Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Ugly World Cup articles

Look at Football World Cup 2002... It's all messed up. Different tables, ugly formatting, bad wiki-links, etc. I am sorry to say the quality of the WC articles is going downhill over the past few months. DR31 16:51, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Article improvement drive

I want to propose restarting this collaboration. I was not here when the drive first started, and stopped, so I probably wouldn't know of any problems that might have arisen/might arise, but I want to give it an honest try. I'm certain it can be made to work, with so many people actively working on football articles. -Aabha (talk) 18:42, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

The main problem was that there were not enough contributors to have a successful collaboration. If you restart the collaboration I'd definitely like to help out. However, keep in mind that there needs to be someone that does a couple of things every week. Templates need to be updated, the history section needs to be maintained, and failed nominations need to be pruned. If you feel you can handle this and there are sufficient contributors, then I see no reason to restart the collaboration. Jacoplane 08:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm ready to take on the responsibility of that, if someone who has done it before can explain to me once what all needs to be done. -Aabha (talk) 09:49, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm restarting the drive. -Aabha (talk) 09:21, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Userbox

Since userboxes seem to be all the rage, I created one for WP:Football:

This user is a participant in
WikiProject Football.

To use it put {{User WikiProject Football}}

Wiki Syntax in football year articles

I have been working on the Wikipedia Syntax cleanup project and there are a large number of football year articles that have a common problem with the syntax of tables. The league tables have two opening sections (ie two sets of {| followed by table styles), but only one closing |}. Although this is rendered fine by browsers it gets picked up by syntax-checking bots and should really be fixed. Given the number of occurances I guess it must have come from a template or example somewhere. When creating further new articles of this type, can people try and correct the problem - otherwise any new ones will need fixing again (see eg 2003-04_in_Scottish_football for a fixed page). I think most of the existing ones are now fixed. Well done on a truely impressive collection of articles!! Kcordina 10:41, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Football matches

I am converting every match in the World Cup 2002 using the spiffy new Template:Footballbox (spiffy IMO) I created. I'm wondering if it could become a standard for all match summaries :) Here's a (nonpartisan, completely fair, realistic) example: – ugen64 03:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

December 29, 2005

Arsenal	10–1	Chelsea
Henry 1' Fabregas 8', 10', 40' pen Cygan 30' Cole 57' Bergkamp 60', 71', 81' Flamini 65', 77'		Cech 90'

Emirates Stadium

{{penshootoutbox |
penalties1 = [[Pascal Cygan|Cygan]] scored<br />[[Thierry Henry|Henry]] scored<br />[[Robin van Persie|van Persie]] missed<br />[[Jens Lehmann|Lehmann]] scored<br />[[Sol Campbell|Campbell]] scored |
penaltyscore = 4–3 |
penalties2 = [[Pascal Cygan|Cygan]] scored<br />[[Thierry Henry|Henry]] scored<br />[[Robin van Persie|van Persie]] missed<br />[[Jens Lehmann|Lehmann]] scored<br />[[Sol Campbell|Campbell]] missed }}

I also made a penalty shootout box - Template:Penshootoutbox. You just stick it immediately after the match, like I did just above (ignoring the fact that the match wasn't a tie).

looks good, but Chelsea's fans won't like it..Dingy 15:36, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Arsenal fans neither, with their players deflecting to Chelsea one by one :) I've been using your infobox, but how do you account for extra time? I tried some primitive solution at the Football World Cup 2002#Last 16 match between Senegal and Sweden:

June 16, 2002

Senegal	2–1 (AET)	Sweden
Camara 37', 104'		Larsson 11'

Stadium Big Eye

Any ideas? Poulsen 15:57, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think any distinction for extra time is necessary other than AET next to the scoreline, most media would list the Senegal goals in the above example as "Camara 37', 104' " Oldelpaso 16:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'll change it, as seen above. That would also be easier in extra time victories with the original scoreline 0-0. Poulsen 16:22, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Page move vote in progress

There is currently a vote on to move Football World Cup to FIFA World Cup. see talk:Football World Cup Jooler 11:19, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

And there is a vote on to move Hanover 96 to Hannover 96. see Talk:Hanover 96. -- Andro96 22:59, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Fans

