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Removing of red link players in first teams squads is wrong.

Why are people removing the red links for players in pro team squads? They should remain red so when that player plays a pro game it will be active as soon as the profile is created. This should be for league clubs only. Also there are citations from the top news sources for these player trades of young talent and so forth. I don't understand how some on the project can totally call a player trade non-notable. Govvy (talk) 17:46, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't get it either - if we take it as given that WP:ATHLETE is completely valid in every case, then removing red links for non-notable players is understandable. But I still don't understand how a player can be non-notable at 11:59 AM and is suddenly notable the moment the ref blows his whistle at 12:00 PM to mark his debut. ugen64 (talk) 18:20, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I certainly agree that red links should be left in place for players who are notable, but I would personally avoid red links for non-notable players. The whole point of red links is that they encourage the creation of articles for notable subjects. If we have them for every youth/reserve player that hasn't played a single game at pro level then we'll end up with a load of articles that will head straight to WP:AfD anyway. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 18:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Dan: if they meet notability criteria, and you don't have the time or info or wikiskills to make the article, you can turn it into a redlink, or leave it as one. If the player does not yet meet criteria, then a redlink is an invitation to create an article that will immediately be a candidate for deletion. See previous discussion of same matter. Kevin McE (talk) 19:26, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I am saying it should be for those in first-team players lists on club pages. That is all. I find annoying that everyone removes them. It's not required to have an article, but being active it better for the style of the pages. Govvy (talk) 19:40, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

The point is that if there is a red link then it is much more likely that someone will create the article. The article will then end up being listed at AfD and will, ultimately, be deleted. What's wrong with just using black text? If anything, it is more similar to the blue links, so looks better than using red links anyway... Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 07:43, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I always remove the redlink after an article has been deleted for failing the criteria. In some cases articles are re-created several times because people can't resist the temptation of filling in the redlinks. Therefore it seems to be common sense not to redlink them and create more work for admins. пﮟოьεԻ 57 08:28, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

They should be left as red-links until such time an article is created and fulfills the given criteria. In navboxes many have been set to ordinary black, which can become confusing when the player of the article also comes up in black. CorleoneSerpicoMontana (talk) 14:58, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

No, if they don't meet the criteria the link should be removed, and the name left in default body text colour, i.e. black. Same reasoning as User:Number 57 above. - fchd (talk) 15:05, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

"Top-level league"?

What exactly is meant by "top-level league" at the WikiProject's Importance scale... I always thought it meant a top-flight league. Mattythewhite (talk) 19:57, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

That's what I interpret it as... Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 21:22, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

The scale says that the Swiss Super League (ie the top division in Switzerland) is a mid-level competition and that the UEFA Champions League is a top-level competition. I interpret that as meaning that only the top few leagues in Europe (ie Serie A, Premier League, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and La Liga) besides the Champions League itself qualify as a "top-level" competition. That would place everything from the Eredivisie or the Russian Premier League down to say the Finnish Veikkausliiga (looking at the current UEFA coefficient table) as being "mid-level", because they are professional leagues, but are not "top-level". The leagues below that sort of level (IFA Premiership, Andorran Primera Divisió, Luxembourg National Division and so on) would be "low-level", because they aren't fully professional. I suppose professional leagues outside the top tier (eg Football League Championship) would qualify as "mid-level". The reason for these distinctions is that otherwise there would be no distinction between a player participating in the Luxembourg National Division or the Premier League. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 21:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

National second tiers where top-level teams could potentially get relegated (e.g., Serie B, Football League Championship) should be usually considered as "mid-level". All other minor divisions (i.e., divisions below the top flight) should instead be categorized as "low-level". I hope I've been clear. In the end, I think the Ligue 1 should be considered as mid-level rather than top-level, I can hardly remember of French clubs succeeding to win at the European level (just Olympique de Marseille in the 1990s, maybe). --Angelo (talk) 22:23, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Well the french is ranked as 4th in Europe, that has to be a top-level league. — chandler — 22:46, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Could you please give me a source for these ranks? I've always believed of Italian Serie A, English Premier League, Spanish La Liga and German Bundesliga as being the top four divisions of Europe. --Angelo (talk) 07:42, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Coefficient table - France is above Germany, although that will probably change next year because Germany's very poor 2003-04 season will drop out of the calculation. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 08:06, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Maybe, but France has been fourth since 2005. — chandler — 08:15, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I can confirm France is still ranked 4th because of an excellent 2003-04 European campaign when Monaco and Marseille went to the finals of Champion's League and UEFA Cup. But last season was very poor. Ligue 1 would probably be ranked 5th next year, that's right. But as a French, I would not be very neutral in that discussion...--Latouffedisco (talk) 09:53, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Are all U21 appearances caps?

For full international teams, not all appearances are caps, and those matches that do not meet full international status (national team games against club/regional teams, or national teams but the FAs have not sought for the game to be listed as an A international by FIFA) are not included in the players' stats. This is consistent with all main sources. But is the same criteria applicable to U21 internationals? The example that leads me to ask the question illustrates it well: is an appearance for Ireland U21s against a "Madeira Select" team an U21 cap? If not, how should we record that he has played for the international U21 team, but not played an U21 international game? Kevin McE (talk) 21:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd suggest explaining it in prose, but I'm clueless as what to do in the infobox. Nevertheless I think a full int'l U21 match is necessary for a U21 cap. Madcynic (talk) 15:24, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Club América

I'm having some problems with several unregistered users on the Club América page. There's more instances of overly detailed kit icons, plus endless recent transfers (as a section, rather than either in the squad or not) and any time I tag something the tag is removed without addressing the issue. I put in a hidden passage (is that the correct terminology?) to ask to not have capped players bolded, but that was removed and the bolding replaced. There's plenty of problems on this page, and trying to solve them gets difficult when the work is undone and the problem returns. Does this need semi-protection, or just for a few others to help in keeping an eye? Dancarney (talk) 08:27, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest semi-protection as a large amount of this work is done by IP users, I am keeping an eye on it but just with the kit alone I am running close to the 3RR rule. Also when the edits are made they done as several edits that conflict with each other so you can not effectively undo them you have to go in and edit the page. Paul  Bradbury 11:22, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I notice that the article uses the "extended" club infobox - I thought it was decided this was just to be used for MLS clubs....? ChrisTheDude (talk) 11:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The parameters for the infobox specify that firstgame, largestwin, worstdefeat, topscorer, fansgroup and honours are MLS specific. I'll get rid. It's interesting that Club América's first game is listed as occurring in 1943 even thought they were founded in 1916! Dancarney (talk) 11:44, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Asian games squad templates?

I stumbled across this category Asian Games football (soccer) squad navbox templates, I was under the impression not all tournaments should have squad templates, and Asian Games isn't even the main competition for national teams in Asia, right? — chandler — 05:06, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Recent bundling discussion in afds

I've noticed a few recent footy afds have had some discussion about when bundling is appropriate, and when it's not. A few examples are [1] [2] [3] [4], but there are more out there. Many times it's been just one person who's objected. Other times, there've been multiple people objecting, and in the recent close of the Richard Asante afd, we reached the point where the afd had to close all together due to bundling. That said, bundling clearly has its uses: I can't imagine anyone would have had different votes on the two candidates in the Jack Jeffery afd, to give one of many examples. So, I thought perhaps we, the Footy community, might want to have a discussion on when in a footy context we think bundling is good and appropriate, and when it's not the case. It seems to me some talk page consensus would be preferable to having it hashed out over and over and over.

So, when do you think it's appropriate to bundle and when not? Do they all need to play in the same nation, for the same league, or even the same team? Should we just be considered capable enough to cast votes on multiple candidates in one afd under most circumstances? Is it okay if any of them have survived a previous afd? Are you okay with bundling if some of the players have 3rd party news sources and others don't? What if they all do? When do you object to bundled clubs? When discussing opinions, we'll probably want to keep in mind WP:Bundle. I know I'm still new around here, so I hope this isn't too forward a discussion for me to start, but since it's been coming up so much I figured I'd go ahead and be bold. Vickser (talk) 21:45, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the most important thing to do is to NEVER bundle an article that has survived or been no-contested through an AfD. That just invites problems. matt91486 (talk) 21:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I see no problem with bundling - AfDs are huge time consumers for both admins and the persons putting it to AfD - and to put similar articles into separate AfDs would be disruptive and counterproductive.

A key point to remember is that there is nothing to stop editors !voting keep for some and delete for others, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul Benson being a case in point. пﮟოьεԻ 57 21:54, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

It is very difficult to respond to bundled AfDs especially when the players are with different clubs or have different types of experience. I think bundlesd AfDs should be avoided whenever possible, but especially if there are differences among the bundled articles. Jogurney (talk) 00:42, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I'm reluctant to vote in bundled AfDs. I would much rather them be listed separately, although I appreciate that this is time consuming. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 07:39, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I just heard back from the admin who closed the Doug Lascody deletion debate and he explained that it was actually due to "These players are too different to be bundled together in one AFD, especially because one of them, Dominic Cervi, was nominated less than a month ago." [5] While appropriate bundling can save time, inappropriate bundles can waste time.

I think a reasonable guideline on bundles is mostly "if it's such that a reasonable person could have a different vote on different pieces of the bundle, than it shouldn't be bundled." And while you can vote differently to different ones, it complicates things, and people can get confused, as here. And after all, WP:Bundle tells us "If any of the articles you are considering for bundling could stand on its own merits, then it should be nominated separately." So while yes, you can vote differently on different parts of the bundle, having to do so is a sign they shouldn't have been bundled in the first place.

Some particular things that I'd consider to be grounds for not bundling: surviving a past afd, longer histories (since they can complicate steps), any substantive differences in terms of awards, sources, time or geography. Vickser (talk) 16:54, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Subheading for every tournament of a player?

Searching high quality wiki articles on footballers, Ive noticed that some of them do occasionally make a subheading for each tournament the player participates in. I am in support of this, I think it makes it much easier to navigate your way around a long article and it also makes it easier to read. But not all articles have done this. Looking especially at Thierry Henry, who is one of the few featured football articles on Wikipedia, I see its not done on his page either, along with others. My main concern is for International Career Sections. Here is an example:

'Football player' is a footballer currently playing for 'club' and 'country'. etc etc etc etc......

International Career

Made his debut on.......had a good performance in the friendy.....scored first goal on.....etc etc etc.

2002 World Cup

Participated at the final tournament, scored a goal but was left out of semi final due to injury but played shortly in the final. Was given a place in the team of the tournament and was the second best goalscorer. etc etc etc.....

Euro 2004

Helped his side qualify for the tournament as he was their top goalscorer during qualifying, notably netting all 3 goals in their 3-2 win against 'opposition'. Given a place in the final tournament, he played an impressive role in opening game and assisted 'teammate' in scoring the 2nd goal in their 2-0 victory. Went on to score in final group game against 'opposition', via a late penalty to help his side to a narrow 2-1 victory which saw them go through.

etc etc etc.....

2006 World Cup

etc etc etc etc........................

Euro 2008

etc etc etc...............................

Whats thought of that? To admit, I think it looks very unnecessary when the sections are all too small which causes the new subheadings to come every 2 or 3 lines or something. However, if the sections are notably larger (like I am experiencing), is it a good idea to make such subheadings for every tournament? The same goes for manager pages as well, notably saying how a manager did well with his side during qualifying and eventually lead them to whatever place at the tournament, and then making a new subheading for the next tournament the manager participates with his side in?

Would really appreciate suggestions on this. THANKS! Domiy (talk) 00:06, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

It really depends - for most players to have a separate heading for each tournament would be absurd - this would only be appropriate if each section was of a reasonable length, otherwise his international career should be all in one section. Persoanlly, I prefer that the whole biography should read chronologically, and thus the club career/international career should run together. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 14:12, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be extraordinarily rare for a player's contribution to a tournament to be worth more than a sentence or two. We should not detail every match appearance, describe goals (unless the goal is exceptional in its notability, such as Maradona's against England in 1986) or pass POV opinions on how he plays. By the time we have taken that out, we're unlikely to be left with much more than "Bloggs played in all three of Templatonia's matches in the group stage of Euro 2005, but was dropped for the semifinal against Fooland, in which the team was eliminated." which scarcely merits a section. Kevin McE (talk) 17:50, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Herbert Chapman

I put Herbert Chapman up for peer review two and a half days ago but alas no-one has commented on it yet. Anyone who has time, their comments would be most appreciated on the PR page here. Thanks! Qwghlm (talk) 07:27, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I was going to have a look last night but didn't get time. I'll try do it later today. If I forget, bug me!! The man really is deserving of a FA page and it looks well on it's way. Peanut4 (talk) 08:30, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Bourne Park

This article was created earlier this year but then changed to a re-direct to Sittingbourne F.C. This morning it's been re-created, but at Bourne Park (football ground). Should it be moved to the unqualified name, replacing the redirect........? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:52, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd put a section in the Sittingbourne F.C. article, and make one or both of the Bourne Park titles redirects. I can't see huge amounts of reliably sourced information about a non-league football ground that would merit a separate article. - fchd (talk) 07:54, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a scout around and see if I can find anything. I was able to get both Hartsdown Park and Crabble Stadium to GA level, and I'd imagine stuff like Sittingbourne's eviction from their old ground and relocation to the car park :-) probably gained some coverage in reliable sources...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:59, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I would agree that it should just be a section in the Sittingbourne article. I don't believe grounds which have not hosted national level football (i.e. top 5 divisions) are notable enough for articles. A while ago someone went round tagging them all with merge templates. However, one user has created most ground articles down to Step 3... пﮟოьεԻ 57 08:21, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

For info it's already fully covered in both the Sittingbourne article and that of Maidstone United, who also play there.... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:25, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Here's a pretty exhaustive source and a news story about the move.... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:39, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

As you said, it's covered already. I can't see how we can create a stand-alone article on, for example, the likes of Rookery Hill (stadium). Articles on non-league clubs are usually pretty brief, and there is ample space to merge them. Does anyone object if I go and merge them all (again - I've already done it once...)? пﮟოьεԻ 57 08:40, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Can't we do this on a case-by-case basis instead of mass merging? It's possible that this subject has enough sourcing to have its own article, and it's equally possible that many others do not, so it might be better to just sort of decide based on the content. matt91486 (talk) 13:38, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, obvviously I wouldn't merge James Whatman Way or Princes Park, Dartford as they are good articles in their own right. However, most of them are along the lines of Rookery Hill. пﮟოьεԻ 57 13:56, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, James Whatman Way is one I would consider merging - it's generally unsourced, and it doesn't really exist yet. A paragraph or two in the club article should suffice. - fchd (talk) 15:26, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

• For info, I've just listed the image at WP:PUI, as it appears to have been lifted from the Pyramid Passion page I linked above...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:32, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

AfD Archiving question

The old AfDs were piling up, so I figured I'd try my hand at archiving them. Since I've never done it before, would someone mind taking a look just to make sure I did it right? [6] Is there any archiving of PRODs or should we just remove the ones that get deleted and/or have their PROD removed? Vickser (talk) 22:16, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

English club notability

In this AfD an editor is arguing that four clubs which played at Step 6 in 1999 appear to meet the criteria. This is prior to the introduction of the Conference North/South in 2004, meaning that they have only played at the equivalent of today's Step 7. I am concerned that this line of thinking would mean that any club playing in the top level of a county league prior to the introduction of the regionalised conferences could be deemed notable.

Could other editors bring their opinion on this matter to the AfD? Currently we only have two contributions to it. Cheers, пﮟოьεԻ 57 22:42, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Step 6 (or any other "Steps") didn't exist prior to 2004. - fchd (talk) 05:16, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this demonstrates a major flaw in the line of thinking that "teams that have played at level X are inherently notable" - how do we apply it retrospectively? For example, the West Midlands (Regional) League Premier Division is currently defined as Step 6, but between 2004 and 2006 it was Step 7. Kington Town played in it from 1997 until 2006 (dropping out the month before it was re-graded) but their article was deleted because they'd "never played at Step 6", even though for 7 years of their stint the "Step" system didn't even exist. Also, back in the late 80s/early 90s, the WMRL Premier fed straight into the Southern League, so it could be claimed it was a Step 4 league - what "Steps" would people say that a club like GKN Sankey played at...? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 14:41, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I would say that if it fed into the Southern League at the time, it counts as the equivalent of Step 4. However, if the league was officially defined as Step 7 at the time a club played in it, then they don't count. пﮟოьεԻ 57 21:12, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

What about the case of Kington between 1997 and 2004? At that time no "steps" were formally defined, but the progression would have been Conference -> Southern League Prem -> Southern League One -> Midland Alliance -> West Mids Regional, thereby making the WMRL "unofficially" step 5...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

To-do-list on 2008-09 UEFA domestic leagues season articles

I thought it would be useful to create a To-Do-List on what has to be done to articles of current or upcoming seasons (2008 or 2008-09) of UEFA's domestic leagues in order to achieve a standard on those articles. It is amazing how much still needs to be done.

I don't know what details are exactly covered (apart from a proper introduction) by the project's policies on competition articles, but my suggestion for a standard would be that all articles should include at least a proper introduction, a team list with names, citys and probably venues, team changes from last season ("Promotion and Relegation"), of course Standings and Results (both formatted with fb-templates) and probably a map.

What is the general opinion about a certain standard for those articles? Would there probably be participants for a task-force or similar on the topic? Discussion explicitly wanted!

