Pre-season Friendlies 2014/15: SOTB’s TV guide

Following a dramatic and widely acclaimed FIFA World Cup in Brazil, attention now turns to the start of the new football season and you can follow a variety of British and European clubs in action as they prepare for the 2014/15 campaign.

With the dust only just starting to settle on a sensational Brazilian World Cup carnival and the celebrations having only just begun in Germany, clubs from the top flight to the lower leagues across Britain and Europe are making their preparations for a long and grueling domestic season ahead.

All the hype and expectation that builds ahead of the new season will be fueled further by a host of pre-season matches and friendly competitions, as well as some crucial European qualifiers, and Sport On The Box presents a comprehensive guide to when and where you can watch your club in action during pre-season.

BT Sport will be screening a dozen live friendly matches in the month building up to the start of the Premier League season, culminating in the mouth-watering Community Shield between Arsenal and Manchester City at Wembley on August 10.

Liverpool, Tottenham, Newcastle and West Ham will also all feature in the build-up to the new campaign, together with the Arsenal-hosted Emirates Cup.

BT Sport’s coverage of the new football season gets under way on July 16 as Liverpool travel to Brondby in Denmark and three days later Brendan Rodgers’ side head to League One Preston North End.

The Reds also face Roma at Boston’s Fenway Park on July 23 before hosting Borussia Dortmund at Anfield on August 10.       

It will be friends reunited in America for Tottenham Hotspur, who play Clint Dempsey’s Seattle Sounders on July 19 and Jermain Defoe’s Toronto FC four days later, with new manager Mauricio Pochettino at the helm. They will also tackle Chicago Fire on July 26.

Newcastle and West Ham are heading to Australia for their pre-season tours with both facing Wellington Phoenix and Sydney FC live on BT Sport in July.

There will be a vast array of talent on show at this year’s Emirates Cup as James Rodriguez’s Monaco, Europa League finalists Benfica and Spanish giants Valencia join Arsenal for the annual tournament, with all four round-robin games televised live on August 2-3.

Concluding the live pre-season action on BT Sport will be the traditional curtain-raiser to the new season – the FA Community Shield – as Arsenal take on Manchester City at Wembley on August 10, again live and exclusive on BT Sport.

Sky Sports will show this summer’s Guinness International Champions Cup, a pre-seson tournament which features eight of Europe’s biggest clubs from four different leagues and takes place across the United States.

The competition begins on July 26 and includes Manchester City, Liverpool and Manchester United from the Premier League together with Real Madrid from La Liga, Inter Milan, AC Milan and Roma from Serie A and Olympiakos from the Greek Super League.

Featuring five of the 2013-14 Ballon D’or nominees, including winner Cristiano Ronaldo, these eight clubs have won a total of 150 domestic league titles, 88 domestic cups and 27 European Cup titles between them, making it the highest amount of football talent ever assembled for a pre-season tournament.

The International Champions Cup will be played in 13 cities across the USA over two weeks during July and August and teams will be divided into two groups, where they will play each other once before the group winners go head-to-head in the final on August 4 from Miami’s Sun Life Stadium.

Ten of the 13 games from the pre-season tournament will be broadcast live on Sky Sports, with the three Manchester United games in the group phase of the competition being broadcast exclusively live on MUTV (see below).

In addition, Sky Sports will be sharing live coverage of the UEFA Super Cup at Cardiff City Stadium between Real Madrid and Sevilla on August 12.

MUTV will be screening five of Manchester United’s pre-season friendlies exclusively live, including its three group matches from the Guinness International Champions Cup tournament in the United States against AS Roma, Inter Milan and Real Madrid.

The Red Devils’ official club TV channel, available via subscription, will be the only place to watch Louis van Gaal’s first games in charge, kicking off with a friendly against MLS team LA Galaxy on July 23 and concluding on August 12 with a fixture against Spanish side Valencia.

Coverage of these five games will all be shown live in high-definition for the first time as MUTV launches an HD service to coincide with the start of the new season and the club’s tour of the USA. 

Premier Sports will be featuring a variety of top European clubs on its channels in the build-up to the new season as it presents a host of live friendly matches, with the majority of them free-to-view for Sky and Virgin customers.

The channel’s line-up is headlined by live coverage of Hearts’ home friendly against Premier League champions Manchester City, which is being staged to celebrate the centenary of the Scottish club’s Tynecastle main stand.

In addition, Premier Sports will also be screening two of Celtic’s pre-season matches against Dynamo Dresden and FC St Pauli, plus friendly matches featuring familiar European sides such as Bayer Leverkusen, Zenit St Petersburg, Galatasary, Werder Bremen and VfB Stuttgart.

ITV4 will be screening live free-to-air coverage of Tottenham Hotspur ‘s final pre-season friendly against German side Schalke on August 9.

Schalke, who finished third in the Bundesliga behind Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund last season, will take on Mauricio Pochettino’s side at White Hart Lane in their last game before the Premier League campaign kicks off a week later.

ITV will also show Gareth Bale’s Real Madrid play Sevilla in the UEFA Super Cup at the Cardiff City Stadium on August 12.

Chelsea TV will have exclusive live coverage of eight of the Blues’ pre-season games live during July and August, giving fans the chance to watch some of the club’s new summer signings in action for the first time.

Matches due to be featured on the subscription channel include friendlies against Wycombe Wanderers, AFC Wimbledon, Werder Bremen and Real Sociedad.

Elsewhere, BBC One Scotland and S4C will be following the progress of Celtic and The New Saints in Europe as they aim to progress through the UEFA Champions League qualifying stages.

Details of all major televised pre-season matches can be found in SOTB’s TV guide below, with further announcements on Champions League and Europa League qualifiers to follow.

Have we missed any live friendlies/qualifiers out? If so, please leave a comment in the section at the bottom of this page.

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