Several club articles (e.g. Tottenham Hotspur F.C.) have a section on famous and/or infamous fans of the club. It strikes me that a club article is not really the sort of place for such information - these sections aren't really about the club - (and it's open an obvious path to vandalism or vanity). My suggestion is to add new categories such as Category:Tottenham Hotspur F.C. fans, Category:Arsenal F.C. fans etc., remove the fans sections and add the appropriate categories to the articles about the people (with the fans category as an appropriate member of the club's own category). This would also have the added benefit of reducing the club articles in size. I'm not really a member of the project, but any thoughts? Stephenb (Talk) 17:57, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it's better off as an list rather than a category; people should only be categorised under the more important aspects of their life, and for most people that doesn't include their football club. A list on the other hand can grow without clogging up each of the individual fans' articles - and if it gets too long for the club page, it could always be split off to a separate article. sjorford (talk) 21:39, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Ugh. I strongly dislike these lists - because a large number of people on them are rumours or unconfirmed from fan websites and bulletin boards - I'm sure 90%+ of those listed don't actually follow the team or turn up for matches. In any case, it's hardly encyclopaedic material. There was recently a deletion discussion for an article listing Arsenal fans, where the consensus reached the same conclusion, and opted to delete. For the same reasons, I'm not mad keen on the category idea either. I'd just get rid of them, full stop. Qwghlm 23:17, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree entirely. If someones support for a club is truly notable, it should be mentioned in their article, not that of the club. Oldelpaso 11:00, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Interesting about the deletion discussion - there's a similar article for List of famous people who are fans of Chelsea FC which has yet to be deleted in the same way. Perhaps Wiki editors just dislike Arsenal? :-) Stephenb (Talk) 15:46, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Even if Chealse still has its list, I also think this information is (generally) not encyclopedic. Mariano(t/c) 16:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Rather than create long and dubious lists of celebrity fans, why not just integrate a few of the verifiable ones into the main club article under the supporters title? SteveO

The problem is that such lists become honeypots for numerous unverifiable additions as well, and editors' time is taken up verifying and/or deleting them. Lists of celebrity fans are exceedingly uninteresting when compared with other aspects - history, achievements, great players etc., so it makes no sense to commit lots of time to such trivia. Qwghlm 20:03, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't very clear there. I mean do away with the lists and in a paragraph on a club's supporters, maybe mention two or three verifiable ones. For e.g. club abc has various celebrity supporters. xxx and yyy are season-ticket holders while zzz is on the board. They've done something similar here: SteveO 00:04, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Player squad template

I prefer to do squad template according to positions 1st then squad numbers 2nd. Here's an example.

No.	Country	Player	Year Signed	Previous Club
Goalkeepers
1		Tim Howard	2003	MetroStars
19		Edwin van der Sar	2005	Fulham
30		Luke Steele	2002	Peterborough United / Academy
Defenders
2		Gary Neville	1991	Academy
4		Gabriel Heinze	2004	Paris Saint-Germain
5		Rio Ferdinand	2002	Leeds United
6		Wes Brown	1996	Academy
22		John O'Shea	1998	Waterford United
26		Phil Bardsley	2001	Waterford United/Academy
Midfielders
7		Cristiano Ronaldo	2003	Sporting Lisbon
11		Ryan Giggs	1990	Academy
13		Park Ji-Sung	2005	PSV Eindhoven
14		Alan Smith	2004	Leeds United
18		Paul Scholes	1991	Academy
23		Kieran Richardson	2001	West Ham United / Academy
24		Darren Fletcher	2000	Academy
25		Quinton Fortune	1999	Atlético Madrid
41		Floribert N'Galula		Anderlecht / Academy
46		Lee Martin	2004	Wimbledon / Academy
Forwards
8		Wayne Rooney	2004	Everton
9		Louis Saha	2004	Fulham
10		Ruud van Nistelrooy	2001	PSV Eindhoven
20		Ole Gunnar Solskjær	1996	Molde FK
37		Kenny Cooper		Academy

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Kingjeff (talk • contribs) 03:12, January 5, 2006

That table is about three times as large as the more compact standardised form used by {{football squad player}} and does not convey that much more useful information - details about a player's career and previous clubs are best reserved for the article about the player itself. Also, what is the (non-playing) manager doing in the playing squad? Qwghlm 08:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more with Qwghlm. Too long, to much unnecessary info. -- Elisson • Talk 11:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't necissarily look at the column headings here. They can always change to more relevent information. Look at the basic design and concept. I think it looks better when players are seperated by position instead of using just a list of players. The managers of the club don't have to be there and the position column doesn't have to be there since the players would be separated by position anyways. Kingjeff 02:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I have just shorten the table as suggested. Length, leaving out irrelevent information. This is what, more or less, what I think the size of the table would be for most of the clubs. Kingjeff 02:54, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

You've had to get rid of several minor players to make it shorter - my comment about it taking much more space than the equivalent in the existing template is still valid. I still don't see why it needs to display information about the player's previous club, and I don't like the background or the gridlines - they crowd out the useful data and make it harder to read. Qwghlm 08:36, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The minor players really shouldn't have been there to begin with. This is the size of a typical team squad under this format. Kingjeff 03:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't matter - the fact remains that the current template will still be still much smaller than the above suggested one, if you remove the same players from it as well. PS You deleted one or two quite significant players from the above (e.g. Mikael Silvestre) to make your point. Qwghlm 20:07, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