Of course, if the issue has already been resolved, feel free to ignore this section. Hockey-holic (talk) 23:18, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Most of that I'd agree with, except that I'd not bother with a team list (the teams will be listed in the table anyway), and I'd not wrap standings and results in fb-templates (keeping it simple). - fchd (talk) 05:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there an even simpler way than using fb-templates? The usual wikipedia table structures are rather complicated to use, especially regarding results boxes. The only thing that would have to be done in order to use of fb's is creating templates for the clubs and future competitions, but this will not be that much of a problem. If set up once, every-day using will be pretty simple. (about 30 league articles so far are running fine with then :-)) Hockey-holic (talk) 09:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I categorised the list in order to get a better overview on the amount of work. If you'd like to participate, be bold to do so... Hockey-holic (talk) 12:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

EPL Picture

Hi, I looked at Hockey-holic's To-Do-List and came up with a picture of the location of all the Premier League clubs within England. Do you think this is worth including? I know it's not very good quality, but it's a start. See here. --El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 09:26, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Put it in. It's better than nothing. :-) Code suggestion (puts map on the top right side if pasted right under {{future sport}}):

[[Image:PremLeagueMap.JPG|right|thumb|400px|Locations of Premier League teams for season 2008-09]]

Hockey-holic (talk) 11:03, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Also consider drawing the map using a SVG vector-based format, such as I did for all Italian professional leagues, starting from Serie A [7]. --Angelo (talk) 11:05, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Put it in now. Doesn't look too bad, but if I get time I'll see about doing a slightly snazzier one like Angelo mentioned. --El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 12:07, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd do this myself for Croatian Prva HNL 2008-09, but if someone more tech-savvy would be willing to make it I'd be grateful :-) Timbouctou (talk) 17:43, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Wish granted. :-) The used method does not work for all countries, though, at least not yet. :-/ Hockey-holic (talk) 18:57, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

That's great man, thanks a lot for taking the time to make the map and improve the article! Btw, would it be possible to put three red dots around Zagreb on the map, to illustrate the cluttering of clubs around the capital? Otherwise, it look great, thanks again :-) Timbouctou (talk) 19:41, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

It would be theoretically possible by adding two non-labelled points, but because of the Inter-dot already located near Zagreb, this could lead to confusion. Besides, it seems to be common use to put multiple clubs from one city to just one dot, except when the urban area (like London, for example) is big enough to display more. Just look at Armenia's or Russia's map, for example. But I'm happy that I could help you out... :-) Hockey-holic (talk) 19:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Copied from the PL 08-09 talk page

I've created {{Location map England}} (based on {{Location map United Kingdom}}) I haven't tried it out yet to see if it works... will repost — chandler — 09:08, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

What do you guys think of this one? User:Chandler/Map locator, I think I got the right coordinates when I made {{Location map England}}, and used the teams stadiums location. — chandler — 09:08, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

If you guys think that map is good enough, It could easily be used to create maps for all English leagues (as you can include welsh teams) and probably seasons. — chandler — 09:08, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Made one for the Championship here User:Chandler/Map locator2 — chandler — 09:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

F.C. Halifax Town

This page has just been unilaterally moved from Halifax Town A.F.C.. However, Halifax Town A.F.C. has gone into administration while a new club has been formed with the name F.C. Halifax Town. Documentation on the new club/name is sparce. I think that the page should be moved back until the position is clearer as, assuming it is a new club, then it is likely that we will need a new F.C. Halifax Town article, using Accrington Stanley, Scarborough etc as many precedents. I should welcome views, fairly quickly, please. Smile a While (talk) 03:12, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it should be moved back. matt91486 (talk) 05:12, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

The F.A. are treating it as a reformation/restructuring/whatever of the old club, hence why they are being allowed to play in the FA Cup this season. I'll try to find a reliable link, but I believe the move to be correct. Accrington Stanley & Scarbourough (Athletic) are different cases where a genuine new club was formed. This one is more like the evolution of Nuneaton Borough into Nuneaton Town this season. - fchd (talk) 05:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the move is OK. Not sure if this can be counted as a reliable source (I would say yes, personally), but there's plenty of info here. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 07:36, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I notice that in multiple places that article uses wording such as " the newly-formed Halifax club".... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:41, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Same club or new club? This story suggests it's a new club entirely. Though I was of the opinion that it is essentially the same club. I'm lost!! Peanut4 (talk) 17:22, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Does the fact that it is a new club mean that it cannot be considered a continuation of the old club? Surely if the FA consider it a reformation as pointed out by Richard, then we should follow their lead? Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 17:52, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I would agree that it is a continuation of the same club, in the same vein as Farnborough F.C. and Nuneaton Town. пﮟოьεԻ 57 19:17, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

User:Peanut4's link, especially the "It had been thought that the football authorities would veto the name as it was too close to the previous club which went into administration in May," makes me think splitting into two articles is probably better. That said, I wouldn't be opposed to waiting a few weeks while the situation plays out. When we have more reliable sources and can see a bit more how it's getting covered in the press, we'll be able to make a more informed choice. Vickser (talk) 19:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

As Richard says, the fact that they are in the FA Cup shows that it is a continuation of the old clubs. FA rules state that new clubs have to have played in the FA Trophy or FA Vase for a season before being allowed to enter the FA Cup (which is why AFC Wimbledon could not compete in the FA Cup in 2003-4). пﮟოьεԻ 57 22:03, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

• Here is an interesting release from the FA - note especially the wording "in the case of Luton Town, the Board considered an application from a new company, called Luton Town 2020, which has applied to join League 2 in place of the existing club" and "preliminary information was received from a new company that wishes to take Rotherham United's place in League 2" - worth keeping an eye on how these "new companies" are treated and whether the League continues to make rules up as it goes along....... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:44, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I'd imagine this is the same situation as Middlesbrough (1986) and Leicester City, both of whom are reformed companies, but de facto the same clubs. пﮟოьεԻ 57 10:37, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Marco Adaggio's nationality?

Adaggio was born in Spain to Italian and English parents, he spent his early years in Italy before moving to England aged 11. What nationality should he be represented as at Stafford Rangers F.C.#Current squad? It's pretty minor, but I'm confused as to whether it should be his nation of birth, or where he has lived the longest as he hasn't represented any of these nations at any internation level? --Jimbo^[online] 22:42, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

• Soccerbase[8] gives his nationality as Italian and ESPNSoccernet[9] (possibly incorrectly) gives his birthplace as Italian. Those are the two sources I go to for checking basic facts that give nationality, so on that basis I'd go Italian until he plays for a country on a national level, until he says something claiming otherwise, or until most reputable sources start calling him something else. You've got to pick something, so pick the one that's the most used. Vickser (talk) 00:56, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

• To be honest, with lower league players I don't really trust soccerbase with details such as these. They're often incorrect. --Jimbo^[online] 16:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

• He has been living in England since the age of 11, and he apparently has English citizenship because of his mother. So I'd say English, even if the name sounds very Italian to everyone around. --Angelo (talk) 10:12, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Polish Third League

I request a mod taking one of the following actions on the article mentioned above:

• Moving the article to "Polish Second League" since there has been a name change prior to the 2008-09 season, in which all Polish minor leagues have basically moved up an ordinal step. (See 90minut.pl sidebar) The former Polish Second League will now be called Polish First League and has already been moved. However, the redirect currently blocks a move of the Third League article.

• Since the article is currently severely out-dated, it may be discussed if it should be tagged as a deletion candidate, assuming the requirements for a deletion would be met.

Thank you, Hockey-holic (talk) 20:02, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Amateur clubs?

I know nothing about football, but are articles like Balintore F.C. really typical? Some amateur club, with no sources, and there's an article on it? Friday (talk) 20:08, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree, it's a poor article and needs a lot of work. I would suggest the maybe the "external link" is a reference and ought to be labelled as such. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 20:11, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I don't know what "amateur" means in football. In other sports I'm familiar with, we'd generally have articles only on professional teams, assuming that they can be properly sourced. But an amateur team?!? What sources would cover such a thing? Friday (talk) 20:15, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

'Amateur' in soccer is probably different than most other sports. For example, Newport County A.F.C. are an amateur club, but I don't think anyone with a knowledge of the game would consider them non-notable. Similarly, a lot of people (myself included) spend a LOT of time working on articles about the USL Premier Development League and its associated teams - which are all amateur. However, the PDL holds a very important place in the US soccer framework, and is most definitely notable. --JonBroxton (talk) 20:28, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd argue that Newport County are "semi-pro" as their players get paid as well as having other professions. I think the only club left in the English league system is Corinthian-Casuals.

Would amateur in footballing terms be "Sunday League" teams i.e. players who don't get paid? The majority of players in teams in the English football league system are paid, whether it's "semi-pro" or "fully professional"? --Jimbo^[online] 20:33, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Weird. By normal standards, it looks to me like the clubs in North Caledonian Football League are speedy deletable for being groups with no assertion of anything, and no sources. But then I noticed this project has claimed these articles, so I thought I better ask. Friday (talk) 20:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Friday, I haven't looked at the Balintore F.C. article so I don't know if it's poorly written or not. If you're interested you could help that article, just a thought. But I agree with Jon though, amateur in the sport of soccer is different than most other sports. Caden S (talk) 20:54, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Some of the clubs are not deletion candidates - Golspie Sutherland compete in the Scottish Cup and Inverness City have moved into the Juniors. The league is effectively at the sixth level in Scotland (below the SPL, Div 1, 2 and 3 and the Highland League) and therefore theoretically on a par with Division One of the East of Scotland League. пﮟოьεԻ 57 22:27, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Rainbow kick

I rescued this PROD and tidied it up and referenced it. Could people here look over it and help improve or tidy it further? Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 05:45, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

French player Yves Mariot made this move in lots of matches. I wanted to add him to the article, but could not find a good reference.--Latouffedisco (talk) 09:46, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Bálint Bajner

This player appears to of signed for West Ham United yet has not made any appearances. His previous club, "Liberty Oradea" is red-linked. I'm tempted with AFD, but wanted to get other people's thoughts on this one. I don't know whether "Liberty Oradea" is a professional club or not. D.M.N. (talk) 11:16, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

They are in the second division in Romania. However, I have no idea whether this is a fully professional league or not. I would guess that it may not be. 52 Ghits suggests that he may not satisfy WP:N either. пﮟოьεԻ 57 11:21, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to agree with both of you. Though wouldn't say so with any conviction. Peanut4 (talk) 11:23, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Why does Liberty Oradea redirect to Liberty Salonta, anyway? Is it the same club, just with a confusing naming convention, or are they two clubs that have been combined together? I don't necessarily understand. matt91486 (talk) 15:17, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

It's the same club, the team were originally from Oradea but play their games in Salonta (about 40km away). 84.71.137.193 (talk) 16:39, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Continental qualification, promotion and relegation table colours (re open)

This is back from WP:FOOTY talk Archive 18 in april we had a pretty long discussion about universal colours for all leagues. From what I can remember without reading it again, most people were for a standardisation, but nothing really happened. Though most articles for this upcoming season (or leagues playing spring-fall) have most of the colours similar at least, most articles seem to use a green for promotion and champions league play (this is UEFA leagues now), some (most i think) use a blue for the UEFA cup, but there are still inconsistencies. My original proposal(s) can still be seen here and here. To list some leagues which have different colours (and too many colours in some cases) over difference seasons, see Eredivisie 05-06, 06-07, 07-08, 08-09 (08-09 in my opinion looks pretty good, escpecially compared to the 05-06/06-07). Among the big three there are some differences Premier League 2008–09, La Liga 2008–09, Serie A 2008-09. Now we have the {{Fb cl team}} {{Fb cl2 qr}} template for tables (which seems to be used by pretty much every league). Wouldn't it be possible to include standardised colours through this? If people would be for that. The colours can ofc be discussed to come up with colours enough disambiguated from eachother and so on. — chandler — 20:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I also would welcome the use of standard colors. Chandler, as for your proposals, I would suggest to change the UEFA Cup berths to blue since the Intertoto Cup will not be continued. However, I would assign the colors rather by competition then by round:

• League champions would be shaded in a medium green, further CL spots in lighter green
• UEFA Cup spots in medium blue (if there are spots for three rounds, e.g. Romania), light blue and ice blue
• Relegation spots in medium red for direct relegation spots, light red for play-off spots against lower division teams
• Promotion spots would be equally treated to CL spots with direct promotion spots in medium green and play-off spots in light green.

A good example for this style is indeed Eredivisie 2008-09. Hockey-holic (talk) 11:16, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Yea I think I would like that too, just because there are fewer colours to handle, though I still think if a league and league runner up (top6 leagues for next CL season for example) reach the same round they should have the same colour because otherwise the {{fb cl2 qr}} will look strange. What about these colours (these are... what's the term... not as bright). 3 Different colours for (I think that's the most different stages a league can send teams.) — chandler — 11:49, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

That's exactly how I meant it, too. Same round = same color. Hockey-holic (talk) 14:47, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Football League originally intended to be UK-wide?

I've noticed that 1888–89 in English football once again repeats the claim that, when first devised, the Football League was intended to ultimately cover the whole of the UK. I've seen this claim made elsewhere on WP, albeit never with a reliable source to back it up. Personally I don't believe it's true. Does anyone have access to a reliable source to confirm one way or t'other.....? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 15:31, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps a e-mail to the FA would settle the matter? — chandler — 15:43, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

See the letter quoted verbatim in William McGregor (unsourced there, but I've read the same text in reliable sources before, probably in Simon Inglis' League Football and the Men Who Made It). Oldelpaso (talk) 15:47, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Says here, "taken from the introduction to "The Ultimate Football League Statistics Book", published by the author [Tony Brown] in 1994", that "Southern clubs stayed largely amateur and aloof from the League; Arsenal were the first to be admitted, in 1893/94. It was originally hoped that Scottish clubs would join; clubs from north of the border had played in the F.A. Cup since the competition started in 1871/72. However, they formed their own league in 1890." cheers, Struway2 (talk) 15:54, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the phrase, pending a reliable source for it. - fchd (talk) 16:00, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Um, did you not see the comment and the link directly above yours? -- Grant.Alpaugh 16:11, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Where? The throwaway comment by Tony Brown in his interpretation of te formation of the League? Nowhere in the chapters of "The Story of The Football League" (The official history of the league published in 1938) relating to formation or the whole period before WW1 is any reference to clubs outside England ever being a part of the league mentioned. The McGregor letter certainly appears clear "that ten or twelve of the most prominent clubs in England combine to arrange home and away fixtures each season". - fchd (talk) 16:40, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Looking for citation re: Football League player names on shirts

I want to mention in an article that in The Football League, players' names were added to to the backs of their shirts in (I'm pretty sure) the 1999-2000 season. I've looked at video/DVD footage and I'm confident this is correct - it was several seasons after the Premier League did so in any case. However I cannot find a citation for this piece of info. Can anyone help? Thanks. --Jameboy (talk) 00:02, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty confident you're correct because I think it coincided with Bradford City's first season in the Premier League, which was 1999-2000. Peanut4 (talk) 00:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Found this which backs up our theory. Peanut4 (talk) 00:05, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Finally found a WP:RS if you needed one - [10]. Peanut4 (talk) 00:19, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. Many, many thanks for this. --Jameboy (talk) 00:56, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Turkcell Super League

As far as I can tell this is the only top-level football league in Europe whose WP article is under a sponsored name - is there a reason for this......? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Change it to "Süper Lig", "Turkish Super League" or whatever other good alternative name. It would be like if we rename Serie A as "Serie A TIM", or Premier League as "Barclays Premier League". I don't think it's a good idea. --Angelo (talk) 10:09, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

And amend the Bank Asya 1. Lig at the same time. - fchd (talk) 10:17, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

That article is actually at TFF First League, with the sponsored name as a redirect......... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:22, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake. Carry on chaps! - fchd (talk) 16:24, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Should probably be at Turkish Super League in order to be consistent with Greek Super League, Swiss Super League... similar problem :-) ugen64 (talk) 17:30, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of sponsored names, I just removed sponsor names from the Spanish league (both Primera and Segunda division season templates). Isn't it time to move the spanish first division from La Liga to Primera División? (as La Liga is a term like The Football League in England, covering a number of leagues, not just the first division) — chandler — 10:14, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I would also agree that a move is needed (both for the Turkish Lig and La Liga). пﮟოьεԻ 57 10:21, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, typically, isn't the Spanish league just referred to as La Liga? That's how I hear it in Podcasts and such all the time, so it's the most likely search term, I think. matt91486 (talk) 18:17, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

But the fact remains that La Liga se the spanish article es:La Liga is the league system, not the first division. es:Primera División de España is the first division — chandler — 18:22, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that the name of the spanish-language article can be an argument for a move. I agree with Matt91486 that La Liga is likely to be the most popular term for people with an English background looking for the Primera Division. Madcynic (talk) 18:32, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but it is wrong, and for that there can be no excuse. If people type in La Liga and end up at an article similar to the Football League, they might learn something. пﮟოьεԻ 57 18:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if people learning something by going to the wrong site is a good reason to ignore WP:Common name. Unless there's evidence that one of the exemptions there (say, that calling it La Liga is found offensive in Spain), we should go ahead and "respect our readers and name our articles as they do." I think that since La Liga is the term the english speaking press uses, it should be the one we go with. Vickser (talk) 19:12, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The full reading of the WP:COMMONNAME guideline is that

Except where other accepted Wikipedia naming conventions give a different indication, use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things.

Clearly here there is a conflict, as La Liga does exist as a seperate entity. Ergo it should be the article at La Liga, not Primera División (and obviously there should be a hatnote on it with a link to Primera División). Incidentally, where is the La Liga article? пﮟოьεԻ 57 19:22, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't know if we have one, Spanish football league system exists, but is not developed — chandler — 19:30, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

(ec)But it is the wrong term, La Liga is as you can see, the same as The Football League in England. And we have for example The Football League 1990-91, it doesn't just show the first division, it shows all leagues of the football league . La Liga could be a redirect, and everything of that, I just feel this is a case we could use the native name, we do have some countries leagues at the native name (I think) which might not be the most popular term to search for, such as: Primera Divisió (Andorra) <- That was a close one :O, maybe a link to that league should be placed at Primera División/Primera Division those 2 really should merge... Oh got side tracked!, Allsvenskan (Sweden), Gambrinus liga (Czechia), Prva HNL (Croatia), Veikkausliiga (Finland), Meistriliiga (Estonia), Umaglesi Liga (Georgia), Úrvalsdeild (Iceland), Ligat ha'Al (Israel), A Lyga (Lithuania), Ekstraklasa (Poland), Liga I (Romania), Campionato Sammarinese di Calcio (San Marino), Slovenian PrvaLiga (Slovenia).. And maybe Eredivisie (Netherlands), I don't really know if that's refered to as Eredivisie, I mean it's just hard to know how to pronounce :P La Liga is at least a thorn in my eye everytime I see it ;) — chandler — 18:59, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I strongly support moving both articles to more official names. -- Grant.Alpaugh 19:09, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm with Grant on this one. Caden S (talk) 21:31, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

CONCACAF question

CONCACAF (the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) is the continent-wide governing body for football in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Three South American entities, the independent nations of Guyana and Suriname, and the French department of French Guiana, are also members.

I know the official name is Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football, BUT isn't Central America and Caribbean just names of certain areas/regions within North America? I just get the feeling it would be like "UEFA is the continent-wide governing body for football in Europe, Iberia and the Balkans" Couldn't we just strip it down to North America? (Yes there are 3 South American teams, but we don't call UEFA Europe and Asia on something like {{FIFA World Cup 2010 Qualifiers}}) — chandler — 21:03, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, if that's the official name, how can we change it? Hubschrauber729 (talk) 21:11, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Not change the name, but in for example that template, we don't need to have all parts, nor in the opening line "is the continent-wide governing body for football in North America, Central America and the Caribbean." could be "is the continent-wide governing body for football in North America." — chandler — 21:14, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

If Central America and the Caribbean were universally recognised as just subsets of North America, they wouldn't be included in the name of the confederation. It'd just be called CONAF. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 22:11, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Where are they recognized as continents? Never heard of them having as high of a status as North America... And I always thought they were in the name because of the confederations that existed before (NAFC, CFU, UNCAF) — chandler — 22:17, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I could suggest two reasons: one geo-socio-political, one from footballing history.

Although when speaking of 7 continents, one would include the isthmus and the Caribbean as part of North America, most of the population of those areas would reject that description. My brother-in-laws Nicaraguan relatives would be deeply offended to be told they are North American. None of the countries other than USA, Canada and Mexico are described as being in North America in their opening paragraphs in this project. Even the List of North American countries finds it necessary to specify "including Central America and the Caribbean". The article for Central America says that it "is variably defined either as the southern portion of North America,... or as a region of the American continent in its own right"; the Caribbean is said to be "located southeast of North America, east of Central America, and to the north of South America", and therefore not part of any of them. In short, it is only by one, and probably not the most common, usage of the phrase "North America" that it is as inclusive as you are assuming.

One of CONCACAF's predecessrs was the NAFC, whose own definition of North America did not stretch beyond Canada, USA, Mexico and Cuba, and it made no claim to authority over the countries that were members of the CFCC. Kevin McE (talk) 22:27, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

That the continents of the world are Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Europe, Oceania, North America and South America can hardly be seen as nothing but the most common usage. I have never heard anyone even claim that America is divided in more than 2 continents. And many articles have it that way. — chandler — 22:44, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Are you actually claiming that the phrase "North America" is only ever used in a way that includes Central America and the Caribbean, even after the evidence that has been presented? Ambiguous phrases, by definition, do not clarify. Kevin McE (talk) 00:45, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Wrong. Australia is a continent. The Confederations are not meant to be "continental," they just happened to end up that way. The reason to leave it as the three enumerated parts is to keep up with the history of the NAFC, CFU, and UNCAF, which CONCACAF still recognizes as zones for the Gold Cup (i.e. NAFC gets all of its members into the Gold Cup final, while the other two have to qualify through various competitions).

