European Club Football
Channel 5's football now consists largely of UEFA Europa League matches, which it has shown throughout its existence and The Uefa Cup/Europa League - this is Channel 5's longest running football commitment showing matches from this every season since 1997-98 starting with Arsenal back in 1997. They showed Aston Villa and Rangers a lot in the early days but would only cover the tournament to a point as BBC or ITV would usually have the rights from the quarter finals onwards. Usually Channel 5 showed these on an ad-hoc basis covering sometimes 3 games in a day from early afternoon to late evening if there were many British clubs playing and showing matches which were not previously build. Since the 2009/10 season, Channel 5 have been the UK’s lead network for Europa League coverage, winning rights to first choice matches in every round and exclusive coverage of the final. They previously held second choice matches and had no final coverage. Matches not covered by Channel 5 are shown on ITV4 or ESPN UK. . from 2009 when they became the main broadcaster they just picked one match usually at 8pm on a Thursday night
It had shown matches involving Chelsea and Newcastle United in the last two seasons of the now-defunct UEFA Cup Winners' Cup. They showed The Cup Winners' Cup in the early days of Channel 5, they showed virtually every Chelsea match in 1997-98 and 1998–99 and also Newcastle when they were in it in 1998
At the start of the twenty-first century Channel 5 would occasionally cover Champions League qualifiers involving British teams. They showed qualifiers of Newcastle in 1997, Liverpool in 2001 and 2004 and Manchester United in 2005.
They showed the FIFA World Club Cup Championships in 2008 which Manchester United won with commentary by Dave Woods and Stan Collymore with the usual UEFA Cup team presenting
Read more about this topic: Football On 5
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