Get Your Euro Predictions in Now (and Win Stuff!)

There are less than forty-eight hours left before the first kickoff of Euro 2008. Can you believe it?

This also means that there are less than forty-eight hours for you to get your entries in for our Euro 2008 Bracket Predictor Contest. Ian has the contest entries set to shut down shortly before the first game starts, but you don’t want to wait till the last minute. Do it now.

When you visit the site, you’ll see that our tech guys have done an excellent job of making this easy and automated. If you know which teams you want to pick, you can finish in less than five minutes. It’s that easy, and the payoff for guessing correctly is big.

If you didn’t catch the original announcement, here are the details on the contest, and more importantly, on the prizes.

There’s no purchase necessary, no signups or anything like that. All you have to do is predict the final standings of each group, and which teams you expect to see in the quarterfinals, semifinals and final, and who you think will win Euro 2008. There’s a sliding scale of points, from 2 pts for a correct standing in the group stage, to 28 points for correctly predicting the winner. For that winner, we have a £100 voucher for UKSoccerShop.com. For those of you in the States (thank you, nosediving economy), that’s over $200. For the next three finishers, SoccerPro.com will provide national team jerseys from your choice of Euro 2008 teams.

There’s also a special prize for the group stage only. Nike has produced a limited number of special edition soccer boots just for Euro 2008. They have a special light blue cleat and will be worn on the pitch by some of Nike’s biggest stars in the tournament, and we have a pair to give away to the entry with the highest score at the end of the group stage. These are also provided by SoccerPro.com.

(Technical Note: All we do ask is that you provide a working email address with your entry. If we can’t get in touch with you, we can’t be sure your entry was really yours, so if you don’t enter an email address, you won’t win a prize. Don’t worry - we’re throwing all these email addresses away at the end of the contest. We don’t spam or phish or any of those other new-fangled words. We just want to give you stuff. -Ian)

We currently have 650 entries from fifty countries: USA, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Greece, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, Belgium, Israel, Malta, Estonia, Slovenia, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Finland, Latvia, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Angola, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Japan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Singapore, and Mongolia (50 FIFA countries, 23 of them outside UEFA).

Quite an eclectic group, no? And we’d love to add to the list.

So do it now! Click on the above link and join the fun. Because once the tournament starts, it will be too late.