Where I live Australia is a country not a continent, and is part of the continent Oceania — chandler — 00:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Australia is a country located on a continent named Australia. Oceania is not a continent, but a geographical zone. The confederation, however, is Oceanian (which is, again, not a continent).  ARTYOM  01:26, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

It might not be a continent in your country, but it is here. — chandler — 01:47, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

How can it be a continent in one place and not in another place? It either it is or isn't. I don't see how the status of a land mass can be disputed like that. --JonBroxton (talk) 01:56, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Well it is, just by looking at the Swedish wikipedia you'll see sv:Oceanien that "Oceanien är en kontinent - Oceania is a continent". That's what we're taught in school. That's how it is for us. — chandler — 03:15, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting. Global education differences, eh? Here, Oceania is inevitably associated with Australia, but generally we see the one giant landmass as the continent and the islands as the periphery. matt91486 (talk) 05:06, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with the line you're describing chandler. I can see where you're coming from, but some people won't understand what CONCACAF means and who they hold jurisdiction over. Keeping the full information is the best way in my opinion. There is no point removing correct information. Peanut4 (talk) 00:15, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting changing the name, so people would understand. And to track back to what Grant said, The Confederations are not meant to be "continental," they just happened to end up that way. I agree with that, that's why I dont want {{FIFA World Cup 2010 Qualifiers}} and similar places to have anything but the confederations names (Or at least posted FIRST), as AFC includes Australia now, and UEFA includes Israel, Turkey and some old Soviet states located in Asia. And if you had the first line read. CONCACAF (the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) is the continent-wide governing body for football in North America. And anyone is confused about what North America means, why don't they just click the link? — chandler — 00:33, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

And if they then click the link for talk, they will see that the phrase is used to describe different extents in different situations. See Americas (terminology. Kevin McE (talk) 01:46, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, CONCACAF is merely a stub, and if it were expanded then maybe there is too much info in the first sentence or so. But until it is expanded, I see nothing with how it it worded now. If you read UEFA, there is significant explanation about the various teams from Asis in the second paragraph. As for clicking on a link for North America, that would not tell you which countries from outside North America, CONCACAF does cover, just which countries it should cover. I'd definitely vote to keep it as it is or give it a serious expansion. Peanut4 (talk) 00:42, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not saying remove the second sentence — chandler — 00:46, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I concur with Peanut4, it is correct information and adds clarity for those that don't already know. As an aside, Oceania is not a continent according to Wikipedia - the fount of all knowledge.--ClubOranje^Talk 07:27, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Oceania is not a continent according to the English Wikipedia fix'd, such as, the spanish, the french and the italian have Oceania as the continent, the german seems to list both and have a statement translated through babelfish "This extended region is called for cultural reasons continent Ozeanien." — chandler — 07:31, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Oceania is not a continent? This is news to me. For 18 years (including 2 years at college) I have apparently lived under this dreadful misconception. ugen64 (talk) 17:27, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually the continent is called both Australia and Oceania as well as Australasia. It all depends on where and when you live and/or went to school Paul  Bradbury 19:41, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Greenisland SFC

Is this a notable football club or not? It appears to play at level 4 of the football pyramid in Australia. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 00:28, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Abdus Ibrahim

Can an admin please re-create the article for Abdus Ibrahim? He made his MLS debut for Toronto FC today (and scored on his debut!). Here is a link confirming this [11]. Thank you. --JonBroxton (talk) 01:45, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Playing style

Is there a guideline for "style of play" or "playing style" sections? If not, what are the generally accepted rules for such? – moonty (talk) (contribs) 21:14, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic. These are the 2 playing style sections I made myself. I would strongly more go by the first one (Modric) as many people would agree it is of better quality. If you want a top feature playing style section then take a look at that of Thierry Henry.

Basically, references are the main thing. This was hard for me as well. In this section, you want to explain what the player is capable of and what he does commonly. (example - Ronaldinho is good at and commonly does tricks to make space. Or Beckham is very good at staying on the wing and supporting attackers as he can make great delivery when the ball comes to him). As you can imagine, you need to be fairly well knowledged about the player to write a section like this. One of the most important things is to not sound too biased (fan-ish). Like make sure you dont keep praising the player in the setion by saying "He is excellent at shooting, and his amazing skill has lead him to be admired and he has taken his country to the top of all competitions and has world class tackling ability etc". You want to sound rather neutral. And again, you are free to say almost anything providing that it has references. Although you may know 100% about a player, others who read the page wont so you will need to find references. Do some google research to try and find appropriate articles that state what a player is capable of. Also, if you have something other than an internet site (like a football book or DVD), you can state it as a reference as well just as long as you make sure you be exactly specific (page number etc). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Domiy (talk • contribs) 23:35, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The simple way to not appear biased is also state what areas of his games he's criticised for too. But otherwise that's good advice. Peanut4 (talk) 23:38, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Fairness and accuracy is not achieved by including both good and bad things. It is achieved by ensuring that all material can be verified by independent reliable sources. Domiy's edits are excellent examples of this. Where criticism can be reliably sourced it should be included, but there's no requirement to include criticism just for the sake of "not appearing biased". Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Not a big fan of these sections myself. Regardless of how many references one finds the references are usually one journalist's opinion, and while they tend to somewhat reflect reality, they are still very POV-ish. I think a single concise sentence is about the limit of what should be included to avoid over dramatisation. Yes, Domiy's SofP sections are well referenced and read OK, but belong more in a biography than an encyclopaedia.--ClubOranje^Talk 12:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

A single sentence? Look at Jens Lehmann for instance. Everyone knows he is good at saving penalties (Argentina at the WC06, Riquelme in the CL semifinals, he's saved several Gerrard penalties in the Premier League if I recall correctly, Scholes in the FA Cup final). That's 1 sentence. Then we all know his tendency to get into stupid disputes and get booked - the Drogba incident two years ago. Pushing over Robbie Keane in the penalty area and giving up a penalty to get a 2-2 draw (that's the season we won the Premier League undefeated BTW). That's another sentence. He also likes to go forward at the last minute and in fact scored 2 goals in the Bundesliga doing this - one of them a penalty! So that's 3 sentences. And this is just from memory - I'm sure there's more things you would write in such a section... and Jens Lehmann is a goalkeeper! Surely someone like Ronaldinho or Ibrahimovic would need more than 1 sentence to describe their style of play... ugen64 (talk) 17:24, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Siem de Jong

I wanted to get the opinion of this project on the article Siem de Jong. Surely that level of detail is not appropriate, no? JACOPLANE • 2008-07-15 00:10

No it's definitely not appropriate. Can you imagine a player, like Tony Ford, with 1000+ appearances? Peanut4 (talk) 00:11, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

It would break the article, although what about List of games played by Tony Ford 1-100, List of games played by Tony Ford 101-200 .....  :-p --Jameboy (talk) 01:00, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I actually suspect the article was written by his agent. Nothing we can do about that though, except for pointing out WP:COI, right? JACOPLANE • 2008-07-15 03:06

I mean, if you want to use that argument, then surely those charts detailing individual international goals scored by players is a bad idea, since guys like Ali Daei have scored over 100 goals... ugen64 (talk) 17:19, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

In some ways, they could be cut. But I'd get rid of the info at Siem de Jong as per WP:NOT#STATS. Peanut4 (talk) 17:33, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Campeonato Brasileiro Série A 2008 team sponsorship

Should be merged with the main article on the championship, surely......? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 14:46, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Defo. пﮟოьεԻ 57 14:53, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Tie-breaking procedures

Are there standard tie-breaking criteria for FIFA or CONCACAF matches? I've been looking all over for the criteria for the [2008 Canadian Championship] and [2008 North American SuperLiga]. Can someone help me out? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.21.242.99 (talk) 15:18, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Usurpation of Template:sb

I see that {{sb}} is simply a redirect to {{soccerbase}}, but I would like to use sb for national softball teams for the same reasons I created {{fb}} et. al. about a year and a half ago for national football teams etc. Does anybody here strenuously object? I will be happy to replace all the transclusions of {{sb|...}} to {{soccerbase|...}} myself. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:54, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I noticed there is an {{sbw}} template, which is used for women's national softball teams. I was just wondering, are there men's national softball teams? Because I always thought that softball was a women's sport, while the alternative for guys was baseball. Or am I wrong?  ARTYOM  23:53, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I had always assumed that was the case, but then I read the Black Socks article. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Wow. That's interesting. Then it of course makes more sense to use the {{sb}} for that, but I would suggest naming the articles as "... men's national softball team" rather than just "... national softball team", to avoid confusion.  ARTYOM  00:08, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, of course. The national team pages for several other sports explicitely have either "men's" or "women's" in the title as appropriate (volleyball and water polo come to mind), so this is already common practice. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 00:16, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Euro templates

See Category:UEFA Euro squad templates by competition. Are these allowed, now? Punkmorten (talk) 09:48, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

They shouldn't be, but I think there was a DRV or a TfD in which one was kept (probably due to it being leading up to or during Euro 2008), leading to a mass creation... пﮟოьεԻ 57 10:03, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was changed to World Cup + top confederation national competition... Though there are others which should probably be removed Category:Football (soccer) international competitions squad navbox templates like the Confederations Cup and Asian Games there. — chandler — 10:14, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I repeat that time ago has been decided not to do those templates just to avoid having tons of templates like Philippines at the 1956 Asian Nations Cup or New Hebrides at the 1973 Oceanian Cup... Consider it, please. --necronudist (talk) 14:49, 4 June 2008 (UTC): --necronudist (talk) 12:39, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

There's a big difference between them and European championship/Copa America, even though I see no problem in OFC and AFC templates — chandler — 14:57, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

So who will carry out the deletion nomination...... Punkmorten (talk) 08:51, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I doubt anyone will, given that it was agreed by a great many people that they were a worthy addition, with a previous tfd push dismissed both on principle and sheer weight of numbers.Londo06 09:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

The 2008 squad templates were a worthy addition during the European Championship, yes, but now I think we might get rid of them, with the option to keep them only for winning teams (such as Denmark's 1992 squad or Greece's 2004 version). --Angelo (talk) 10:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Right, Angelo. I would agree for winning and runner-ups templates about continental competition. But EVERY squad is too much, and pretty irrelevant. --necronudist (talk) 10:23, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

A easy way to show players who've played in the second most notable and prestigious football competition for national teams can hardly be irrelevant. — chandler — 10:33, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I would hardly say that Oceanian Cup is the second most notable and prestigious football competition for national teams. However, as I said in the other discussion, I don't care about templates, for me it's ok every decision. I'm just trying to say that is a stupid idea. But in a stupid world...maybe it's a great idea. --necronudist (talk) 11:18, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

This was a very recent discussion and no argument was put forth that gave a reason why these violated wikipedia polocy and the majority (which does not necessarily mean they were right) agreed that they should be kept. I see no new argument or reason why this should have changed. Paul  Bradbury 11:11, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Please note the discussion was held during the 2008 European Championship, after a user begun creating these templates, and the outcome was definitely influenced by WP:RECENTISM; as you can see in the discussion archives, I agreed to keep these templates with the option to delete them all once the competition was over. Personally, I think the issue should be discussed once again, with no potential recentism influences. --Angelo (talk) 13:14, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:RECENTISM is an essay not wikipedia policy. However the previous disscusion to keep the templates did not use the argument that they should be kept because it was relevant to the current tournament. In fact the discussion was based around them being a useful navigational device or not and whether the competitions (not just the Euro but all continental international competitions) were notable or not. The issue of having too many of them was also raised and new collapse boxes were created along with guidlines to solve that problem. Paul  Bradbury 14:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

The Euros are the second biggest football tournament in the world, it seems very silly to suggest removing them. Come on the Mothers (talk) 11:33, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I would keep them as they do exactly what they say on the tin. They are used for navigation, being a navbox, that is their role. I'd certainly keep the Euros, going back for years. They have and continue to be the 2nd most important football competition in the world, even though we have never actually qualified for them. GarethHolteDavies (talk) 13:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Vatican City clubs

User:Retepretep is creating pages on many (all?) Vatican City football clubs. Although the Clericus Cup itself has received some attention and deserves an article, I doubt any of the individual teams do (the few I searched on had no indepth reliable sources). While I seem to understand that in general the goal of the project is to have articles on all first division clubs in all countries, I think that in a few cases (miniature countries), exceptions should be made for those cases where even first division clubs don't have enough sources to satisfy WP:NOTE. Perhaps a third opinion from the people of this project can give either of us a change of heart :-) Fram (talk) 15:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the championship is notable as such, but as the Vatican is not recognized by either FIFA or UEFA, the clubs itself sorta fail WP:NOTE, I think. Madcynic (talk) 15:10, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Do these articles cause us any harm by existing though? The Vatican City is a country recognized by the United Nations, so even if the top division clubs are just 1 paragraph stubs (this team plays in this league, located in this city, owned by this guy, finished this place in the league last season) I don't see why they can't exist. It's true, maybe the league itself is less prestigious than even a 6th or 7th division English league, but IMO having articles for teams in 1 questionably notable league in a country is still better than having no articles at all about teams in that country. ugen64 (talk) 17:14, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I am from Italy, and national media occasionally covered the Clericus Cup, but no media at all actually mentioned the teams. First, they are not official, since there is no football association in the Vatican City, and the quality of football is comparable to a workers' club tournament, a university intramural league, or the Italian Seconda Categoria. No harm at all to keep the article about the competition, but making articles for the teams is absolutely nonsense and easily fails the general WP:N guideline (I strongly doubt you can find a significant number of independent sources covering these teams). --Angelo (talk) 17:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, OK, but the difference is that you will find thousands of teams in any given league of that nature in a big country, so it would be unfeasible to have even 1-paragraph stubs on every team in the league, regardless of whether you could find those beloved reliable sources to make them. But I imagine that since the Vatican City's population is miniscule, it's actually feasible to have such articles. ugen64 (talk) 17:38, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm with Angelo on this one. Keep the tournament, drop the team articles as they fail WP:NOTE. -- Alexf⁴² 17:42, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I also support this view. Hockey-holic (talk) 17:46, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

By the way, just to make it clear, the Clericus Cup is not the "official football league of Vatican City" (there's no football league at all there), but is a competition organized by the CSI (Centro Sportivo Italiano, Itailan Sports Centre, controlled by the Catholic Church). Again, there's no football association in Vatican City, that is a country with a population of less than 1,000 and no football field. A short mention about the team names is way enough, since the notability of such "teams" is definitely negligible. --Angelo (talk) 17:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all. I have proposed all 16 club articles, and the club list, for deletion. Fram (talk) 19:40, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm contesting the list of them; I think that even if you decide that each individual club doesn't meet notability, the list of them as a whole should, and we should redirect the individual clubs to that list. There's no reason why we can't combine it all and make a usable list on the clubs. matt91486 (talk) 21:59, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I've merged the list content into Clericus Cup. I did it for two reasons: first, because the title is quite misleading, since there is no football association of Vatican City, and almost all of them are actually based in Rome or its neighbouring cities and towns. Secondly, these teams are the ones who contested the 2008 Clericus Cup, which, again, is not an official tournament of Vatican City, but merely a competition organized by the Centro Sportivo Italiano (see above). Feel free to open up a discussion at Talk:Clericus Cup in case you think we should just get rid of the whole list. --Angelo (talk) 23:01, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

The merge is fine by me; I just think the information is significant enough to remain somewhere on the Wikipedia. matt91486 (talk) 21:44, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

1930 FIFA World Cup squads

Too much vandalism...can someone protect the page? I surrender (yeah Angelo I know...) --necronudist (talk) 15:13, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I tend to support the proposal. Necronudist keeps reverting and reverting unsourced IP edits. If no protected, the page would turn into a mess with unsourced and false informations.--Latouffedisco (talk) 16:02, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

The trouble is, the existing version is unsourced too. Oldelpaso (talk) 16:06, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Not any more. ArtVandelay13 (talk) 16:12, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm a football researcher, I'm collaborating with Freddi, I think I am a little reliable :-) I watch the WC squads and keep them vandal-free, so if I say some user is vandalizing a WC squad page, you can trust me. That user is vandalizing 30s WC squads from ages, with different but similar IPs. I've alerted him in every single talk page and he still doesn't provide any source. Plus, he sometimes provide different DOBs for the same player and that's obviously because he doesn't know the right one. Usually he put Mexican and French DOBs who are pretty unknown... let's think they're correct: ok, it would be great to know the source... However, as Latouffe said, the risk is to have a page with false and unreliable informations. --necronudist (talk) 20:56, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

That's a shame because I would like to know the "real date of birth" of these French players! Too hard to find anyway... By the way, the first French player on the list "Nouma Andoire" is often referred to as "Numa Andoire" (not the same pronounciation in French) which could be a nickname for first name "Emmanuel". But this is just an intuition. Is anyone able to confirm that?--Latouffedisco (talk) 17:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

In French sources it's always written as Numa. No Nouma or Emmanuel. That's an honest website with a picture of him. --necronudist (talk) 17:29, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

That's true, I've always found Numa. I've made some research and discovered that it was a common first name at the time he was born, in the 1900's. But Nouma is a very very rare first name: it seems it was first given in the 1970's! (I'm not talking about Pascal Nouma!), so I think Nouma should be changed into Numa. Thanks for the link, by the way, the photograph on the boat en route to Uruguay is quite famous. I have others.:)--Latouffedisco (talk) 18:10, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Really?? Can you please send me?? :-D --necronudist (talk) 18:50, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

FA Cups

Starting from today, I'm going to try to add the results for each FA Cup year starting from 1990-91 and working backwards, doing (hopefully) one per day. Today I did 1991-92 - have a look, see what you all think. Two good resources for this are the football club history database and the FA Cup archive page --El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 16:13, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

A brave undertaking: good luck. Some might query it under WP:NOT#STATS, and I do fear that it is beginning to go down that route (if it shows nothing that is not on fchd.info, why have it here?) But a comment on the layout: the wins on penalties look rather like headlines, making them look far more promient than other matches. Kevin McE (talk) 17:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Good luck. I did a few, and if you can do one a day including checking your wikilinks and looking for typos you'll be doing better than I did :-) One style point: scorelines should be separated with endashes, not hyphens; your sixth round results are, but the earlier rounds aren't. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 18:22, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Can anyone give a good reason why this is still in the MOS? It's certainly not in common use anymore in the print world or by the looks of it online. - fchd (talk) 19:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I reckon it's more a question at somewhere like WT:MOS. However, I think 1–0 looks loads better than 1-0. Peanut4 (talk) 21:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

The point is more to provide a base of information for others to add to, I think. I've not added the information on the preliminary rounds, as that would probably be going too far. I don't think putting the results for each year is too bad, but obviously some mention of salient points from the FA Cups of those years would be good. Does anyone know of a good resource which has information about the FA Cup seasons beyond mere statistics (match reviews, overall cup reviews, etc.)? Also, seeing as I'm working backwards through time, I won't be dealing with penalties anymore. If you fancy changing how they're presented to look better, please do. And I'll try to make sure my '-' are '–' from now on. ;-) --El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 07:05, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Personally I would like to see the preliminary round results. Try the RSSSF archive for all results. пﮟოьεԻ 57 08:07, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Season page moves

