As many of you know already, in addition to mCalcio I have been writing for Soccerlens for several months now, and am currently part of their Editor staff.

Due to the enormous success of their previous writing contest (for which I appeared on the judge panel), Soccerlens will be launching a new contest for the month of December, for which the theme will be:

“Share Your Football Experiences“

If you have a favourite / most memorable real-life, personal footballing experience, and would like to tell others about it, this is your best shot. Experiences can be about anything that is related to football (soccer).

You could talk for instance, about playing the game (is there a game you played in which something so special took place that you will remember it all your life?), meeting a real life football professional, watching the game (is there a match you watched in the stadium or on television, that you experienced in a personal way worth writing about), or even… refereeing the game (we all screamed “kill the ref he’s blind” at some point or another, but perhaps there are some referees out there (amateur or professional) who would like to share their thoughts, on what it feels like to be on the other side of the whistle).

I’m only giving you a few examples here, the sky’s the limit.

As a guideline and to give you an idea of what we expect, read “The Heart of Football” by Kris or “My Friend Who Played With Pelé” by Steve Amoia.

The contest will last for one week exactly, and articles will be published between Monday December 3rd and Sunday December 9th (inclusive). For that effect, the Soccerlens editors (that is, Ahmed Bilal and myself ) would like all your articles in our mailbox by Sunday December 9th at 23:59.

Rules:

• 1 submission per person.
• All emails must be sent to contests(AT)soccerlens(dot)com with the subject ‘Writing Competition’.
• Article Length: There’s a misconception that longer pieces do better – however a minimum of 500 words is expected, and because we don’t want book submissions, an upper limit of 2000 words will be enforced. Find your own space in between.
• If you’re taking information from somewhere, mention your sources (in-context links).
• Get your facts right and use a spell checker – we’re less strict on grammar but it would be advisable to fix that too
• Submissions must be sent before the deadline (23:59, Sunday December 9th) – This deadline will be enforced without exceptions, so stick to it .

Note that this contest has no prizes, but the winning articles will be used to pick future writers for Soccerlens. This is your chance to show your stuff.

Alright then – send in your submissions at contests(AT)soccerlens(dot)com, and if you have any questions ask them in the official contest post. Feel free to promote this contest on your blogs and forums as well – any mentions will be noticed and appreciated.