Well, to be fair you’re looking for English soccer scores on an American sports site. Proportionally very few of the site’s readers are interested in footie results, especially those from outside the USA. Of course ESPN might be well served to improve their Euro sports content, but it is what it is now.
Additionally, there’s surely a learning curve on any website, especially one that tries to be a portal to all things sports.
For example in order to achieve the goal you were looking for there’s a much easier way to go about it. Two actually:
Scroll down the home page to the “Soccer” section of the headlines. Select from the header “scores” and on that page select “Championship” from the “Jump to Scores” drop down. Done.
Select “Scoreboards” from the “Soccer” menu. Then select the “Championship” option from the “Jump to Scores” dropdown. Done.
Well, I was talking about the old format being easier to use, not this one. But it took me five seconds to get the scores from today. Just hit the “Soccer” drop down and clicked on “Scoreboard.”
It gives me the scores from the Africa Cup of Nations games played today, plus the score from the Westham-Fulham game in the Premiership. If I want yesterday’s scores (Sunday’s) I click on the link to Sunday. Then I get African Cup of Nations, English Premier, Scottish Premier, Spanish Primera, Serie A, etc. I see that Chelsea tied Carlton and Man U defeated Liverpool.
I dunno, it was all intuitive for me.
Plus, as Omniscient said, it’s a US site for US sports.
That’s funny. The title bar says “ESPN: The Worldwide Leader in Sports”. That it is an American company is no more meaningful than if you were to tell me that CNN is ‘American news’. Admittedly, www.espn.co.uk redirects to Soccernet, but this doesn’t avoid what I see as basic design flaws.
Why?
[quoute]1) Scroll down the home page to the “Soccer” section of the headlines. …
[/quote]
If the page requires scrolling just to find basic navigation buttons, it’s too big.
Eh, I’m past the whole “below the fold” web design philosophy. I think designers try too hard to get content to the top of the screen to the detriment of the overall layout and flow. Gone are the days before scroll mice. I prefer more content.
Not to defend the website too much, but I don’t see the basic design flaw that you’re talking about.
Go to espn.com and along the top there are nav bars for each sport. Roll over the “Soccer” on then go to “Scoreboard” on the drop down menu. Boom. Today’s scores.