User:Mr Hall of England has been moving season pages to replace the endash in the title with a hyphen. Previously I have seen bots (such as User:DyceBot) moving such pages in the opposite direction, i.e. replacing the hyphen with a endash. Can we agree on which is correct and perhaps organise a bot to make all football season article titles consistent? --Jameboy (talk) 21:36, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

The Manual of Style is clear on this, endashes should be used. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 21:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Can an admin undo Mr Hall's edits then in that case? --Jameboy (talk) 21:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Endashes are indeed correct. But a redirect with a simple hyphen should also exist. Peanut4 (talk) 21:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Endashes should be used... maybe someone with some t00ls can revert all the m0ves. — chandler — 21:42, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Most seasons have this 2007-08 in English football not like this 2007–08 in English football — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr Hall of England (talk • contribs)

That isn't relevant – read the Manual of Style. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 21:52, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

What is better 1st or 2nd — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr Hall of England (talk • contribs)

This isn't really open to discussion – the Manual of Style says that we should use the second option, but I think that the second option does look much better too. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 18:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

FA Community Shield

I've just noticed that the list of games on this page is in reverse chronological order. I always thought that they were supposed to be listed oldest first (although I don't have time to look for the policy as I need to get to work!). Can anyone offer any advice on this? Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 07:35, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, definitely should be, all other competitions are listed that way -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists)#Chronological ordering. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 07:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I've fixed it now. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 18:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Discussion about Juventus managerial list

Hello to everybody, I opened this discussion about Juventus managerial list and I'd like that someone pay attention on it. Thanks a lot. --Mess (talk) 08:29, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Template:Switzerland-footy-bio-stub

Could someone who knows about templates have a look at {{Switzerland-footy-bio-stub}}? It seems to be producing too much blank space afterwards - see Iván Alejandro Furios (born one place, another nationality, plays in a third country, so seemed to need 3 stubtypes!), where the three stubtypes are listed neatly one after the other in the code but the display looks very odd. It's also got a smaller ball than most of the others. PamD (talk) 08:42, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully that's fixed now (after 5 test attempts!). --Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 10:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Waterlogged pitch etc

I'm working on the rainout (sports) article and trying to find an article about when games may or may not be postponed in football due to weather conditions (ie, snow, waterlogged pitch, etc), but can't find one. There's nothing also on the football pitch article about this, should there be? Neıl ☄ 15:18, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, there really isn't a hard and fast rule on this, a game is postponed if the referee deems the conditions to be, in his opinion, hazardous to players. I think that's as in-depth as it gets........ -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 15:20, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Just checked and the Laws of the Game (accessible in a PDF document linked in the WP article in question) state that the ref may take "a decision that the condition of the field of play or its surrounds or that the weather conditions are such as to allow or not to allow a match to take place" - that's all it says.......... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 15:23, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

German Flag in the 1934 World Cup

Which flag did they actually use? Flag of Germany says "a ruling on 12 March reintroduced the old black-white-red imperial tricolour and established the flag of the Nazi Party as the two legal national flags of Germany." The 1934 article shows the black-white-red flag. On the 1934 talk page this section exist Talk:1934 FIFA World Cup#Nazi or Empire Flag Flown by Germany?, but they don't look to have come up with a united answer. I looked over at FIFA.com at their photos but couldn't find a flag. The match reports don't give anything of use (as they don't seem to have a system for historical flags, showing the current flags of all countries). So, does anyone know which one it was? or ? — chandler — 21:29, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest looking at several (non football) articles relating to that time period to see what is being used most on WP for that period. That way it should be more clear which country and from which era the team is from. Thats just my two cents. -- Grant.Alpaugh 02:17, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

From what I can tell by looking at this picture, it has the black-white-red flag on it. Interestingly the coloring is different from the poster used in the article, but I suspect that this external source has the correct coloring. Hence I'd use the Empire flag, not the Nazi flag. Madcynic (talk) 12:11, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, from the picture we have at the article Image:WorldCup1934poster.jpg, that flag isnt really the same one. — chandler — 13:56, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Grant, I did look around, so far the only thing I've found is the 1934 Grand Prix Season, but even in these articles there are inconstancies. 1934 Grand Prix season has the tri-colour for the German drivers, cars and grand prix. Czechoslovakian Grand Prix had German winners 3 times in a row, 34, 35 and 37, all with Nazi flags. German Grand Prix show a tri-colour for the winner of the 34 Grand Prix. But with this it seemed, maybe the tri-colour is the right one, until I found 1935 Grand Prix season (which has the tri-colour), at this time wasn't that flag outlawed? And from the looks of it, it's the same editor who've put the flags there. I looked through more Cinema of Germanys infobox. It seems pretty clear that both flags at least were as it says "legal national flags of Germany", but could they just bring which ever they wanted? Or was one flag more "important" than the other and actually was the real flag? More findings European LC Championships shows the 34 German flag as the Nazi one. We have 1933–34 in Swedish football (showing the World Cup match) and 1934–35 in Swedish football (again, wasn't it banned at that time?) showing the tri-colour. List of sovereign states in 1934#G has the tri-colour. It looks more articles are using the tri-colour. I just thought I could have been better to from 1933 use the other flag, distinguish between, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany. At least from the flag article I get the feeling it was justed as the "real" one. [nazi] Flag of the National Socialist German Workers Party (1920–45) National flag of Germany (1933–45), [tri-colour] Used jointly with the swastika flag (1933–35), then banned as "reactionary". Maybe someone who's German or remember more than "kartoffell" from their German lessons in school could see if the reference used for the flags on that article say anything more. von Hindenburg, Paul (1933-03-12). "Erlaß des Reichspräsidenten über die vorläufige Regelung der Flaggenhissung". documentArchiv.de. Retrieved 2008-02-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help). This comment become too long, as I wrote it while searching — chandler — 14:48, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that settles the confusion. The Hindenburg source says that "until a final rule be made, both flags are to be flown equally". This final settlement came with the "Reichsflaggengesetz" which was part of the Nuremberg Laws (15 September 1935). Here it says in Artikel 2: "Reichs- and national flag is the swastika flag. It is also the merchant flag." Hence until 1935 the black-white-red was legal, and remained so until 1935. Madcynic (talk) 18:25, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, (though this doesn't concern WP:FOOTY alone) there might be good to have a standard of which flag should be used from 33-35, though there's no inconsistency on the football articles (that I've found) there is on other articles... Maybe the place to take this question up is at WP:FLAGS, WP:GER or WP:WPFT? — chandler — 18:41, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I've come across a picture of German supporters at the 1934 World Cup in 100 Jahre Deutsche Meisterschaft, Hardy Grüne ISBN 3-89533-410-3, p.205 and they're waving the Nazi's Swastika. Wiggy! (talk) 02:12, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I got answered at WP:GER. and it seems should be the flag used for Germany from 1933 — chandler — 07:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think the supporters are not a valid source. Supporters at Germany matches have had the state flag/ensign/war flag flying, but still the German nat'l football team plays under the civil flag (cf Flag of Germany). As to the answer you got from user:Lost Boy, I'm afraid this is not quite exact. The German wiki states quite clearly that from 1933 to 1935 both flags were the official flag of Germany. Personally I'd try and find some images from the tournament that show official flagging (outside stadia, e.g.) for a decision. As for the time being, I'd prefer the Empire flag, but I can live with the Swastika flag, as long as this is not a final decision but one that might be reversed if there is new evidence. Madcynic (talk) 15:22, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Does this even matter? I don't think it does and it's not that important. As a fan I don't care about which flag was used officially or not. Just stick to the Empire flag. Caden S (talk) 04:13, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, as fan, I wouldn't worry about it either. However, from what I hear, wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Hence it should report accurate facts, not factoids. Madcynic (talk) 14:32, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Good one smartass! I'm happy to see that you know what an encylopedia is. Caden S (talk) 18:04, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Atleast he knows. Obviously you don't. Based on the information I could find and discussion here, I would use the Swastika flag since it was more common than the other. But then that isn't too offical either so I guess I will have to find out some more. Hubschrauber729 (talk) 18:37, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Grimsby Town F.C. past squads and players

Is Grimsby Town F.C. past squads and players really notable enough or should it be included in the individual season entries, e.g. Grimsby Town F.C. season 2007-08? Peanut4 (talk) 22:20, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I've never heard of this club. Certainly it does not need the past players and squads article but does it even need the individual season articles? Hubschrauber729 (talk) 00:17, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm extremely surprised that you would not have heard of a club that has played in the Football League for 116 years, including several spells in the top division, and reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup twice, but that's by the by, I do agree that this article is not needed, especially as the creator will almost certainly give up when he realises he doesn't have access to the information any further back than a decade or so...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:37, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that single-season articles would be the way to go. matt91486 (talk) 00:33, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Squad changes for 2008-09 season

Oh good god, this is driving me bananas. Loads of club articles are filling up with squad changes for the upcoming season, something which clearly doesn't need to be in the main club article, only in one of those articles for a club's individual season. Is there some kind of template that could be added to help stop this annoyance? Dancarney (talk) 14:54, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

You could always put a hidden comment in, e.g. <!-- This section is for current squad only. Any "squad changes" should go in the individual season articles where they exist --> пﮟოьεԻ 57 15:23, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I thought of that after I posted above. Seems it must be a decent idea! Dancarney (talk) 15:28, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Unknown years at club

What I mean is this, the year Marin joined Frankfurt is unknown. Is it common to use "xxxx" in place of say a "?" or leaving it blank? Personally I think that xxxx looks terrible and a "?" or leaving it blank looks alot better. But if the years are supposed to line up properly, I would suggest using {{}} with the 0 inside. Would that be acceptable? Hubschrauber729 (talk) 17:59, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I think {{0|0000}} would fit best, just because the align is right. I'm sure people will understand that it is a unknown and not since the beginning of time — chandler — 18:54, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I personally use either ? or 19?? / 20??. I agree that xxxx doesn't look good. Either ? or leaving it blank are better alternatives, although leaving a blank may cause problems when the unknown date is when a player left a club as it would look like the player was still at the club – in that case a ? is preferable. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 20:43, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

User:Enterandypandy

User:Enterandypandy's edits to football club articles seem quite concering to me... Mattythewhite (talk) 11:58, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

The image looks like a copyright symbol, and now no longer links to captain to explain the role. Quite pointless edits to be honest. Peanut4 (talk) 12:01, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I have left him a note pointing him at the manual of style, specifically not using images to replace text. The edits seem innocent enough from a new user who probably thinks that the image looks nicer. Paul  Bradbury 13:29, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Portal:Association football

Someone update the portal pics and nominate the whole thing for Featured Portal, it looks like it'll pass with flying colours! 84.71.187.109 (talk) 00:16, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Fully Pro league?

Our criteria for inclusion is very dependent on the distinction between fully pro-, or not, leagues. Do we have any list of which leagues can be thus described? Kevin McE (talk) 00:08, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

There was an attempt to compile a list a couple of months ago. See here [12] --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 00:25, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

We could add Singapore's S League to that list we had started before for sure, per recent AfDs. matt91486 (talk) 00:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd be interested in restarting that up with you if you'd like. Vickser (talk) 01:25, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Copying the list from last time, adding in Singapore per above and Argentina because I know their first league is fully pro:

• ARGENTINA: Primera División Argentina
• AUSTRALIA:A-League
• AUSTRIA:Austrian Football Bundesliga
• BELGIUM:Belgian League
• BRAZIL:Campeonato Brasileiro Série A
• DENMARK:Danish Superliga
• ENGLAND:Premier League, Football League Championship, Football League One, Football League Two
• FRANCE:Ligue 1, Ligue 2
• GERMANY:Fußball-Bundesliga, 2. Fußball-Bundesliga, 3rd Liga (when it begins this fall)
• GREECE: Super League Greece
• IRAN: Iran Pro League
• ISRAEL:Ligat ha'Al
• ITALY:Serie A, Serie B, Serie C1, Serie C2
• JAPAN:J. League
• MEXICO:Primera División de México
• NETHERLANDS:Eredivisie, Eerste Divisie
• NORWAY:Tippeligaen
• PORTUGAL:Portuguese Liga
• RUSSIA:RFPL, Russian First Division, Russian Second Division
• SCOTLAND:Scottish Premier League, Scottish First Division (sometimes the odd club remains part-time)
• SINGAPORE: S. League
• SOUTH KOREA:K-League
• SPAIN:La Liga, Segunda División
• SWEDEN:Allsvenskan
• UKRAINE:Ukrainian Premier League, Ukrainian First League, Ukrainian Second League [13]
• UNITED STATES:Major League Soccer, USL First Division, USL Second Division, North American Soccer League (defunct)

Honestly, I think a list of leagues we know are not fully pro might be equally helpful. That way, when there's a league that's not on the list, we can see if it's on the semi-pro list or if it needs to be researched. Vickser (talk) 01:49, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Sure thing. I added the USL 2nd division, since recent AfDs have shown that to be notable; the USL Premier Development League would be the level in the US that would not confer it. We'll have plenty of more to check on though to be completely sure, and I'm not sure the best way of going about it. matt91486 (talk) 00:36, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Also added Greece and Iran, both are fully professional according to their Wiki pages. Enterprise Football League is NOT fully professional, according to its page, so that can be ruled out. matt91486 (talk) 01:00, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

• Here's a list of leagues I think we should check into which I assume have at least a good shot of being fully professional (or I generally assume are, but don't know for sure): Gambrinus liga, Egyptian Premier League, Premier Soccer League, FAI Premier Division, Serbian Superliga, Bulgarian A Professional Football Group, Liga I, Turkcell Super League, Ukrainian Premier League, Soviet Top League, Campeonato Ecuatoriano de Fútbol, Colombian Professional Football, Primera División de Chile, Campeonato Brasileiro Série B, Qatari League, Saudi Premier League, Chinese Super League. matt91486 (talk) 01:00, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Added Ukraine, I know that the top two tiers are fully-professional. I'm sure that Turkish, Czech, Romanian and Bulgarian leagues are fully-professional too, not 100% sure about the rest, but I think all of the leagues mentioned above are professional. BanRay 22:54, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I figure the same; hopefully we can get some confirmation soon and then we can copy the list over to the soccer notability page so it's easily accessible. matt91486 (talk) 06:47, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

If this intends to be a definitive list (or even if it doesn't) please could people supply a reliable source for the professional status of any leagues included in the list. It'd avoid a lot of arguments later if we also added a reliable source for the next league down in each country not being fully pro. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 07:43, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Added source for Ukraine (unfortunately couldn't find anything in English). As it turns out, the third tier is also fully professional. BanRay 13:32, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Mass grammar change on team articles

User:Sennen goroshi has made changes to a large number of team articles changing Team Name is a football club to Team Name are a football club. I have raised this with them however they are convinced that they are correct and that are should be used based on them being a collective noun. I don't think that this is the case however could you let me know whether I am just wrong and the amends should stay, I have reverted them the first time but they have been re-reverted. Paul  Bradbury 09:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

As long as the edits are based on what is correct, not personal feelings that I am very happy to get some opinions here. My edits were based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences#Formal_and_notional_agreement which basically states - if the teams name is based on a proper noun - ie. a place name then in British English it must use plural form, for teams that have names that are not based on proper nouns - ie. Arsenal then you can use either singular or plural. But if someone with a greater knowledge of British English grammar wishes to shed more light on this, then please go ahead and educate me. Sennen goroshi (talk) 09:39, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I go with English plural#Discretionary plurals. Re those collective nouns which refer "either to a single entity or the members of the set that compose it", the writer on English usage H W Fowler says they are "treated as singular or plural at discretion", and that this allows for "delicate distinction[s]". I'd say usage in football club articles is a example of such a distinction. Template F.C. is an English football club, because we're talking about the single entity; but Template F.C. are playing tonight, because we're using it to refer to the football players which compose it. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 10:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Discretionary plurals are fine when dealing with Arsenal, because as far as I am aware, they are not named after a place ie. real/proper noun, so you can make your own choice (ironically I did not edit the Arsenal article, it was already in plural form) - however in the link you gave, it states Also in British English, names of towns and countries take plural verbs when they refer to sports teams but singular verbs when they refer to the actual place: England are playing Germany tonight refers to a football game, but England is the most populous country of the United Kingdom refers to the country - which seems to make it quite clear that if the team is named after a place, then plural would be correct. Sennen goroshi (talk) 10:14, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand the names of towns and countries bit. That deals with referring to a sports team specifically by the name of a town or country, e.g saying England are playing tonight, using England as a convenient shortcut for the England national football team. Or at club level, Bury instead of Bury F.C.

The grammatical status of the name of a football club can't possibly depend on the origin of that name. American and British English differences#Formal and notional agreement, which you cite above, starts off saying "In BrE, collective nouns can take either singular (formal agreement) or plural (notional agreement) verb forms, according to whether the emphasis is, respectively, on the body as a whole or on the individual members" (which is what English plural#Discretionary plurals says), and goes on to say that "[t]he difference occurs for all nouns of multitude, both general terms such as team and company and proper nouns". cheers, Struway2 (talk) 10:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I had a sneaking feeling about that, it's hard to balance good grammar and natural English - to me plural sounds natural, however I don't want that to cloud my judgment. I did do a quick search online to see which form was more popular with newspapers etc. [14] for example.. while search for Man Utd references, I could not find any uses of "is" but then again, I didn't look very hard.

Which leaves me to ask, what happens now? If I read correctly then there is a free choice as which form to use. So do they all get randomly reverted back? do they stay as they are? What happens to articles such as Arsenal's that was already in plural form, before I edited anything? Sennen goroshi (talk) 10:55, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd put them back how they were, Arsenal's discretionary differences and all, if it were up to me, probably citing this discussion in the edit summary. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 11:17, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree with the firt comments of User:Struway2 above. Manchester United F.C. is a football club, but when talking about the team, e.g. Manchester United are the Premier League Champions. - fchd (talk) 10:59, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh and, ignoring what happens regarding the above, would I be right in thinking that teams such as Bolton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers, should remain as plural no matter what, because their name is plural? Sennen goroshi (talk) 11:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't say so, Sennen. In the case of "Bolton Wanderers Football Club is an English football club", the singular seems appropriate. – PeeJay 11:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The bolded phrase in the first line of the lead paragraph usually includes the words football club. Anyone with knowledge of BrE in a sporting context would expect "Bury are a football club", and most would be happy with Bury F.C. are a football club..., but I do find Bury Football Club are a football club". Maybe the way to avoid the problem is to avoid the word team in the earliest sentences, which does seem to demand treatment more strongly (ungrammatical as it might be).

