Admin picks!

About 15 hours until Euro 2024 kicks off!  We have 40 entries already which already surpasses our Euro Pool totals in 2012 and 2016.  We are on track to break the Euro Pool record of 49 entries in 2021 and become our 5th highest entry total for any of the 15 soccer pools (behind World Cups 2010, 2014, 2018, 2022).

I will be on a flight tomorrow morning so I'm hoping there will be a bunch of entries when I land and will send out any modifications to picks late Friday night (right now, tiny issues on 11 of 38 (29%) entries, not to bad considering we have to deal with 3rd place permutations).

But here, here I lay out my two picks for the tournament.  Will it be $20 down the drain?

• Futbol Fab Fünfzehn - Since 1998, I have always tended to pick France to win the World Cup (was the only one to do so back then).  With their talent, hard to pick against them.  My bracket laid out a good path for Portugal, even though they wouldn't necessarily been my top 2 to make the final.  Fünfzehn (or fuffzehn if the U with umlaut causes me any troubles) is German for fifteen (15), which this is our 15th soccer pool.
• Germany Minus One - The host has not won the Euro since 1984 (France).  Germany is uncharacteristically ranked #16.  Yet, yet, if they can get past the Iberian peninsula teams (Spain and Portugal) in the Quarters and Semis, it's a coin flip in the final against France or England (in this case, England - sorry, it's not coming home).  Having seen the masterpiece Godzilla Minus One on Netflix, this German team is down, knocked by a poor 2023 record, but could they rise out of the ashes to claim their 4th Euros to match their 4 World Cup titles?

Admin Picks!

 Okay, so I have submitted two entries:

• Futbol Fabone Twelf
• Glory to the Heroes

Explanations for why the nicknames forthcoming...  Good luck!  We have at least 45 entries... kickoff is minutes away!

Edit for Explanations:  This is the 12th HWCI soccer pool and since this is played across Europe instead of one host country, I picked an older language for Twelve, one where the semifinals and final will be held in England, in this case, Old English ("Twelf"), which means "two left over after ten".  Turns out 12 has more dividable (thus, desirable) properties over 10, believe it or not.

Russia was upset with Ukraine's new jerseys, which dropped just five days ago, as it has an outline of the country, including the part Russia annexed.  But since it is the UN-recognized border, UKR gets to keep the outline.

There are also two innocent phrases that individually are fine but when combined, become the rallying cry of Ukraine during the annexation.  We get this drilled into us at work, where unclassified + unclassified can be classified.  Or if you apply it to spoilers, one post may say "Luke and Vader get into an interesting conservation" which is fine, and one post may say "One reveals a family secret", which is fine, but put them both together and connecting the dots, "The Empire Strikes Back" gets spoiled for someone.

So "Glory to Ukraine" is cool and if another country had "Glory to the Heroes" that would be neat, but put them both on a Ukraine jersey, it's a political reference, and both Russians and Ukrainians will know what you are really talking about.  So "Glory to the Heroes" is to be nixed on the jersey but it survives as my nickname on my second entry!