracker, MyP2P connects user A and user B via their forum and TV-schedule.

MyP2P recently won the court case against C More Entertainment, and the question I have is; is this perhaps a peak of what will happen in the Pirate Bay case? All charges dropped? It wouldn’t surprise me.

This is the ruling the Dutch court came with, posted by an Admin in the MyP2P forum:

The Dutch court ruled that C More mistakenly initiated injunction proceedings because the case was to complicated, both factually as well as legally. C More was ordered to repay us all our legal costs. We know it has been a long wait so we would like to thank you for all the support in the past weeks. It was worth it.

Det var 6 år sedan jag hörde om Zarate för första gången. Då diskuterade jag med min vän Micke vem som skulle bli störst av Robinho (då i Santos) och Zarate. En brasse mot en argentinare, Pele mot Maradona. Lazio borde ringt för 6 år sen, då hade jag kunnat svara att de borde köpt Robinho istället.

Keane has issued a statement, which read: ‘I would like to place on record my thanks to the board, players and fans of Tottenham for the past six years, which were the best and most enjoyable of my career to date.

‘I will never forget them. I would specifically like to thank chairman Daniel Levy for understanding, that, as a fan, joining Liverpool is a lifelong dream of mine and one I couldn’t let pass me by.”

One can only expect that Keane will join the likes of Gerrard, Torres and Carragher as the players who is not likely to rotate as much as other players during a season. Keane is most likely to take on the role that Gerrard has been hosting the past season, as an extra attacker behind Torres. This of course leaves Gerrard in a more central, commanding and playmaking role in midfield, allowing Liverpool to be more offensive than in past seasons. I really hope this is what’s going to happen. I also really hope that this indeed proves to be a solid buy.

Micke poängterade förövrigt att han hade fått sig en tankeställare angående Sveriges insats, den var mycket intressant, även om det knappast är en tröst för hur värdelösa (eller?) vi egentligen var mot Ryssarna. Here goes;

“Ryssland möter Spanien i semifinal imorgon, Holländarna blev ju förnedrade på samma sätt som Sverige mot Ryssland, innan dess hade de slagit Frankrike och Italien enkelt. Sverige föll på övertid mot Spanien. Både Spanien och Ryssland som möts i semi gick vidare från Sveriges grupp. Spanien vann dessutom ganska enkelt, i alla fall på pappret mot Ryssland i en av EMs mest underhållande matcher so far. Frågan lyder alltså: hur dåliga var egentligen Sverige? Var det inte bara Ryssland (och Spanien) som helt enkelt var skitbra?”

Han är inte så dum som han ser ut den där Micke.

Who will go where? That’s the big question. Real Madrid and Chelsea are of course in the race of all mentioned players (as reported by the press, yeah) – while Liverpool and Manchester City are also being connected with a lot of them. I wouldn’t say no if Liverpool bought Villa, Silva, Van Der Vaart, Arshavin and Pavlychenko – however that budget is most likely to only exist in dream land. Even so, I’d settle for only Silva.

Sveriges trupp är 69 år äldre än Ryssarnas, det märktes minst sagt. Ryssland var snabbare, hungrigare och sprang både smartare, längre och snabbare än svenskarna. Det såg ut som det brukar göra i kvalen mot blåbärsnationerna – vi hade inget eget spel. Fast å andra sidan, återigen; full eloge Ryssland – de var riktigt bra, och Arshavin som var tillbaka efter avstängning var överlägset bäst på planen. Tänk om vi hade Rysslands ytterbackar istället för en trupp bestående av Stoor, Alexandersson och Mikael Nilsson (vad gör de två sista i truppen överhuvudtaget förresten?), då skulle det kanske sett annorlunda ut. Överhuvudtaget hade vi inte en enda person på planen som kunde slå ett inlägg. Det var egentligen vår enda chans kändes det som. Lyfta långt in mot Ryssarna och försöka vinna lite andrabollar, tyvärr slog vi varken några lyckade inlägg, eller vann en enda andraboll.

Att spela med två defensiva mittfältare var kanske genialt på pappret, men då ingen av dem markerade Arshavin eller den döda ytan framför vår backlinje – var det kanske inte lika genialt. Det är dags att föryngra, om det är Lagerbäck eller någon annan som gör det bryr jag mig inte om, men med det här laget kommer vi aldrig nå längre än kvartsfinal. När vi inte ens gör det är det dags att ta drastiska åtgärder. Jag har inget emot om Alexandersson, Daniel Andersson, Micke Nilsson etc slutar i landslaget. Jag har inget emot om Ljungberg lämnar över kaptensbindeln till någon annat. Jag har inte heller något emot om Lagerbäck lämnar över. Jag svär alltid över honom. Skillnaden den här gången är att det är befogat.

Summeringen av matchen idag lämnar jag över till en av mina bröder: “Sverige suger!”