Even the "Rovers/Rangers/Wanderers" of this world usually have football club (singular)in their full name. Kevin McE (talk) 11:11, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

If you want to be as formal as possible, then use the full name followed by is - however I doubt many people actually use the full name when talking about a team, people say Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal. When I look at some other sports such a baseball, they use only the name of the team "new york yankees" - is that the official name of the team? is it the equivalent of saying Man Utd? Sennen goroshi (talk) 11:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The funny thing about American team names is that they are usually in the plural form anyway, thereby making a player for that team a "New York Yankee" or a "Los Angeles Laker" or a "Harlem Globetrotter". I say let's leave the Americans to their own devices. – PeeJay 12:50, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

American names are just crazy. On if NYY is their official name, I suppose so... I've never heard anything else... Though I have heard people refer to the New York Giants, as the "New York football Giants" because there are other (defunct) teams called the New York Giants. — chandler — 18:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Now I don't know if I should laugh or cry - based on the above discussion, I decided to revert all of my edits, and put the articles back to singular, however as soon as I did that, someone reverted the Bolton Wanderers article - it doesn't matter if I put them to singular or plural - someone is reverting me.Sennen goroshi (talk) 18:18, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Tommy Godwin

I would like to report a case of vandalism and / or poor editing at Tommy Godwin (footballer). The vandal whose IP addresses begin with 213 or 82 has been very persistent and has continued to mess with article for several months. He / she seems to be a supporter of Shamrock Rovers, one of several teams Godwin played for. One issue is the constant renaming of a paragraph about Godwin’s Early Years to Shamrock Rovers. Godwin only spent a short period of career at Rovers and the paragraph includes refs to three other clubs and not just Rovers. Secondly he also insists in adding this link [15] which can only be accessed by paying to log on. Thirdly in doing these changes he removes all the references that have been previously added to the article. In addition the vandal refuses to login or use the talk page to discuss edits. At least one other editor User:Schcambo has reverted his edits and another User:SoWhy has requested he use refs properly. I believe this article should be semi-protected to help prevent further vandalism. Djln --Djln (talk) 17:24, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The same two IP users have been regularly vandalising or adding poor uncited edits to Jason Gavin. Peanut4 (talk) 17:54, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Infobox Football biography

It's been nearly two years since {{Football player infobox}} was renamed {{Infobox Football biography}}, yet I've noticed today about half a dozen articles created using it. Whilst this isn't a major problem, as it still works, some fields such as 'nickname' remain from the older versions. Can I ask people to bear this in mind, and evangelise as they feel suitable?  slυмgυм [ ←→ ] 21:00, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

User:CarlosHBA

Just a headsup that we have a new user CarlosHBA who may be adding non-free photographs to articles, e.g. Dimitar Berbatov, Diego Maradona and Robbie_Keane. See his contributions[16] for the full monty. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 21:33, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I've deleted all of his pictures, as they all were blatantly copyrighted photos taken from the Web with no licensing information whatsoever. I've also left a notice in the user's talkpage; feel free to let me know if he keeps on uploading similar pictures. --Angelo (talk) 21:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Further image of Ledley King uploaded Tmol42 (talk) 22:01, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Scottish Young Player of the Year

According to SFWA Young Player of the Year, which has no references, and its associated template, the 2004 winner was Craig Gordon. However, there's no mention of it in his article, and this and this say it was Stephen Pearson, who won the SPFA Young Player of the Year in the same year. Anybody got any definitive source to clarify this? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 16:46, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

If we have two reliable sources saying it was Pearson, and no reliable sources saying it was Gordon, then per WP:V it should be changed to say Pearson. -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:14, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Brazilian clubs

Is there a reason why their names stand out? Sporting Club is usually abbreviated as SC, Royal Club - RC and so on. We have "Everton FC" and not "Everton Football Club", "RCD Mallorca" instead of "Royal Club Deportivo Mallorca", "R Charleroi SC" instead of "Royal Charleroi Sporting Club" etc. And yet there is Sport Club Corinthians Paulista, even despite the fact that they use the SC abbreviation on their club crest (S.C. Corinthians Paulista[17]]). Same with Vasco da Gama, who have the CR abbreviation on their crest. Additionally "CR Vasco da Gama" generates more google hits than "Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama". My proposal would be to move some of the pages in order to try and maintain at least some sort of standard for club names and make them less confusing for readers unfamiliar with football and/or Portuguese language. BanRay 13:01, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Some of those pages should be moved. – PeeJay 13:36, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I oppose moving the pages. First: both Corinthians and Vasco official web pages use the club's full name instead of an abbreviated name. Second: if we start naming the articles based on their club crests, Vasco's article would have to be moved to "CRVG", Manchester United F.C. of England would have to be moved to just Manchester United, Manchester City F.C. would have to be moved to "M.C.F.C.", Newcastle United F.C. would have to be moved to Newcastle United, and Club Social de Deportes Rangers of Chile would have to be moved to just "R". Third: moving some pages will make the Brazilian football club pages more confusing, as some clubs will have abbreviated names while others will maintain their full names. Also, the Brazilian club names are already standardized, so there is no need to fix what is not broken. Fourth: The names of the Brazilian football clubs articles have been stable for a very long time, thus, as per Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Controversial_names, "If an article name has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should remain. Especially when there is no other basis for a decision, the name given the article by its creator should prevail", changing the name of the articles merely to include acronyms or abbreviations is not a good reason to move. Fifth: moving the articles to use those acronyms or abbreviations will create an unnecessary work, as several templates and categories will need to be fixed by someone. Sixth: Google hits are not relevant, as several pages listed by Google are not reliable, and several other sources (like books and magazines) are obviously not listed by Google. Seventh: we already have SC Corinthians Paulista redirecting to Sport Club Corinthians Paulista, and CR Vasco da Gama redirecting to Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama, so I can't see how moving the clubs' pages will make them less confusing for readers unfamiliar with football and/or Portuguese language. --Carioca (talk) 19:22, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I think a consensus is always a good reason to move a page, so let's just wait and see if we can get one here, because I'm happy to go with whatever the community decision is, but I just don't think that "Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama" is a good name for an article, as it's both too long and does not go in line with generally accepted "guidelines". I'm not suggesting abbreviating club names. Manchester United is known to the world as Manchester United and whereas FC is, formally, part of the name, it is not part of the "club's" name (:S if you know what I mean and I think you do). The official website may refer to the club as Sport Club Corinthians Paulista, because it's the correct name of the club, but so is SC Corinthians Paulista and the abbreviation on the crest suggests that the name is neither uncommon nor incorrect. Google search may have little importance when it comes to reliability, but the reliability aspect is of secondary importance here, since I was merely trying to show that the suggested name is at least as common or, in fact, even more common, as it turns out, than the current name. Standardization is one of the reasons we have WikiProjects and while I don't mind long names as such, I think it's better to maintain some sort of standard. If this means moving R Charleroi SC to Royal Charleroi Sporting Club or RCD Mallorca to Real Club Deportivo Mallorca then so be it, but since vast majority of club articles use abbreviations, it is easier to move the Brazilian articles. BanRay 21:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with User:Carioca. The move seems pointless, as they stated they have been like that for a long time and have appropriate redirects for other common names. The name is neither incorrect or inappropriate so the status quo should stand as per Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Controversial_names. Paul  Bradbury 21:46, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I was called to join this discussion in order to write my thought about this issue, so here I am. I see someone cited WP:NC#Controversial names here, however I think that guideline (naming conventions are all guidelines, as you probably know) is controversial itself. For how long an article name should be stable in order to define it uncontroversial, for instance? So, I think we should just forget it and use WP:NC#Sports teams instead; we have a guideline written exactly for sports teams, so I don't really understand the aim of this discussion. In short, I think we should just apply WP:NC#Sports teams and forget about all the rest. --Angelo (talk) 22:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Just to make it clear, do you mean that you should keep the club's full names, right? As per "In cases where there is no ambiguity whatsoever as to the official spelling of a club's name in English, the official name should be used." (Sport Club Corinthians Paulista and Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama are the clubs' official names) Correct me if I am wrong. --Carioca (talk) 22:39, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

You're not wrong, but we first have to apply tests for ambiguity. – PeeJay 22:44, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

PeeJay, you obviously meant about the "no ambiguity" test to be applied first, didn't you :) ?!? For Vasco, the club website has an English-language section, which uses both "CR Vasco da Gama" and "Clube de Regatas Vasco da Gama" denominations, the former much more frequently than the latter.[18] But I would consider also an alternate denomination such as "Vasco da Gama (football club)", per WP:COMMON (the club is internationally known as Vasco da Gama, with no CR or Clube de Regatas indications around). Corinthians has apparently no English-language section, so the ambiguity test (Google News) should be used instead: the full denomination has no Google News hit around [19], whereas the shorter "SC Corinthians Paulista" has one single Google News hit [20]. Again, in this case the club is internationally known just as "Corinthians", so "Corinthians (football club)" might be an option as well. I have no opinion, sincerely, I am just providing you with facts, so feel free to decide yourself about the issue. --Angelo (talk) 22:53, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

"Vasco da Gama (football club)" and "Corinthians (football club)" are very bad names, as both clubs are not just football clubs, they are multi-sport clubs, while naming the article "SC Corinthians Paulista" just because of a single good hit seems to be a very weak reason. Thus it seems more logical to just keep the current article names (Sport Club Corinthians Paulista and Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama), as it has been named in this way for a long time without any problems. Besides that, moving the articles will bring a lot of unnecessary effort to fix several categories, subcategories and templates. The time will better be using improving other Wikipedia articles. Besides that, User:BanRay canvassed eight editors to this discussion: User:Number57, User:Chandler, User:Grant.Alpaugh, User:Struway2, User:Peanut4, User:Angelo.romano, User::Matt91486 and User:Falastur2. --Carioca (talk) 23:18, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Canvassed? How is that canvassing? Informing other editors of a certain discussion is totally acceptable, unless you are trying to influence the outcome. I think you've just pretty much crossed the line with this accusation. BanRay 23:23, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

No apology coming my way? BanRay 23:39, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I apologize, even if I disagree with sending messages to other users when the discussion is already available in this Wikiproject. Sorry. --Carioca (talk) 23:42, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Apology accepted, I was only trying to boost an important discussion that had only received two responses in over six hours. Now back on topic, I'm not sure about Corinthians, maybe Corinthians Paulista may be an option. As for Vasco, the club seems to prefer the "CR" name on their website, so that's probably the name we should use, according to WP:NC#Sports teams. BanRay 23:50, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the first suggestion, I disagree with Corinthians Paulista, as the club is usually just called Corinthians, and as explained above, "Corinthians (football club)" is not an acceptable name. Regarding the second suggestion, I am not sure that Vasco prefer to use the "CR" name on their website, as in the page posted by Angelo, in the top it is still written "Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama" even in the English pages, and also in the PDF page you can see that the first thing you will read is "Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama", so it is better to just leave Vasco's article' s name as "Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama". --Carioca (talk) 00:07, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

All (or at least all except these?) football clubs seem to use the abbreviation instead of writing out any national variant of "Football club" or "Sport club" or anything alike. I don't buy the argument that "because they write their full name on their homepage..." Many clubs do this: Man City Liverpool Sevilla Juve, the list could probably go on. — chandler — 00:11, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

That's true, most clubs use their full names on banners, same with Vasco, who prefer to use the CR Vasco da Gama name in plain text. BanRay 00:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

First, to clarify, Carioca, I was invited here by BanRay to give an opinion, whatever it was, not to support his. I know that point has been resolved, and I'm not trying to reopen the argument, but I felt like I should clarify for the sake of good will. Anyway, moving on.

Here's my take: If we look back to December of last year, a discussion came to the consensus decision that official names should be used as article names, so I don't think we should think about naming, say, Sport Club Corinthians Paulista as simply "Corinthians" as their main article page. Sure, have a Corinthians page link to the club article (though it already has a hefty disambiguation page), but don't have it as the main page. Apart from anything, this saves us from having such problems as, for instance there being an English team Corinthians F.C.. Giving the abbreviation "Corinthians (football club)" to Corinthians Paulista based purely on them being the best-known is unfair, and likely to cause several other problems where an abbreviation clashes with an unrelated team sharing that name. Since we're pursuing the official names, then where possible it's my opinion that the full name of the club, including some sort of "Football Club" pre- or suffix, should be added to complete a team's official name. To this end, I personally think we should dismiss talk of using "(football club)" in this way - generally, the official name of a team makes the football status clear, and so to use "(football club)" would indicate that we aren't using official names. So to my mind the real debate is whether to allow abbreviations of these words - i.e. Football Club to F.C. (I think personally that the dots between the letters are important where they are commonly used - I don't know the case in Brazil so this may not apply here, but to me "Everton FC" as seen above should be "Everton F.C."). But anyway, that might be partly personal preference, and I start to stray from my point. Anyway, as for whether to abbreviate the terms, i.e. here "Club de Regatas" to CR...I'm undecided. Personally I lean towards the abbreviations as they are more natural terms, in a way - they are how a club's name would be spoken in most cases. Opinions? Falastur2 (talk) 03:37, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer, Falastur2. To anyone who may be curious, in Brazil, Placar magazine, in their 2008 Campeonato Brasileiro guide, place the club short name (for example Vasco) on the side of the page, while below the club's logo, they place the club's full name (for example Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama). Also, if you check the Portuguese-language Wikipedia, you will see that they are also using the clubs' full names in most (if not all) the Brazilian clubs. Anyway, you raised an interesting point, if the articles ended up being moved to use abbreviations, we will need to decide if we will add dots between the letters or not. --Carioca (talk) 03:56, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll add my opinion briefly - use the common short name of the club and then abbreviate any other parts of the name. So, for Vasco de Gama (short common form) I'd go for C.R. Vasco da Gama. пﮟოьεԻ 57 08:09, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

On dots, there are a number (that I've just seen in passing) of European clubs not using dots, all(?) spanish teams {{fb team |t=Almería |tan=UD Almería |tc=ESP |abb={{#if:|ALM}} |oc={{#if:|{{{oc}}} }} }}<!-- -->, {{fb team |t=Barcelona |tan=FC Barcelona |tc=ESP |abb={{#if:|BAR}} |oc={{#if:|{{{oc}}} }} }}<!-- -->, {{fb team |t=Espanyol |tan=RCD Espanyol |tc=ESP |abb={{#if:|ESP}} |oc={{#if:|{{{oc}}} }} }}<!-- --> too just name the first 3 alphabetical of Primera Division. We have all(?) French teams Auxerre, Bordeaux, Caen etc. We have all Swedish teams AIK, Djurgårdens IF, IF Elfsborg etc, here I can actually give the input that, Swedish clubs are never referred to with dots. I don't know if this is the case in France and Spain. And as I can think how weird I would feel if Swedish clubs were moved, AIK → A.I.K. or Djurgårdens IF → Djurgårdens I.F. It might be good to go by that common use. — chandler — 10:58, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

For full disclosure, I was invited here to express my opinion, which is... If these articles were being created today, I would name them according to what came of the Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Naming convention for sports teams discussion mentioned above, which is WP:NC#Sports teams, the sports teams section of WP:Naming conventions. (WP:NC says it's a policy, not a guideline, by the way.) Using the example of Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama, its website has an English section which refers to the club using the full name spelt out only once, at the very start of the introduction, and CR Vasco da Gama (without the dots) elsewhere. Though at the bottom of each page, in the copyright notice, it uses C. R. Vasco da Gama (with dots). So if this article were created today, I would call it CR Vasco da Gama, and ask Brazilian editors whether it was conventional in Brazil for dots to be included or not. In England and Italy it is, in Spain it isn't, for example. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:18, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Dots-issue is an old issue. It was decided not to use them, also if they are commonly used in that nation. --necronudist (talk) 11:12, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the Vasco da Gama page to CR Vasco da Gama, without dots (per User:Necronudist). Additionally I'm proposing the following moves:

• Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras → SE Palmeiras

Per WP:NC#Sports teams. The club has no English-language section, but uses "Palmeiras" everywhere on the Portuguese-language website. "Palmeiras" is also the name widely adopted by the English-language media (602 google news hits, whereas the current name has 0).

• São Paulo Futebol Clube → São Paulo FC

Football club is always abbreviated as FC. Additionally the club uses Sao Paolo FC on their website, even on the top banner. Google news : 5 hits (FC), 0 hits (fulls name)

• Santos Futebol Clube → Santos FC

Same as above, Futebol Clube-->FC, Santos FC is used on the club's English-language section. Google news: 14:1.

• Grêmio Foot-Ball Porto Alegrense → Grêmio FBPA

Again, google news and the official website. BanRay 13:06, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I support two of them, but Palmeiras and Grêmio should be SE Palmeiras and Grêmio FBPA (as it says on its badge) respectively. пﮟოьεԻ 57 13:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, I prefer "SE Palmeiras" and "Grêmio FBPA" too, I only went for "Palmeiras" and "Grêmio" because those are the most commonly used denominations. BanRay 14:49, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Generally speaking, I'm in favor of going to the abbreviated, commonly used names with redirects from the complete ones. matt91486 (talk) 21:39, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Trials/triallists

Do we have an article explaining what it means for a player to go 'on-trial' with a club? I've found Trial (sport) but it mentions not football.  slυмgυм [ ←→ ] 16:50, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

If my experience with Football Manager is anything to go by, football trials may last anywhere from one week to four weeks. During the time that the player is on trial, the trialling club does not pay him a wage, and the club may not play him in any competitive matches. – PeeJay 17:16, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's as formal as one to four weeks. Basically any player who doesn't have a club and decides to train with a team is on trial. It could be as short as one day, as long as the club needs to say no. I also think trialists are allowed up to two reserve games in England. Peanut4 (talk) 17:22, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, players can go on trial while they are already with a club. Americans like Freddy Adu and Brad Guzan have had trials with Manchester United and Celtic, respectively. The MLS season runs during the summer so guys that are looking to move abroad during the winter transfer window are allowed by their MLS teams to go on trial with European teams. -- Grant.Alpaugh 23:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Birmingham have two players on trial currently, one already with a Belgian club, the other with a French one, and had to get international clearance before they could play them in friendlies.[21] The lad from the Belgian club also trained with Birmingham during last season. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:26, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

As far as the duration of trials go, sources would appear to indicate that Andy Hessenthaler spent an entire season on trial with Charlton........ -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 13:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

This is to some extent a 'behind the scenes' occurrence, and since it deals with contracts, I'd expect few verifiable sources to be available to construct an article. I think P4 is right to say that they may, in real life, play in matches as I can vaguely remember a couple of examples. Doesn't everyone know someone who's 'had trials' with some club? And according to his autobiography, Tony Adams arrived uninvited at Highbury one day asking for a trial. I think there is enough anecdotal evidence, but little more.  slυмgυм [ ←→ ] 20:53, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

This isn't a definitive answer, so don't quote me on this, but from what I have picked up, a trial is an invitation to train with a club for test purposes, to see if the manager thinks they are a worthwhile purchase. They can extend for as long as the manager (presuming the manager is the one who makes the trial offer) wants it to, but rarely last over a month because if after a month the trialist hasn't been offered a contract, it's probably because the manager has decided not to hire them. During this period they can take part in any match which isn't an official FA game - so basically friendlies - because in order to play in a competitive match they would need to be a registered player to be submitted to the local FA on the teamsheet. Otherwise they can do as much or as little as the manager wants, but it's basically a license to turn up to training sessions. Falastur2 (talk) 02:40, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Trialists can play in Scottish league games, but their names do not go down in the official records, they are simply recorded as 'A Trialist'. If more than one trialist plays in a game then the others are 'B Trialist', 'C Trialist', etc. See Elgin's lineup here as an example. — Gasheadsteve ^{Talk to me} 10:01, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Trials are usually subject of players writing to clubs or their agents sending their CVs to clubs asking for a trial. It is unusual for a club to initiate contact. I know someone who used to handle a club's e-mails and said he was always getting players CVs sent through. Some triallists play in league games buy sign short term contracts, or on non-contract terms - which is basically a weekly rolling contract where neither the player or club is tied down - but they have to be registered with the club. They usually last anything up to 4 weeks and are only allowed to play in friendlies and reserve leagues, such as the Football Combination, which allow players not registered to the club to play. --Jimbo^[online] 12:46, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Pontin's Holidays League Cup

Given that we don't generally use sponsored names for competitions, does anyone know what the official unsponsored name of this cup is? I'm guessing Central League Cup.......... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 12:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'd probably say so, and merge the content of the separate article in to the Central League (football) article. There does not appear to be enough information to need two articles. - fchd (talk) 13:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject notification bot

There is currently a proposal for a bot that would notify WikiProjects when their articles have entered certain workflows, e.g. when they are nominated for deletion or for Good article reassessment.

The question is whether a relevant number of wikiprojects would be interested in using such a bot. You can find details of the functionality, and leave your comments, at the bot request page.

I am posting this message to the 20 largest WikiProjects (by number of articles), since they would be the most likely users. Thanks, --B. Wolterding (talk) 12:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea; I'd prefer that the scripts be generated at a separate subpage, but that's all I've got. matt91486 (talk) 13:16, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

List of African football players in Europe

Notable or not? Personally, I would say not. – PeeJay 14:09, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Is it a list of current players? Players through all time? They don't even show the club(s) the player play(ed) in. I think a complete list of all African players in European clubs through out history would be interesting though. — chandler — 15:08, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Better to have it by country than by continent, I reckon. Dancarney (talk) 15:46, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Should I nominate this article for deletion then? Only one editor really seems to think it's worth keeping, having made over a thousand edits to it in the space of a few days (5-9 July 2007, 26 June 2008 and 8–10 July 2008). – PeeJay 16:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Category:Scottish expatriate footballers

Category:Scottish expatriate footballers lists that it should include only Scottish footballers to have played outside Britain, rather than simply Scotland. However, on closer inspection such a change was made without any explanation or any note on the talk page. I'm unsure whether such a change is correct or not though. Anyone with any thoughts on whether it should be outside Scotland or outside Britain? Peanut4 (talk) 19:04, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with that change. There must be thousands of Scottish players who have played in England. Almost as many truly notable players (eg internationals) will have played in England as have played in Scotland. Scottish players playing outside of the UK is notable almost in itself (eg Garry O'Connor). Jmorrison230582 (talk) 19:20, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes I also agree. A further issue are players of Scottish descent who were born and lived all or most of their lives outside Scotland and played for the national team being called expatriates. One example is Neil Sullivan. I am not persuaded you can categorised such players in this way either.Tmol42 (talk) 19:30, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

There are also a significant number of Scottish players who sign for English clubs as youths and never play in the Scottish League; see Darren Fletcher, Paul Dickov or Jim McCalliog. They haven't "expatriated" really, at least not until later in the careers in the case of McCalliog. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 19:46, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the change, and have removed players from the equivalent English category on the same basis. Scotland -> England is a change of federation, but not expatriation in any useful sense: I think the categories are useful as a list of players who have properly played abroad, and this would be lost if it was swamped with the thousands of players that have crossed the borders. ArtVandelay13 (talk) 21:09, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm totally convinced by the arguments particularly looking at the current players in Category:English expatriate footballers. I've tidied up the criteria and added similar explanations at other Category:British expatriate footballers categories. Peanut4 (talk) 21:36, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Fb team templates: Subcategories? Naming conventions?

Since we are nearing the 2,000 template mark for Fb team templates, would it make sense to sub-categorize them by country in order to create easier access? At the moment, it is pretty time-consuming if you are looking for templates that already have been created.

On another note, are there any kind of defined name conventions for said templates? I'm just wondering because I occasionally have difficulties how to name new templates if I need to create them for standings and/or results.

Discussion as always welcome. Hockey-holic (talk) 11:28, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I had to create some 12 new when I made the league table for Superettan, and I just thought, are they really necessary? Isn't it just easier to write in the names manually (Are they used on other places?). — chandler — 11:53, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I believe they can be used with a couple of other templates like Template:footballbox or anything Fb related as well. As for necessity, their original purpose was to avoid naming inconsistencies. I think they are a faciliation if said other templates would be used more in the future. The problem is that the whole fb template system is rather new, thus unknown and subsequently not included in many articles yet. Hockey-holic (talk) 12:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Well on templates like footballbox you can still right the names yourselfs (which you can't in the league table template) — chandler — 12:25, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this behavior is owed to the fact that you don't want to create team templates for those teams that are belonging to minor leagues in a cup competition. A (top-tier) league is usually a rather closed circuit, thus write-in can be deemed expendable. Hockey-holic (talk) 12:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Though to jump back ontopic, sub categories, is a have to. I would suggest Category:Fb team templates only to list countries, such as Category:Fb team templates England, Category:Fb team templates Sweden, Category:Fb team templates Russia. Inside these you see all teams listed, but also sub categories for leagues such as Category:Fb team templates England Premier League, Category:Fb team templates England Championship, Category:Fb team templates League One — chandler — 12:30, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

On another note, if there exist such, where can one find documentation and explination abuot all templates in Category:Internally used Fb templates and Category:Fb templates? — chandler — 13:14, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Documentation is usually included on the respective template's page. For example, if you open Template:Fb cl team, an explanation for all parameters is given. Hockey-holic (talk) 14:42, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes but for example that doc don't tell about when or where to us the template. Or what it's for — chandler — 14:47, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Template:Fb cl team is the template for a row in a Standings section. The "cl" stands for "competition league". But to be honest, I don't know the purpose of some of the templates either. It would be good to have a page where all documentation is collected and presented. Hockey-holic (talk) 22:13, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I may provide a short update about the topic. As the one or another of you has probably already noticed, the team templates page is currently under reconstruction. Completed are about 50 per cent, more specifically the letters A through E and all of Germany and the United Kingdom. The rest of the templates will be inserted into their new subcategory later this day (after some sleep). Hockey-holic (talk) 00:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I have just finished the subcategorising process. I would be glad if a few users would have a look at the specific subcategories, especially on those where a lot of templates may be found (e.g. Category:Fb team templates England), check them for possible double entries and put redirects on the template with the most common name for the dublettes. Hockey-holic (talk) 23:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Technical staff, club officials, etc

Are there any guidelines as to which members of a club's staff should be included on a club page? Obviously, the first team players, first team manager, director, etc should be on there, but how far down should it go? Some pages include goalkeeping coach, physio (debatable, I reckon) and others go as far as programme editor and community development officer. I couldn't see anything at Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Clubs. Dancarney (talk) 15:46, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I tell you what, the list of Manchester United's non-playing staff is pretty long (see Manchester United F.C.#Club officials). However, when you consider that a great number of positions have been commented out of that list, it doesn't seem like that many at all. – PeeJay 16:19, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

My preference is that someone should only be included if having that role alone would make them notable enough for an article (assuming a club at a reasonably high level). I can't abide the exhaustive lists going down to the under-9s coach or similar, and routinely advise against them at peer review. An article is not a telephone directory. The Manchester United example is to me well in excess of what should be there, leaning too far towards that advised against at WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Oldelpaso (talk) 16:41, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

On a slight tangent, the club template is essentially the same as when it was created, which was based upon the structure of IFK Göteborg from when it became the first featured football article in 2005. That it has changed so little is testament to the job Johan Elisson did in creating it, but certain things have changed since then, and from threads on this page it is evident that it could perhaps be overhauled in certain areas. Hell, I've got the second most edits to it even though I've barely touched it. Anyone interested in going over it so it can reflect the structure of our best club articles? Oldelpaso (talk) 16:50, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that Man Utd list almost deserves its own article. I think the administrative side could be trimmed down a fair bit.CorleoneSerpicoMontana (talk) 08:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Kits in club infobox

I've recently gone over to using Firefox 3.0, and notice that in the kit section of the football club infobox, between each set of socks and the wording underneath, is a graphic of some sort, which I've never noticed before. It's not there in IE6, and I don't remember it in FF2 (but I'm not very observant). Is it a mistake, or is it supposed to be like that, in which case why? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 16:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox 3.1 and I don't see any graphic there. Can you get a screenshot of the problem you're having? – PeeJay 16:14, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry i took so long, real life gets in the way soemtimes. See Image:Struway screenshot.jpg, cheers, Struway2 (talk) 16:54, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, I recognise the character from somewhere else (no idea what it represents though), but I can't think why it would be showing up there. I guess your computer (or even your browser, for some reason) is rendering the paragraph break incorrectly. – PeeJay 17:53, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I get some sort of little artifact (a small, empty box) in that location on occasional as well, using Opera. Some, but not all infoboxes display it. Dunno why ... Wiggy! (talk) 10:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

It's Firefox's way of telling you that it wasn't able to find a character matching that glyph in the font being used. Lord knows why it's appearing: god a selection of sample articles? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:08, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The screenshot is from Birmingham City F.C. infobox. I've had alook at various football clubs and national teams (all from {{Conference National teamlist}} and {{OFC teams}}, for instance) to see if I can find one where the graphic doesn't appear, and I can't. It also appears on London Wasps rugby union and Hull F.C. rugby league. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 12:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

What does 　 look like to you? {{football kit}} includes it for no immediately obvious reason. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:51, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Like the shape in the screenshot, a small square with what looks like a backwards E and three 0's inside it. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 18:01, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I had this problem. I could see symbols like that whenever I should have been seeing Japanese text. Since I've rectified that problem, I no longer see those symbols in the club IBs. Seems you need (assuming you use WinXP) to enable East Asian languages in Control Panel, Regional and Language options, Languages, and check Install files for East Asian languages. You'd need the windows CD and 203MB disc space. Then I needed to clear the cache in FF3.  slυмgυм [ ←→ ] 18:56, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Someone should also remove the 　 from the {{football kit}} template. – PeeJay 19:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

...which appears to be this Unicode space/separator characters here. Clever me didn't realise that what I described as a backwards E and 3 0s was actually the hex characters 3000 :) Presumably I'm seeing it how I do because I don't have the requisite character sets enabled on my nice new laptop, but does this character do anything in the template that an ordinary space wouldn't? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 20:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

That whole row doesn't have any effect that I can see. I've raised an editprotected to get it removed, it's been there since the template was first authored. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

thanks for taking the trouble, cheers, Struway2 (talk) 20:33, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Well it's probably there to give a space between the "First Kit" and the socks. Maybe switch it to nbsp;, if that extra row is needed. — chandler — 20:37, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Nah, it's between the socks and the home/away label. Anyway, yeah, better ways of doing padding. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:44, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

That's exactly what I said... Be between "First/Home/Away/Second/Third/Whatever Kit" and the socks. — chandler — 20:46, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

D'oh! Anyway, it's fixed now. If anyone thinks it's weird that the label now occupies the space where our ghost boots used to be then we can adjust the padding via CSS, but I think it's fine as-is. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:47, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Derry City and British expatriate footballers

Further to the section above re Scottish expatriate footballers, I was looking at this last night to tidy it up because there seemed to be a fair number of Scottish players missing from this category. While doing this I came across a couple of players (eg Paul Kinnaird) who have played for Derry City, a club based in Northern Ireland which has played for many years in the Republic of Ireland league system. Do these players count as expatriate players? They're still playing for a club based in the UK, but play in a league outside of the UK. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 08:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I would say no. It also counts the other way: a player from ROI playing for Derry wouldn't be counted, nor would Monaco's countless French players. ArtVandelay13 (talk) 13:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Chris Turner

As you will notice, the four footballing Chris Turners listed on this dab page are disambiguated by their playing position. Now, although this method of disambiguation works (none of the four Chris Turners plays in the same position as any other), I was under the impression that year of birth was the first disambiguator for footballers. Since all four were born in a different year, should I move each article to be disambiguated by the year of birth or not? – PeeJay 10:57, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd say so, in fact that's how they appear to have been dab'ed until April, when User:Mayumashu moved them around citing "better disambiguate, given that four Chris Turner footballers each played a different position" -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 11:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The ultimate case of "text being replaced by images for no good reason whatsoever, contrary to policy".....?

After cogitating for ages on the funny little symbol next to Eduardo's name, I'm presuming it's meant to mean "currently injured"..........? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 13:22, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Awesome. That's like Champ Man. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I have seen this a couple of times, also there are red and yellow cards out there taht sometimes appear next to peoples names. This red cross is being used currently on the following national football team pages - Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, Albania, Morocco, Iraq and Pakistan. Paul  Bradbury 14:01, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Notability query

Would a player who has played for a fully professional team in a major cup competition pass as being notable? Ck12 (talk) 13:44, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I would have thought so. Could you give a more specific example.......? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 13:46, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

If they play in a league in which appearances confer notability, then their cup games do too. ArtVandelay13 (talk) 13:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

This is evidently the case. A player whose only professional appearances were in FA Cup ties would be notable. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 14:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Concur IMO. -- Alexf⁴² 14:22, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Not necessarily - if he plays for a fully pro club in a non fully pro league (e.g. Oxford in the Conference), then his cup appearances do not count. пﮟოьεԻ 57 14:29, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I thought concensus was that cup matches should be considered league matches from a notability standpoint and so if both clubs in the cup match are fully professional, the cup match can be viewed as similar to a match in a fully professional league. However, cup matches involving semi-pro or amateur clubs are not any more notable than league matches involving those clubs. Best regards. Jogurney (talk) 14:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure about "consensus" as there always seems to be quite a bit of disagreement on notability criteria, but there's certainly precedent that shows that cup matches should be considered league matches from a notability standpoint. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 21:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protection of Sheffield Wednesday F.C.

Please could an admin semi-protect this article? It's being vandalized a lot today by various IPs. Cheers Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 19:09, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The same goes for Bryan Robson and Brian Laws. I presume that they're all being done by the same person with different IPs... Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 19:23, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. пﮟოьεԻ 57 19:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Cheers Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 19:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Coca-Cola League logo in infoboxes

An IP just added a tiny version of Image:Cocacolalge2.jpg immediately to the left of the words "League Two" in the Gillingham infobox. There's no way that this copyrighted logo could qualify for fair use under those circumstances, so I removed it, but just keep an eye out in case it gets added anywhere else........ -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 20:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Even if it was, it looks ridiculous at 25px! --Jimbo^[online] 20:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

UEFA elite stadium

I should be grateful if someone from this project, with expertise on football stadiums, could take a look at this article. No-one has been able to track down a physical list but the concept of a 'UEFA elite stadium' certainly seems to exist - see here, for example. However, the page is a mess and needs the attention of an expert. TerriersFan (talk) 20:27, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Deletion review for Abubakar Bello-Osagie

I added a deletion review for the Abubakar Bello-Osagie article, as he has now played a fully professional league match (he played a Campeonato Brasileiro Série A match, check here), thus he now passes WP:ATHLETE. The deletion review is available here. Feel free to give your opinions. --Carioca (talk) 21:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, WP:DRV is mainly used as a last grade for controversial AFD cases, and is superfluous when the subject's notability situation has improved from the time of the AFD case. In short, just recreate the article, there's no need to open a DRV case. --Angelo (talk) 21:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and responded over at DRV, but I'm going to say it here too so no one else needs to say the same thing. The page isn't protected from recreation, so you can just recreate it without going through a DRV. Cite reliable sources and make it clear in the article that he's made his profession debut, and there shouldn't be a problem. Hope that helps! Vickser (talk) 21:40, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I just recreated the article and added references. --Carioca (talk) 21:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

(c) on squad templates

I've noticed a few squad templates have started to contain additional information, (c) after the captain's name. This is an affliction that seems to have spread no further than PL templates. It seems nothing other than superfluous as the tp is solely for navigation and the info already appears on the club article.

• Examples: Man Utd and Man City.

I'd like to see this practice abolished, but can we establish a consensus on this?  slυмgυм [ ←→ ] 23:22, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

You are correct. They are principally navigation templates so the info isn't necessary. Peanut4 (talk) 23:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree with both statements. Hubschrauber729 (talk) 00:10, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Disagree, the captain is a seperate role, it is useful information. Following the logic of this argument we should remove the numbers and the manager text and just have a list of names. Adding in things like number of goals scored would be superflous, adding in who is the captain is not. Also I don't understand this constant tendancy to try and delete or remove information that is neither incorrect or even under debate. Paul  Bradbury 08:03, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with Paul - we mention that Ferguson is the Manager, and that each squad member has a particular number (and from those numbers we can infer who is the main goalkeeper, the defenders, etc.). The captaincy role is a role of huge importance - being the person who organises the team as they are playing. Showing which person is the current captain is useful information, showing who is considered the most experienced or responsible or loyal (or whatever) player. This does not take up much room in the template, and is of interest to those who wish to know more about the club. It is handy having it in the template, rather than having to trawl through the club article. We wouldn't make people do it for the manager, so why make them do it for the captain? I say it should stay. --El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 09:04, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I'm fairly indifferent to this captain indicator, so long as it's done as (c) and not the graphic that looks like a copyright symbol. The problem I do have is with the growing tendency for mass changes to be made without any prior discussion, as these were a few days ago, which is what provokes the perceived tendency to delete or remove. If someone wants to make a general change, is it that much of a nuisance to come on this talk page and say hey, lads, what about doing such-and-such? Then if people have objections they can be discussed before there are dozens/hundreds of articles to revert, and if nobody can be bothered to express a view it's probably reasonable to assume they don't object. (If the editor who added the (c)s is reading this, please don't take it personally, it just happens to be your edits that provoked the discussion.) cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:31, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't like the (c)'s at all, not all clubs even have a specified captain. — chandler — 09:35, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Having been linked here by User:Slumgum, who's been removing it from the Man Utd template, I'd personally prefer it to be kept, as per the reasons given by User:Pbradbury and User:El Pollo Diablo. If clubs don't have an established captain, then that's fine, they don't get the (c), but those that do should have it. Darkson (BOOM! An interception!) 09:49, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree it should be kept. I feel it belongs. And Chandler, it doesn't matter if some clubs don't have an established captain. Caden S (talk) 10:05, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Captaincy is not always matter of fact. The case of Gary Neville is a prime example - someone who hasn't led his team out for a year but people still think he's captain. Bradbury's extreme logic of removing numbers could work, but we use them as an identifier - something which captaincy is not. Pollo Diablo's suggestion that numbers tell us something about players is sometimes correct, but often wrong. The numbers are there purely as a sort criteria, as early versions of the squad tp were sorted by name. Differentiating the manager is necessary, though whether I think he should be on the playing-squad box is another argument. In short, the (c) is something which does not need to be on there, so for purity, it shouldn't.  slυмgυм [ ←→ ] 13:53, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. The status of a team captain does not necessarily have to do with the status of who's leading the team on the pitch, due to injuries etc. but I still believe that it is a valid additional piece of information. Madcynic (talk) 14:42, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Exactly - Gary Neville is the team captain, as it is an honour given to a player who deserves it. If he's injured, it's usually given to someone often thought of as a deputy for a specific game, but even when that's the case, Neville is still the team captain. It's a bit like times when managers are unable to be on the touchline for whatever reason (funerals, bans, whatever). The fact that the management has been handed over to someone temporarily doesn't mean that the manager is no longer the manager. The template isn't about "purity", it's about getting across a good amount of useful information about the squad in a very simple, concise way. The typical useful information desired about a team are the players, their numbers, who is the manager, and who is the captain. I don't think it's going to make readers' heads explode due to information overload to mention numbers, captaincy and management. --El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 20:59, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

In association football the captaincy is much more fluid than either code of rugby where it would be appropriate to have (c) next to someones name. Football does not is my opinion require a (c) next to a players name, nor would it be appropriate. CorleoneSerpicoMontana (talk) 09:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that opinion stands in contrast to the fact that (apart from games where the nominated captain is unavailable) it is actually fairly static. To continue the Manchester United example with Gary Neville, he has been the captain since 2005 when Roy Keane retired. Last season he was mostly unavailable and so other players took on the mantle, but he was still the captain. Bryan Robson was captain for twelve years until he moved on. After him, Steve Bruce for two until he moved on. After him, Eric for one year until he retired. Keane was captain then for eight years until he moved on. Neville will be the captain until he either retires, transfers somewhere else or seriously pisses off the boss (which would usually mean a transfer or retirement). This is not a good demonstration of "fluidity". This arrangement is similarly applied for most teams in England. --El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 09:02, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Navbox question

Hello. Should {{Ararat Yerevan 1973 squad}} stay or be deleted? according to our quite fresh consensus about navboxes and other football templates. - Darwinek (talk) 10:31, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Definite delete. I can see where the creator is coming from creating a template for a championship winning squad, but it really isn't needed and would set a dangerous precedent. Can you imagine what the bottom of the Rangers page would look like............? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Right. Feel free to nominate for deletion at WP:TFD. - Darwinek (talk) 10:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I nominated it at WP:TFD together with another similar one, feel free to comment and vote. - Darwinek (talk) 11:38, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

As I explained on the TfD page, I feel this is misguided. The navbox was not intended for all chamionship sides, it was intended to highlight the preeminent club side in 100 years of Azerbaijani football. There is no dangerous precedent at all. If for example, someone did a navbox for Champions League winning sides for placement on the players' pages, I don't see that as a problem, especially since they can be minimized/nested as needed. This is no different that the navboxes that exist for most World Cup sides (for example, see Brazil's 1966 WC template). Further, as I said at the TfD, the concern for the cluttering of a club's page is misplaced, as these templates do not appear on the club at all, only on players' pages.--Friejose (talk) 15:36, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Seems like all Armenian and Azerbaijani users decided to vote for keep. - Darwinek (talk) 09:01, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

A shocking decision IMO and one that could open the floodgates. What about a Navbox for Ipswich's only championship winning side, or perhaps Forest's, or maybe Barnsley's one season in the top flight... Oh dear. пﮟოьεԻ 57 09:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm off right now to create {{Gillingham F.C. 1963–64 squad}}. Hell, it's the only trophy we've ever won, that sounds like a "golden squad" to me..... :-) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:14, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The difference for the Blues and the Gills is the lack of additional notability involved with them. I mean, I know you're being a bit tongue in cheek, and I get your "slippery slope" concern. The main difference, however, between non-Premier League squads and the clubs involved in the navboxes proposed for deletion is pretty huge. With Neftchi and Ararat, you have sides that were not just little brothers to big Russian clubs like Spartak and Dynamo, but distant cousins from the sticks, who achieved amazing results against all odds, in a way that was recognized at the time and now as nothing short of astonishing. It'd be as if a Conference side won the FA Cup, somehow qualified for Europe, and then won a double. Putting aside the qualification problems with that scenario, wouldn't that qualify for a navbox? Isn't that a quantum difference from a League 2 title? And that is what we're are talking about here. (By the way, Darwinek found a way to get Azerbaijanis and Armenians to agree on something, and for that he deserves a medal!)--Friejose (talk) 20:44, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but you're really displaying a lack of knowledge here. "Distant cousins from the sticks, who achieved amazing results against all odds" is an exact description of the Ipswich team which won the title in 1962. Ipswich is a county town in a rural area and were havign their first season in the top division. To claim that their championship winning team is less notable than Ararat or Neftchi is rubbish. пﮟოьεԻ 57 08:11, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely right. Ipswich's first season in the top Division in England and they won the league. That's truly astonishing. It somewhat trumps Ararat Yerevan's notable season, but I would never suggest an navbox for it. Gah. The Rambling Man (talk) The Rambling Man (talk) 10:24, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

• I am showing my ignorance about Ipswich, and for that, I apologize. But I believe the WP:FOOTY paladins here are showing ignorance of Soviet football, and I have not seen a similar recognition of that lack of knowledge. I have been working in the weeds trying to improve Soviet football player and club articles, which are woefully inadequate currently. The Neftchi '66 navbox was part of that process, and as you see from the response of the Azerbaijanis and Armenians, they believe that such a navbox is notable, useful, and not duplicative. Thus, by the definition contained in Wikipedia:Templates For Deletion itself, both templates meet the "keep" criteria. These persistent claims that a "terrible precedent" would be set is hogwash, IMO. The same editors that have been commenting here and on the TfD have been watching with vigilant eagle-eyes and surely would fight any non-notable explosion of templates for specific squads. A bright line rule of "no individual squad navboxes" that fails to take account notability and usability concerns undermines the core principle of what should be included on Wikipedia. Such a rule is also oddly hypocritical considering the vast number of manager navboxes that currently exist, have limited notability and usability, and which clutter articles like Dick Advocaat, to use one example I used on the TfD. Why is that presently existing clutter acceptable, but the potential, unproven, purely conjectural clutter of notable individual squad navboxes is not? No one is arguing the notability or utility of the navboxes at issue here, which is telling, but rather people are parroting a previous consensus that many of us didn't participate in or are gnashing their teeth about what a dangerous precedent this would set. I deny that there is consensus and I deny that any problematic precedent whatsoever will be set. --Friejose (talk) 15:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Generally I hate navboxes, they're pointless. Nav boxes which are used for anything of note (e.g. UEFA Cup winning managers for example) should just be a category. So, to that extent, I would generally advocate their complete removal. The problematic precedent is that everyone will suddenly declare their own opinion on notability (just as you have), create a navbox and we'll have to head over to TfD every five minutes. Ipswich's achivements, in your definition of notability, should warrant a navbox. But that's the last thing the community wants to add. Anyway, the consensus is likely to be achieved over at the TfD right now, and hopefully once this navbox is deleted, you'll understand the community's opinion. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:24, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I am concerned that you are suggesting that somehow I am not a part of the "community." Am I not here as a registered editor? I may only have a tenth of your edits, but that doesn't make me less a member of the community, I would hope. My opinion on notability is based in fact, which you can clearly see from the well-cited references of both squads at issue here. I am also concerned that you consider what is happening at the TfD as any sort of "consensus." It's about 55-45 for delete right now, which is hardly a consensus; it is more like a barely majority, which isn't how Wikipedia works, as far as I understand it. A editor's vote should carry the same weight whether that editor is a member of WP:FOOTY or not, whether that editor as 20,000 edits or 2. I hope that someone not involved in the TfD, and someone who hasn't prejudged the issue, makes the final determination of whether a consensus has been reached. --Friejose (talk) 16:13, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey hey, stay calm man! I never suggested (nor meant to suggest) that you weren't part of the community! All I'm saying is until you can substantiate an consensus-backed notability for that one squad, the navbox should go. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:28, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

How many football leagues does it exist in the world? Well they've all had a winning team since they were founded, ontop of that, confederation cups (UEFA Cup etc), domestic cups. Just for the English first divisions it will be, what? 120? Many countries have had leagues from if not the early 20th century, the middle or the late. I'm just guessing there have been in Europe alone more than 2000 winning teams for domestic leagues. — chandler — 16:44, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Foreigners in a national team - worth mentioning???

I would appreciate if somebody could look at the 'Foreigners' subsection in this page - Croatia national football team. The idea of mentioning the foreign players on that page was first put forward by another user and then I included it as shown now. However, there is currently a debate about it on the discussion page as it is being argued by a user that it is irrelevant and if anything, inaccurate. Basically, I need a second neutral opinion on this. Can anyone comment on the importance (if any) of this foreigners section? Please keep in mind that the only reason it was put in is because Croatia itself as a national team is very unique in this area. They have a lot of players from other countries playing for their national team, and likewise a lot of players with Croatian heritage in other national teams. Right now, my best solution is to take another users advice and simply rewire this section as a prose of paragraphs, not just merely list with vague list descriptions.

Any comments or suggestions on this? I would really appreciate it because this page is about to go up for Featured Article nomination shortly. Thanks! Domiy (talk) 05:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The word "foreigner" is entirely relative (to me, every member of the Croatian team is a foreigner), and often carries an undertone that is disparaging. Even taking the meaning that I am sure you intend, I would be very reluctant to include this. FIFA rules in essence tie eligibility to citizenship. I do not think that we have the right to say that any Croatian passport holder is not Croatian. If you want to consider a section of players "born outside Croatia", that might have some merit, but I think this is better tackled through a category (eg Category:English-born footballers who played for the Republic of Ireland). Kevin McE (talk) 06:14, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll admit to having written that in principle before looking at the Croatia page. Now that I've seen it, I would suggest that such a section applied to teams in the British Isles, or to any area of the globe that has had fluid population over the last few generations, or to countries which have special migration arrangements with former colonies/colonial rulers would be so large as to be entirely unmanageable. Kevin McE (talk) 06:23, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

So should it be kept in the section or deleted/modified?Domiy (talk) 06:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll admit that I haven't had time to look at the article at the moment as I'm on the way to work, but surely they can't be "foreign" if they are eligible to play for the national team. I would remove it on grounds of inaccuracy, I don't see why it deserves a place in an encyclopedia. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 07:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, technically as the previous guy said, they are actually Croatian if they are eligible to play for the national team. However, there is the fact that a lot of them are not initially Croats, with a large number of them being born and raised in other countries (and holding citizenship in them as well), before coming to play in Croatia. Hence, it is worthy of mentioning in my argued opinion. Domiy (talk) 07:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Hardly a unique situation. Many countries have internationals who were born and raised in other countries. In 1982 the New Zealand team at the world cup had over half the squad 'foreign born'. Still have a number of current internationals foreign born, as does Australia, and no doubt other countries. Hardly worth mentioning in my opinion.--ClubOranje^Talk 09:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I can't see the uniqueness, too. Just thinking about Switzerland... However, it's pretty interesting the first list. The risk is to have a piece of this monstrosity also in national team pages. --necronudist (talk) 10:48, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it deserves a mention either. First of all, plenty of national teams use foreign-born players and, secondly, I just don't like the word "foreigners". BanRay 10:46, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

This is not so rare: there are "foreigners" in France national football team since the 1930's (for example Rudi Hiden)... And I agree with Dan1980, they can't be foreigners if they play for Croatia and surely hold Croatian citizenship. Maybe creating a category like "foreign-born footballers who played for Croatia" (if it doesn't already exists) could be enough---Latouffedisco (talk) 11:43, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems as though everyone is looking at the negative as this; maybe we have to look at it from the other side. Not as a measure of Croatia's uniqueness, but just as the only article that we've addressed the phenomena in. I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with discussing foreign-born players in the Croatia article, but rather than isolate it, I think it can and should be discussed in other applicable articles as well. matt91486 (talk) 13:15, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the Category idea is the right way to cover it. not notable in itself, but a handy reference list. Such categories already exist in other forms, so there is good precedent for it - vis Category:English-born footballers who played for other national teams--ClubOranje^Talk 07:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

While we're on the topic of things that should/should not be in a national team article, what does everyone think of this section of the Croatia national team article? My thoughts would be that we shouldn't include such info as it could be regarded as recentist, and we also don't have similar info in club articles. – PeeJay 14:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok first of all I deleted the other lists in the article after careful consideration. I admit that it was somewhat irrelevant to mention players in other national teams. The list is still the same format though, I just deleted the other two in left the first and most important one in.

Anyway, about the qualification section in national team articles - I think its a great way for people to stay in touch with the national team. Of course, after the qualification process ends the section will be replaced with the next qualification table for the next competition. But I think its worth putting something so current in. It would save people a lot of time in searching around and finding such groups, whilst they can easily just see who the team will shortly and how they are doing so far. Nothing at all wrong with that in my opinion. Domiy (talk) 07:27, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but it's blatant recentism, and WP is not a news service. Why is the 2010 qualification more notable than, say, the 2002 qualification? Just because it's happening right now? Sorry, but that's not encyclopedic -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 20:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I hardly think it's any more recentism than listing its current roster. matt91486 (talk) 04:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes good point. You may as well take out the current squad out of every national team page since it is very recent and current as the name suggests. Hey while we are doing that, we should also take out the current managers in the 'managers' table since it is also recent and current right? Domiy (talk) 05:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

List of footballers of Italian descent who played for another national team

Is this list usefull? I think it's another monstrosity. --necronudist (talk) 10:44, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists)#Appropriate topics for lists is quite clear on the issue, especially when it says "Lists that are too specific are also a problem". I agree with Necronudist, this list is way too much. --Angelo (talk) 10:53, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm actually not entirely convinced it's too specific a list. If you take a look at it, it's a pretty sizable list. It's not so specific it's only got a few people on it.

I also think it could actually be of interest and is about a relatively encyclopedic topic. I think one could write a pretty good introduction explaining how people can be eligible for multiple nations and maybe describing common reasons why people choose to play for a particular country. I think there would probably be sources for it--I know I've read several stories about why so and so plays for such and such a country. I think maybe list of Italian footballers rather than "of Italian descent" would work better (so you don't get someone who had one great great grandparent who's Italian), but I do think a list of players who are of one nationality but play for another national football team is pretty encylopedic, and on the basis of the current list, it seems like there's enough of them for Italy to get its own list. Vickser (talk) 05:56, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

It's a pointless list with no sources. Delete it. Hubschrauber729 (talk) 06:07, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I did a bit more exploration and it seems there's a good bit of precedent for having such a grouping, but it looks like it's generally being done in categories. Check out Category:Football (soccer) internationals with dual nationality and its associated subcategories. I do think it's an encyclopedic topic, but it's possible it would be better done as as category. Verification should be eminently doable if it's restricted to "Italian footballers" than "of Italian descent" since we're often able to find things like place of birth and parental nationality for players who are good enough to get senior national caps. Vickser (talk) 06:26, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Notability in disambiguation pages

Is Reading's kit-man, Ron Grant notable enought to be placed on a disambiguation page? He's not wiki-linked or red-linked, but I'm a bit unsure about note-worthy on disambiguation pages. --Jimbo^[online] 12:44, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd say that anyone who doesn't have/is never likely to have an article certainly shouldn't be included on a dab page -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 12:50, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages are for getting people to articles. Every entry should have an article. No entry, no notability, no inclusion. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Chances are he will never have an article. Is he still listed as being on the disambiguation page? Caden S (talk) 17:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Nikolai Starostin

As far as I can see many references links to the same 2 articles, and the findarticle.com link is dead... --necronudist (talk) 15:52, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. A case of a user not realising refs can be used multiple times without repeating the footnote. Some of the findarticles refs can be rescued using the ever-useful archive.org. Strangely enough, that was one of the first articles I ever started. Oldelpaso (talk) 16:22, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Protection request for UEFA Cup 2008–09

Can someone of the administrators put a protection on the UEFA Cup 2008–09 article? There is currently an edit war about the question of including the goalscorers of the qualification rounds, which is extremely disruptive. I already suggested to discuss the matter here since a decision for this article would affect several other articles as well, e.g. the UEFA Champions League, but the opposed parties did not follow the proposal, to the contrary. Hockey-holic (talk) 16:34, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not an admin and can't protect pages, but my understanding is that you're generally better off asking for protection at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. There will be more admin eyes there and you're likely to get a prompter response. Vickser (talk) 17:25, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, I will do that at once. Hockey-holic (talk) 17:27, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Does this WikiProject not support FL-Class articles yet?

I was having a look at {{football}} to see why List of Manchester United F.C. managers was being categorised as an FA-Class article despite being assessed as an FL-Class article and I noticed that the project and all of its task forces categorises FL-Class articles as FA-Class. Why is this? – PeeJay 20:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

See Template_talk:Football#Adding_List_and_FL_classes_for_all_taskforces, if it's changed - by all means update it. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 01:41, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

A few editors are considering changes to WP:ATHLETE

If you are interested in the discussion, one or two editors have proposed some changes to WP:ATHLETE (here) that will probably have a dramatic effect on this project. The proposed changes are not aligned with WP:FOOTYN and I suggest project members might want to give input over there. Best regards. Jogurney (talk) 17:32, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The notability issue must be solved as soon as possible, I'm getting bored of all these discussions. My proposal is to revive WP:FOOTYN and make it officially a part of WP:BIO, or alternatively revive Wikipedia:Notability (sports) with WP:FOOTYN part of it. In either case, we need to push it all together in order to make it pass. Thoughts? --Angelo (talk) 20:54, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm all in favor of getting our notability into policy. We just need to stop the changes that are proposed first, because they're ridiculous. matt91486 (talk) 22:21, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

We need to be careful: some editors seems to be very restrictive about sport-related articles.--Latouffedisco (talk) 11:45, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:ATHLETE seems to have been amended. Mattythewhite (talk) 20:36, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it now reads simply "Articles about athletes must meet the provisions of WP:Notability and WP:Verifiability without exception." No such changes have been made to the "career-specific" guidelines for entertainers, porn stars, etc, thereby confirming that this whole drive to change WP:ATHLETE is simply a pointy vendetta against articles on sportspeople, specifically footballers -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 20:38, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems about as vague as possible now. It's probably not the best place to ask the question, but why the change? Except for one editor who is annoyed that there are 17,000+ bios on footballers. Peanut4 (talk) 20:48, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I've no idea - the change was made by User:Kevin Murray, who doesn't even seem to have participated in the debate on the talk page. As a pretty drastic change which has clearly not gained any sort of consensus, I suggest it should be reverted -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 20:56, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

It must be reverted, I don't find any track of such this consensus in the talkpage. I've just reverted it, and I suggest you all to join the discussion, regardless of your opinion, to help finding a sort of consensus about the issue. --Angelo (talk) 21:02, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I see there is a suggestion there to limit it to those who have played at the "highest tier of a fully professional league." How many footy bios would that wipe out at a single stroke? Peanut4 (talk) 21:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh too many. It seems the people who are proposing these changes don't comprehend what a massive effect this would have. Mattythewhite (talk) 21:13, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

There is one editor in particular who appears to be on a bit of crusade to eliminate WP:ATHLETE (i.e., User:EconomistBR). I'm trying to follow WP:AGF, but his behavior here and on WP:ATHLETE in the past has left much to be desired. I think there are other editors that are concerned that WP:ATHLETE is too permissive, but I've yet to see them consider WP:FOOTYN. Should we have an RfC on incorporating it into WP:ATHLETE somehow? Best regards. Jogurney (talk) 21:31, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I was going to suggest a centralized discussion, as we already did earlier to approve the current naming convention for sports team. --Angelo (talk) 21:37, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

On a side note, I've just had to file five (!!) AfDs in one go - Pedro Beda, Michael Ohnesorge, Akanni-Sunday Wasiu, Titus James Palani & Maic Sema. I have to say that I am beginning to get seriously pissed off with all these articles being created, and ten times more so with the bloody IPs who keep deprodding them. пﮟოьεԻ 57 22:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that editors should have to provide a reason when removing a prod. If one isn't provided, then the prod should be re-added. That would prevent the IPs from forcing us to go to AfD when an article should obviously be deleted. – PeeJay 22:17, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I would also allow only established users (i.e., registered users who have been active for at least a month or two) to remove PROD notices. By the way, something similar is already happening with creation of new articles, so I think this thing should be reasonably extended for all other things around (except, of course, for regular edits). --Angelo (talk) 23:54, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

