Into The Swing – European Football Preview with Liberty Shield VPN

We’re back with a weekend European Preview, taking a look at the best action on offer from the Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Serie A and La Liga. The major European football leagues are streamed live by a selection of channels including Sky Sports, BT Sport, Amazon Prime and La Liga TV.

ll four leagues are well into the swing of the season and with the exception of Ligue 1, where PSG have already began to leave the field trailing in their wake, they are all nicely condensed with good title races potentially set to develop in Italy and Spain. Bayern will, in all likelihood, win the Bundesliga at a canter but at this early stage of the season we can at least dream of an Erling Haaland powered BVB pulling off the upset title win. Fun Fact: European Football VPN is one of the most searched terms on Google.

Our European Football VPN articles are brought to you in partnership with EPL Index, and Dave Hendrick – host of the Two Footed Podcast, offering FREE podcasts to football fans.

UK TV and video streaming rights for 2021/22 season (excludes unofficial IPTV streaming services who will show footage from other broadcasters):

• Premier League – Sky Sports, BT Sport & Amazon Prime
• Bundesliga – Sky Sports
• Ligue 1 – BT Sport
• Serie A – BT Sport
• La Liga – Amazon Prime & La Liga TV
• SPFL – Sky Sports & BT Sport

There’s been some great feelgood stories in the early part of the season, such as Rayo Vallecano sitting 5th in La Liga, Angers holding the same position in the Ligue 1 table, Freiburg matching them in the Bundesliga and the delightful Fiorentina resurgence seeing them also occupy 5th in Serie A. Can those teams maintain this early season form over the course of a 38 game season (34 in the Bundesliga) or will they regress to the mean? We’ll likely find out over the next five to six weeks, but it’s an interesting thing to keep track of.

Anyway, into this weeks games.

⚽ Atletico Madrid vs Barcelona
🇪🇸 La Liga
📅 Saturday 2 October 2021
⏰ 2000 UK Kick-Off
🖥️ La Liga TV

Depending on your allegiances the demise of Barcelona will either leave you feeling upset or warm and fuzzy. The club who flittered away billions over the past decade and now find themselves £1.2billion in the red were humbled in Lisbon by Benfica on Wednesday night and patience is wearing thin with manager Ronald Koeman. The former Barcelona legend has done himself no favours with his brash attitude, treatment of players and Pulis-esque style of play. That Barcelona are playing Luuk De Jong upfront in meaningful matches tells you all you need to know.

With a strange blend of players who are well past their best, young players who aren’t ready for the roles they’ve been cast in, players who simply aren’t good enough for Barcelona and countless failed signings who they’ve been unable to sell, there’s very little about this Barcelona squad that inspires hope in the short term. Frenkie DeJong and Memphis Depay are outstanding but other than goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, who has suffered a dip in form, there’s nobody else who can contribute who doesn’t qualify for one of the four groups mentioned above bar Ronald Araujo who can’t hold the defense together by himself. ter Stegen, Araujo, DeJong and Memphis do potentially give Barcelona something of a spine to build from, with young superstars Pedri and Ansu Fati adding to what could become a strong 11. But that’s six players. And the ones being asked to fill the other five spots just aren’t getting the job done.

A defeat to Atleti could, and probably should, see the end of the Ronald Koeman era at Barcelona but filling the hot seat won’t be easy. There’s not a lot to work with, no money to spend and the La Masia, once an unmatched production line of talent, is in need of an overhaul as well.

Diego Simeone must be looking at the situation and laughing. There is no manager under less pressure in Europe than El Cholo. A God amongst men when it comes to his club and fanbase, he could likely finish in midtable every season for the next decade and still never hear a hint of a boo. He’d surely love nothing more than to send Barca further down the path to explosion.

 

⚽ Stade Rennes vs PSG
🇫🇷 Ligue 1
📅 Sunday 3 October 2021
⏰ 1200 UK Kick-Off
🖥️ BT Sport Live Streaming

It would be easy to talk about PSG, they have the name talent. Messi, Mbappe, Neymar and so on. They’re running away with the title and defeated Manchester City in the Champions League during the week. They’re a great team and everyone knows it.

Less known is how much fun Rennes can be to watch. Even after losing the incredible Eduardo Camavinga in the summer, they still have a quality team. They did very clever business in the summer, signing Baptiste Santamaria and Loic Bade among others, but their big move, the one that flew somewhat under the radar, was the signing of Kamaldeen Sulemana. The Ghanian attacker is one of the best young players in Europe, and one of the least well known. Having come through the Right to Dream system and made his way to Europe with Nordsjaelland, he impressed all who saw him during his debut year and earned a big money move abroad. Rennes stole him from under the nose of Ajax with the intention of pairing him with their other young star, Jeremy Doku, in what should potentially develop into a frightening wing combo. Doku has missed most of the season with a hamstring injury meaning the duo have only played together twice but there’s an air of anticipation around what the pair could become when the Belgian returns.

