In less than one month, the next round of qualifying matches for the European Championship begins with England taking on Estonia, Scotland against Ukraine, Ireland against Germany, and the big match – England away to Russia on the plastic pitch, which could seal the destiny or fate of the England national team. To whet your appetite for the matches (to be played on October 13 and 17), here’s an interesting find by EPL Talk reader Jeffyhash (aka Unoriginal_name):

I was just reading your post about international matches on CCTV, and it reminded me of something I found earlier during the qualifying tournament. UEFA alongside a company called Sportfive has launched a service to watches Euro qualifying matches on line. I found it through a link on the UEFA’s Euro 2008 website. The site is at euro2008.videosport.com

It’s still a pay site (no matches are for free), but the prices are much more reasonable. They’ve broken down the pricing into four different schemes:

2 euros (roughly $2.75) can get you either a single match of your choice on delay OR can get you the 10-minute highlight packages of all available matches played on the day. Delayed matches are usually available about a half-hour to an hour after the match ends. The pass last 24 hours from the first video you watch.

5 euros (not quite $7) can get you a single match of your choice live. You also have the option to watch it again delayed for up to 24 hours.

6 euros (about $8.25) allows you to watch anything on the site for 24 hours live or delayed. All live matches, all delayed matches, and all highlight packages.

I’ll also note that JumpTV, which is a North American Internet broadcaster of a variety of ethnic TV stations, also carries the same matches, but has their prices in US dollars. They price the packages at 2.95, 6.95, and 7.95 in ascending order. That site is at euro2008.jumptv.com. I only found this after registering with the original Sportfive site.

I’ve tried the service twice, and the quality is fairly good. Similar to what I remember of my experiences with Setanta Broadband. There are, however, a couple of drawbacks. The big one being not all countries have allowed their matches on the service. Most of the big nations (England, Scotland, Spain, Germany, Holland and Italy) do not make their home games available. However, France, Portugal, and the Czech Republic make their home games available, and any away matches of the above nations are carried if the home team allows (for example: Israel-England was on the service earlier this year).

The other drawback is not all matches have commentators, so you have to watch closely. Most of the bigger matches do get commentary teams usually.