LuaLua

Does anyone know of a credible source for the number of caps that Lomana LuaLua has for DR Congo? The article says 30 but that's dated August 2006 and he has played several games since then. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 00:02, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Slovakia national under-21 football team

Hello WikiProject Football. This article needs a bit of an expansion and a cleanup of the table. I would, but I'm pressed for time and do not know enough about the squad to be of much help. BalkanFever 03:21, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Sarumio's mass edits

Was there ever a conclusion to whether the clubname parameter in the football club infobox should have F.C. or not? I only ask because Sarumio's at it again. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 14:17, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

MASS removal of FC - show me where this happened? Sarumio (talk) 08:24, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Dear, oh dear, oh dear. Will that boy ever learn? However, AFAIK, no conclusion was reached. – PeeJay 14:29, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

On the basis that Arsenal (which is a Featured Article) has Arsenal F.C. at the head of the infobox, as do Manchester United and Liverpool, then for the sake of consistency so should all other clubs. I have therefore reverted his change to Southampton, plus a few more. I will leave the rest to others. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 06:27, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Lying is such a nasty quality - I havent changed Southampton's infobox - you appear to have imagined this one and added FC in a fit of rage! Sarumio (talk) 08:24, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Playing devil's advocate a bit here, that's not a hugely compelling argument, because Gillingham, Margate, Leek Town, Dover Athletic and Stocksbridge Park Steels are all Featured Articles and don't have the F.C. at the top of the infobox...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 06:58, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Theres a reason for this - its called Dudesleeper - he added FC to all Premiership clubs a while ago - they previously didnt have the FC included - but in an attempt to show who's boss and to back up his argument for the FC's inclusion, he added it to all 20 and he and the Rambling Man guard over them like zoo keepers. Sarumio (talk) 08:24, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Did I hear my name mentioned? Actually, Sarumio, I'm studiously ignoring your edits. I have much bigger fish to fry than give a toss over whether you think FC should be in the infobox or not. It's a pity you don't listen the community once in a while, but there you go. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I've restored the Birmingham City F.C. infobox to its state before any mass editing/reverting of the clubname started, which happens to be without the F.C. If and when any standard is set, I will change it to meet that standard if indeed change is needed. And I headed this section 'Sarumio's mass edits', because I was wondering about any conclusion to the discussion provoked by those edits and the reversions thereof some months ago. And Sarumio is correct in that he didn't change Southampton's infobox yesterday. Wish I hadn't mentioned it. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:55, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I propose that anyone familiar with this tedious debate who adds/removes an FC to/from the infobox without prior discussion and consensus on the article talkpage be treated as a common vandal, with escalating vandalism warnings and blocks if necessary. EP 19:41, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

He/She's at it again - this time removing F.C. from text within articles. I reverted one before realising this is probably another crusade. - fchd (talk) 14:31, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Jordan Baguley

I've speedy-tagged the above article. Its creator should probably have an eye or two kept on him. - Dudesleeper / Talk 09:58, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Xabi Alonso

Would someone like to protect Xabi for a few hours. Its obviously a slow day in Turkey today, There have been about a hundred IP edits moving him to Fenerbahçe despite lack of reports of any sort about him. I have asked over at Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection but there have been another 20 since I did that 3 hours ago. Thanks--ClubOranje^Talk 11:03, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protected. As the edits are generally speaking misguided rather than outright vandalism, a short explanation for the revert reason would probably be more effective than template warnings. Oldelpaso (talk) 11:35, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Something I'd like to disclose so as not to be mistaken for a role account

I don't know anything about football - in fact, I hate the sport! I have a friend, however, who's really into it. He doesn't know much about Wikipedia so I agreed to incorporate facts he knows into articles - mainly those of Grimsby Town players. This was not me acting as a role account - Ii did all the editing, he just read me the facts. Just thought I'd disclose that, and here seems as good a place as any...... Dendodge .. Talk^Contribs 19:55, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I know nothing of role accounts, but perhaps you should persuade your friend to tell you the sources of his information, and then you could add those at the same time. However knowledgeable your friend may be, I don't think "facts he knows" quite constitute a reliable published source. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 21:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

m:role account. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:59, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Where to find tutorial or help page on kit (pattern) design?

Where can I find a tutorial or help page on kit design? {{Infobox football club}} is not much help. I specifically want to fix FC Barcelona's kit which shows as blue-red when it should be blue-maroon (C32148) as stated in the Talk page, but though I tried I did not get satisfactory results due to lack of kit template (pattern) design information. -- Alexf⁴² 12:07, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

The instructions for editing the kit are on Template:Football kit. You may be experiencing problems though due to the pattern being set as "| pattern_la1=|pattern_b1=_redhalf2|pattern_ra1=", that is - the underlying colour for the shirt is set as blue but it has Image:Kit body redhalf2.png sat on top of it. The easiest way for you to then edit the kit would be to upload a new image (possibly Image:Kit body maroonhalf.png) as per the instructions on the template and use that. You can then set the right colour for the right arm and socks. Hope that helps. Nanonic (talk) 12:20, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah. That's the template I was looking for and couldn't find. Thanks! -- Alexf⁴² 12:47, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

INVESCO Field at Mile High a priority article

With the Democratic convention weeks away, and the nominating acceptance speech to take place at INVESCO Field at Mile High, this seems like a good time to get this article in shape. If anyone knowledgeable about the stadium and its history could improve the article's references and perhaps expand the article, it would be helpful for the curious who wander onto the page. ThanksJohnelwayrules (talk) 19:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Heh, you, my friend, have wandered into the wrong "football" discussion page. -- Grant.Alpaugh 21:59, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps not - if you look at the image on that page you can make out the markings of a football pitch. It has previously housed Major League Soccer franchise Colorado Rapids according to the article, and Johnelwayrules did ask for anybody with knowledge of it's history.--ClubOranje^Talk 06:10, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Olympic Football and nft articles

My inclination would be to avoid anything other than the most fleeting of references to the Olympic football competition in nft articles; in particular, squad lists and recent results sections, or details of captaincy/management in the infoboxes should not reflect the events of Beijing over the next few weeks. However, 10 of the 16 teams in the men's competition have links to the main team rather than an underage side. Is there general agreement with my sense that the Olympic team is not the top national representative side, and that therefore Olympic details should not be on them (maybe a summary sentence, but not the sort of section already appearing at the Korean team's article)? And if there is consensus that such details should be excluded, is it appropriate to have <!-- a remmed out note for editors to that effect --> ? Kevin McE (talk) 23:21, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Edit Warring on Gustavo Poyet page

Over the past 24 hours User talk:Regozcan and User:86.162.69.29 (the latter I believe has also previously used several related IP addresses) have been edit warring at Gustavo Poyet over the appropriateness of an image of Poyet here. The image depicts Gus and another person who it turns out is Regozcan. There was at least one earlier round of tit for tat reverting by these two editors on 18 /19 July but this stopped when I suggested they discuss their respective points of view on the Talk Page instead. But today sadly it seems although they have started discussing their points of view ( Options ranging from removing/ replacing the image to cropping the image to leaving it intact) as their skills in polite debate are severely lacking they have just wound each other up by reverting each others' edits. I have advised both editors I will report them for 3RR if they repeat they 'revertings' which will hopefully call a temporary halt to their editing spree. Please could someone with some experience of image protocol cast a look and suggest a way forward. I will point both Editors to this posting here. Thanks Tmol42 (talk) 23:48, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

The obvious solution is to crop the image to only show Poyet. matt91486 (talk) 04:07, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Done BanRay 20:42, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Notable or not?

Knowing little about the Scottish pyramid system, how notable are Welfare League clubs, i.e Buckie united? Wheelchair Epidemic (talk) 21:14, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

That link is a redirect to an article that doesn't actually exist?? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 21:20, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Think if you capitalise it, it does. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 21:26, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

D'oh! Silly me! Anyway, to answer the original question, there is no pyramid system in Scotland at all - see Scottish football league system - so we can't make the same "club has to have played at level X" calls as we do in England. However, looking at Buckie Utd's website, they appear to play matches in a local park, which would suggest their level of football is below that which we would consider notable in the English pyramid. The cut-off point in England, level 10, tends to generally be the lowest level at which teams play at proper stadia, as opposed to park pitches, and charge for admission. All of the above is based solely on gut feeling, though..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 21:33, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I would say they are not notable. Try prodding them. пﮟოьεԻ 57 22:00, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I have done so. Wheelchair Epidemic (talk) 22:54, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

International competitions football squads

Wouldn't it be better to have a standard template? In the Olympics squads I've seen three different ways to show selected players:

• The useless one
• The World Cup one (used in all World Cup squads articles)
• The massively used too specific one

Obviously I would like to use the World Cup one, also 'cause is the only real template (others are not-user-friendly tables) and it's far the easier to handle. Plus doesn't provide useless informations (mostly left blank, like in the too specific one) and it has automatic redirects for roles. A squad list must be a squad list, with nothing more than player's name, shirt #, role, DOB with age, caps (optional) and the club as of the end of the preceding season (and not like the 2008 one updated daily... we've debated about this since ages but someone still wanna misunderstand...). You know, like the one we use for World Cups. --necronudist (talk) 14:37, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The "World Cup" one should be used. The others are just awful. Truly awful. – PeeJay 15:33, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. GiantSnowman 16:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

World Cup template for sure. The rest are bad. Hubschrauber729 (talk) 16:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree as well. And players should be sorted by squad number once they get them (positions are fine until then, sorted by last name within the position). Also, we should look at a better way to do overage players than simply an *. Bolding might be good. Thoughts? -- Grant.Alpaugh 20:48, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and by the way, I think that we should continually update the players' clubs until the tournament is over. -- Grant.Alpaugh 20:48, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to convert all the Olympic squads to the World Cup template, but I think I'll need an automatic tool, or it will take ages! Something useful for Linux? --necronudist (talk) 17:14, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

While I agree that the world cup template is the best template, that is my opinion. The first one violates wikipedia policy by using colour to denote info. The third one seems to be unecessary. However this discussion seems to follow a worrying trend that seems to happen regularly at WP:FOOTY, that is the following

• A point is raised
• People agree or disagree
• No reasons or logical arguments are given just POV (e.g. The "World Cup" one should be used. The others are just awful. Truly awful)
• A revision is made
• It is then considered consensus

Bottom line, deleting things or sudo-policy should be discussed more thoroughly and cogent arguments should be made before people start mass changing or deleting. Obviously some people are not aware of the project or all WP rules, but regulars at this talk page should try and hold themselves to that standard. Remember wikipedia doesn't work by votes. Paul  Bradbury 23:13, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, since you've used my POV comment to make a point, I think I'd better respond... I agree with Necronudist with regard to the content of the table (name, shirt number, position, date of birth/age, caps, goals and most recent club), and the "World Cup" style table does that perfectly well. Any other information is superfluous and therefore unnecessary. – PeeJay 23:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I wanna remember that a consesus was reached before the 2006 World Cup to keep the clubs as of the start of the tournament, with optional footnotes for the transfers occurred during the tournament. Just like the age is the one at the start of the tournament, so is the club and caps. It's a widely used standard who reached a consesus as well. --necronudist (talk) 09:13, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. You often see news reports saying that a player will link up with a new team after their involvement in the tournament is finished, indicating that players rarely switch teams mid-tournament. Therefore we should only use the team the player was with before the tournament. The problem comes when a player has been on loan. Do we list his parent club or the team he was on loan with? – PeeJay 09:16, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd say the club on loan, with a footnote saying he spent the run up of the tournament on loan from y club. --necronudist (talk) 09:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, it is unlikely that a player would fly home in the middle of a tournament overseas to sign a contract with a new club....... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:20, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Contracts are signed before but takes effect after. For example Ronaldinho must be listed as a Barcelona player and Vanden Borre under Genoa (on loan from Fiorentina). --necronudist (talk) 09:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

If we're talking about the upcoming Olympics, I would say that Ronaldinho should be listed as a Milan player as he has already signed with Milan before the Olympics started. Furthermore, Barcelona weren't even willing to let him go to the Olympics, so that would make things even more complicated. – PeeJay 09:26, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

AC Milan too, Galliani said that he left Ronaldinho 'cause "Barcelona already gave him permission"... a bit complicated, yeah :-) --necronudist (talk) 09:54, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree with necronudist and PeeJay on this point. About squad templates; well, as I'm currently working on past Olympic squads, I will use WC templates in the future, as everyone seems to prefer it. I would have prefered to know this before, however... In that case, could we use a bot for what I've already done? I used what Christian called "the too specific one"? It would take some time to do it manually...--Latouffedisco (talk) 11:31, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, I'll help you. I didn't think before at this template issue... --necronudist (talk) 12:48, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey! I didn't realise the "The massively used too specific one" one existed! I was looking at squad articles the other day, and I was actually thinking there was room to include some of the stuff in that template. Not the minutes or reds and yellows, but tournament caps and goals might be a useful addition to such articles. The only problem, as far as I could see it, would be confusion between the caps pre-tournament and the caps in it.

I do wonder why we bother, actually, with including the date of birth in such templates. They're unnecessary, and they look ugly with no unified length and the age in brackets. I'd prefer it if we just used a template that displayed just the age at the start of the tournament - which is what the DOB is there do but would be neater and save room.

So, thoughts? I'd certainly be pro adding/removing the above to the World Cup template. What is important though, is that everything is standardized, and the World Cup one should definetely be rolled out across the articles. HornetMike (talk) 00:36, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

"Hey! I didn't realise the "The massively used too specific one" one existed!"- Me neither, and I have looked at A LOT of squads lists, and this is really the first time that I saw this one. So "Massively used", I'm not too sure about that. UmutK (talk) 13:54, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think we should change the "World Cup template" to have DoB in one collumn and Age in another collumn right next to it. That way everything will be relatively standardized in width so the table doesn't look like poop. Thoughts? -- Grant.Alpaugh 16:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The "poop" comment is a bit of an overstatement, tbh. It looks fine to me, but if you want all the column widths to be standardised, you should set a width parameter in the template. – PeeJay 16:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I think we all agree on using the World Cup template as the standard template for football squads. Now two issues remaining:

• I wouldn't agree on a separate column for the age. I'd keep the current DOB column filled with the {{Date of birth and age}} template.
• How can we massively convert the various tables to the World Cup template? --necronudist (talk) 09:37, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that there should not be a separate column for age. As you suggest, the {{birth date and age}} template is perfectly suited for this task. As for the mass conversion, we first need to establish how many articles currently use the incorrect ones. If it's not too many, the task can be done manually, but if there's a lot, we may need to get a bot to help, although I don't know if a bot could cope with a task as complex as this. Otherwise, we can always change them as and when we see them. – PeeJay 09:48, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Notable players, or notable FORMER players?

Something I’ve been wondering about for a while is the tendency to add players to the “notable players” list when they still play for the team in question. I’ve always thought it was a bit redundant, and overly-repetitive, to have players listed in both the current roster and in the notable players list. Although it is clearly not specified as such, in my mind, the notable players list should only include players who no longer play for the team. Does anyone else agree? --JonBroxton (talk) 20:56, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Notable players sections really shouldn't exist. They are POV, and strictly any player with a wikipedia entry is notable. Peanut4 (talk) 21:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Point taken... but given that they DO exist, should players who still play for the team in question be in the list, or should it be only former players? --JonBroxton (talk) 21:11, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd be of the opinion of deleting them for the reasons above. You won't see any football articles at WP:FA or WP:GA with such lists, certainly not ones without any proper criteria. Peanut4 (talk) 21:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

(Assuming you mean notable players lists within football club articles) where they exist, there should be very strict criteria, like being members of the club's Hall of Fame or something equally objective (and restrictive). Then so long as a player fits those criteria he should be in the list whether he's still at the club or not. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 21:19, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, we sort of agree. In this list, for example, I would remove Segares, Blanco, Frankowski, Brown, Mapp, McBride and Rolfe, as they all current members of the Fire roster. --JonBroxton (talk) 21:33, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

(Assuming you would,) on what grounds would you keep the others? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 21:39, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, you know... international caps, played a significant amount of games for the club, did something really important like scoring the winning goal in a major game, or something. I appreciate that the list is totally subjective, but I didn't add the players to the list. I really wasn't thinking about criteria for inclusion; the lists already existed before I even thought about this. I was more thinking that still being an active player for the team in question should be criteria for EXCLUSION from the list of notables. --JonBroxton (talk) 21:45, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>The need is to set the criteria and then note players who meet it, whether or not they are still playing for the club, I think. A player who makes over 1,000 appearances for a club will be a notable player in the history of that club even if he still plays for the club, for example. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 21:56, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. The point I'm making, though, is that while he remains an active player with the club, he's not part of it's history yet; he's part of its present. When he leaves the club, or retires, or whatever, THEN add him to the notable players list, because otherwise it's repetitive and rendundant to have him listed twice.--JonBroxton (talk) 22:00, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I would say the way to go about "Notable (former) player" sections is for them to be blank in cotent, but provide a link to a seperate article for the notable players, e.g. "List of X F.C. players". Also, by doing this, the redundancy would be eliminated. Mattythewhite (talk) 22:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Matty's right, obviously. But where such lists do exist, I'd disagree about active players. An active player with 1000 appearances is making part of the club's history now. Incidentally, that Chicago Fire list includes Brian McBride, great player without doubt, but he's never played for them... cheers, Struway2 (talk) 22:10, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Your comment about Brian McBride illustrates exactly the point I'm making... but whatever. I'm not overly concerned one way or the other. Consensus always wins :) --JonBroxton (talk) 22:14, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

If a player is in the current squad list then they don't need to be listed twice. If the criteria used is , for instance, having played over x number of times, then a note can be at the bottom of the list stating that a current member of the squad has also exceeded this. I've been having problems with the equivalent section for Grimsby Town F.C. One editor seems to think that a player who played less than 20 games for the club should be listed, for example. Dancarney (talk) 11:58, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned the "Notable players" lists are only for former players; at least most articles I've read/edited/created follow that criteria. Bruno18 (talk) 16:23, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

In response to Dancarney, the problem is why isn't 20 games notable? Without any set of criteria, any person can list / delist a player, because it is totally POV. There has to be some strict criteria such as Hall of Fame, or internationals, or players with 500 games. Peanut4 (talk) 17:53, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Without citation and reference, any list of "notable" players or definite stated criteria, whether former or current, appears to be WP:OR to me. - fchd (talk) 18:50, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Totally agree Richard. If we take "notable" literally then every player who has played a pro game must be listed, which is the purpose of List of XYZ F.C. players, so I feel that these sections are best avoided unless a reliable source has published a list of "legends" that can be referenced. There used to be a list on Sheffield Wednesday F.C. which was not referenced and was constantly being changed depending on each editor's point of view, so it was removed when the article was being improved in order to gain FA status. Dan1980 (talk ♦ stalk) 19:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Well I opened a can of worms that I had no intention of opening, didn't I? --JonBroxton (talk) 19:32, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

At least people responded to your query. There've been a few times when I've raised a topic in here and I haven't had a single reply. – PeeJay 19:37, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

True, and people have raised some interesting related points. However, given that the consensus seems to be slightly in favor of not having players in both the current roster and the notable players list, and acknowledging that the existence of notable player lists in the first place is debatable because of point of view, I'm going to start deleting active players from said lists when I see them, citing this discussion. Thanks for your time everyone! --JonBroxton (talk) 21:55, 31 July 2008 (UTC)