For now, tune in to watch Sulemana. And the likes of Mbappe and co.

 

⚽ Bayern Munich vs Eintracht Frankfurt
🇩🇪 Bundesliga
📅 Sunday 3 September 2021
⏰ 1630 UK Kick-Off
🖥️ Sky Sports Live Streaming

After a very poor run of results in pre-season, and a very fortunate draw against Borussia Monchengladbach on the opening day of the season, Bayern looked like they may have to walk among the mortals this season and actually have to fight to win the Bundesliga title. Such talk was unwarranted, and the Bavarian giants have rattled off nine straight wins in the league, Champions League and both domestic cups to get their season on the track we all expected it to take.

Julian Nagelsmann is still trying to find the right combination in defense, but he seems to have the attack firing by simply moving Leroy Sane back to the left wing and using Serge Gnabry on the right wing. Who knew that playing players in the positions they perform best in, rather than the positions they enjoy the most, could work? Sane, almost written off by some after his time under Hansi Flick, has already shown more than a few flashes of rediscovering the form that made him so devastating for Manchester City before his knee injury. With Thomas Muller still doing Thomas Muller things, and Robert Lewandowski still being superhuman in front of goal, Bayern have the fire power to devastate any defense. With a great goalkeeper and midfield pairing in place, it really is just that defense, and in particular the right back spot, that remains a question mark for them.

Eintracht have not started the season well so this isn’t the ideal time for them to face Bayern but maybe Oliver Glasner’s men can pull off the upset and the new manager can finally secure his first league win since taking over in the summer. Through six games, they have drawn five and failed to score more than one goal in any of the last five games. They have looked strong defensively, but the failure to properly replace Andre Silva in the summer has caused them to look a little blunt in attack. This will be a big test of a team that came into the season expecting to challenge for European places again. I wonder if Glasner regrets his decision to leave Wolfsburg after leading them to a Champions League spot this past season.

 

⚽ Atalanta vs AC Milan
🇮🇹 Serie A
📅 Sunday 3 October 2021
⏰ 1945 UK Kick-Off
🖥️ BT Sport Live Streaming

You could watch Fiorentina vs Napoli at 4.30pm, but the game I’d recommend is this one. Atalanta might not score goals at the same rate they did two seasons ago but they remain one of the most interesting and entertaining clubs in Europe and rarely feature in a dull match. Gasperini sets his team up to play attacking football, regardless of the opposition, regardless of form and regardless of who’s available to him. It’s admirable, even if it can cost them at times. They have made a decent start to the season, both in Serie A and the Champions League but haven’t quite clicked in attack just yet, scoring only eleven goals in their eight matches across Serie A and the Champions League. They are yet to score more than two goals in any game which is a stark contrast to a team that scored three or more on 21 occasions across all competitions last season. The good news is that have been more solid defensively, which has enabled them to secure two one-nil victories already this season, something they managed just three times in all of last season across a total of 51 games.

Milan have made a good start to a season in which they have a real chance at winning their first Serie A title in a decade. With Inter having lost Lukaku, Hakimi and Antonio Conte, and Juventus still trying to figure out what they are in the post-Cristiano era under the returning Max Allegri, Milan boast continuity and a settled squad that their rivals could not. They currently sit second in the table, two points off Napoli who have made a perfect start in Serie A but will believe that they have the quality necessary to outlast the team they still believe stole their title in 1990. Milan’s only dropped points this season where in their away game to Juventus where they secured a 1-1 draw. A similar result in Bergamo wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. While they would lose a bit of ground on Napoli in the short term, Napoli are yet to visit Milan, Turin, Rome or Bergamo this season so Milan will be confident that those points can be made back up in the coming weeks.

 

With these and plenty of other games taking place around Europe this weekend, there’s no shortage of football available if you decide you’d rather not watch Premier League games outside those of your own club, or indeed at all. For alternative ways to watch them online, Liberty Shield can help you. Click here and find out how.

 

How to watch every European Football match from anywhere…

How can I watch BT Sport 2021/22 season matches live?

As well as the FA Cup VPN, BT Sport has the rights to just over 50 Premier League fixtures during the 2020/21 campaign, and will also carry coverage of the UEFA Champions’ League and Europa League until 2024. Subscribers can watch BT Sport on their computers as well as their various apps on connected devices. They do offer a Monthly Pass with no contract, which will give customers access to the BT Sport mobile app. BT Sport Box Office will no longer show the matches via the now scrapped pay-per-view offering, but is it too late and have customers already moved towards illegal streams and IPTV providers?

Remember that BT Sport also features coverage from the Ligue 1, and holds rights to Moto GP, UFC and WWE coverage as well.  After a long delay the BT Sport app is now available on several models of Smart TV as well as Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices.