One of the most prestigious and looked-forward-to events in European football for both fans, football players and punters alike is the Euro championships and this coming year, the 2008 Euro championships will be hotter than ever. There'll be hundreds of free football bets flying around from all of the top online bookmakers. In the 2008 Euro (also known as the UEFA European Football Championship), teams and countries are qualified by the number of goals its clubs and players make. The higher the scores, the higher the team and its corresponding country will rank in the Euro 2008 qualifying rounds.

Northern Ireland are in the 2008 Euro qualifiers lead with nine goals made by David Healy of Leeds United and one goal made by Grant McCann of Barnsley. Germany follows a close second with seven goals scored by Lukas Podolski of Bayern Munich, three goals each for players Michael Ballack of Chelsea F.C. and Bastian Schweinsteiger of Bayern Munich. Two goals were scored by Kevin Dennis Kuranyi of Bundesliga, Thomas Hitzlsperger of VfB Stuttgart and Miroslav Klose of Bundesliga. Croatia comes in third along with Georgia, and Portugal with their lead players each having scored five goals apiece. The players are Croatia’s Eduardo Alves de Silva of Dinamo Zagreb, Georgia’s Shota Arveladze of AZ Alkmaar and Portugal’s Christiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aviero of Manchester United F.C.

Nine countries each have their star players scoring four goals a piece, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Israel, the Netherlands, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey. Four goals seems to be quite the popular number! These star players, in the same order as their respective countries are: Zvjezdan Misimovic of VfL Bochum, Martin Ivaylo Petrov of Atletico Madrid, Jan Koller of AS Monaco, Roberto Damian Colautti of Maccabi Haifa, Robin van Persie of Arsenal, Nikola Zigic of Racing Santander, Marek Mintal of 1. F.C. Nurnberg and David Villa Sanchez of Valencia C.F. Although these scores are the main determination of the team’s placement in the 2008 Euro qualifiers, each country had a number of additional goals – players for Bosnia-Herzegovina scored an additional five goals, Bulgaria only scored three additional goals, the Czech Republic scored a whopping additional nine goals (by seven different players), players for Israel also scored nine additional goals, players for the Netherlands scored four more goals (one being an “own goal”), Serbia scored only four additional goals, Slovakia scored an amazing eleven additional goals (by seven different players), players from Spain scored five more goals and last but not least, players from Turkey closely follows Slovakia with an outstanding ten additional goals.

Countries with their main players having scored three goals are Belarus (with 6 additional goals), Denmark (with four additional goals), England (two players each have three goals with three additional goals), Finland (with four additional goals), Hungary (also with four additional goals), the Republic of Ireland (two players each scoring three goals as well as six additional goals, one being an 'own goal'), Italy (with six additional goals), Poland (with a whopping nine additional goals), Romania (two players scoring three goals with four additional goals, Scotland (with eight additional goals) and Sweden (with six additional goals). Countries with star players scoring two or less goals include Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Faroe Islands, France, Greece, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, FYR Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Norway, Russia, San Marino, Slovenia, the Ukraine and Wales. Although several of the latter named countries only have two goals for their main players, some are doing better than others based on the additional goals each country has made. Any fan of the Euro 2008 qualifiers will now be well-prepared and ready to go for the exciting and exhilarating games to come!