You were looking to much at this paticular template with this paticular roster. Obviously specific team's will have there own main players. If I was actually editing Manchester United squad and not using it as an example, I would have actually picked which specific players to put in. Kingjeff 03:47, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Deletion discussion

I have nominated a series of minor players for deletion for non-notability reasons. Anyone interested please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dorchester Town footballers - all contributions welcome. Qwghlm 13:27, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I've nominated the 1972 Cup Winners Cup final for deletion. Go make your vote heard. -- Elisson • Talk 23:05, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

• I have created the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup 1971-72 page. A lot of people when discussing whether or not to delete the page mentioned by Johan Elisson suggested merging them - does anyone think this would be sensible now, and how best to do it so that it looks alright? Starfighter Pilot 15:52, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wembley F.C. might be of interest to be people here. Qwghlm 21:21, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I've nominated Danish manager Allan Kembe-Stohr Morell for deletion, all votes welcome! Poulsen 21:35, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup help required

The user AlexWilkes (talk · contribs) has been adding a lot to articles about English clubs recently, about each club's experiences in the FA Premier League (e.g. Aston_Villa_F.C.#Villa_in_the_Premiership). Unfortunately, this content is often a duplicate of what has already been mentioned in the club's history (and thus adds little new information), and is totally unwikified. In some cases, there is also a lot of unnecessary speculation. The duplicate content is, IMHO, severely reducing the quality of these articles by making them a disorganised mess.

Despite me asking him on his talk page to retract or merge his edits he is seemingly ploughing on regardless, so I think the best thing to do is just clean it up now and nip the problem in the bud. I am willing to go through some of his edits and make sure they're properly merged with what already exists but there are a lot of articles that need repairing and I could do with some assistance. All help gratefully received - let me know here or on my talk page. Thanks. Qwghlm 01:45, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Oldelpaso (talk · contribs) and I have managed to sort out the offending articles between us. Qwghlm 18:17, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Help with vandalism on Football firm

This page is constantly being under attack from vandals that change the names of (what I presume is) firms they don't like, or similar. As I don't have enough interrest and/or knowledge to see if a change is vandalism or an enhancement (unless it is obvious or related to Sweden which I do have knowledge about), I need help finding a way to make this stop. Do we have a member of the project that has knowledge about English football firms (the section being vandalized the most), or do we need to request the page to be semi-protected? -- Elisson • Talk 17:45, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Article deletion

I'm getting worried at this recent tendency to nominate football articles for deletion. To prevent it getting out of hand, I suggest that we work out a level at which clubs/players are considered notable enough and add it to the notablilty guidelines. Otherwise, we'll end up with 50+ AFDs for English non-league clubs, probably with clubs at the same level arbritrarily succeeding or failing depending on who bothers to vote on their nomination.

I'll start the ball rolling: I think any English football team that is eligible to play in the FA Vase or above is notable enough to have its own article. What does everyone else think? File:Yemen flag large.png CTOAGN (talk) 22:05, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I think only the top 6 level clubs should have their players in wikipedia but actually I don't know english football that much so I'm not sure it really makes sense. Anyway we are still left with the problem of the promotion/relegation, i.e. if only the clubs in the first 6 levels of the english fls were chosen, we should add players that once played with a top6level club and this could mean many players. So to me the first 9 levels is too much unless we donate to wikipedia... Julien Tuerlinckx 22:57, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I think we need to consider players separately from their current clubs. Players quite often drop down the leagues when they get too old or unfit, for example the England internationals Jimmy Greaves and Chris Waddle (even George Best played a couple of non-league games). If they've ever done anything notable enough to get themselves a page here we should just keep it.

I still think we should go for an inclusionist approach to clubs. Even lower-level non-league clubs are much more notable than the average school in my opinion. File:Yemen flag large.png CTOAGN (talk) 23:26, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with CTAOGN, in that we should be inclusionist with clubs but not so with players. Merely playing for a club with a WP article does not make a player notable for a WP article on their own (as I've been arguing in the Dorchester discussion). When I've been adding articles for former Arsenal players, I've used a basic criterion of 100 matches or more for the club, if playing for Arsenal is the only thing they are notable for; players who enjoyed notability at other clubs or who went into management I've also included, but for those other reasons instead. Perhaps for past players, 100 first-class club matches is a good rule of thumb?

As for current players, I'm less sure, but any player who's on professional forms and has played a first-team match in a country's top division (or is likely to) should probably considered noteworthy. I'm not so sure about the more obscure youth players who are some way away from a first-team game, though. Qwghlm 09:57, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, In England, a current club should be considered noteworthy if it participates in the FA Cup, at any stage (preliminaries included) - is this the same as CTAOGN's criterion, or do more teams take part in the Vase? Also, we should include former Football League members, clubs involved in the early history of the game (e.g. Sheffield F.C., West Auckland Town F.C.) and any other exceptionally noteworthy club (e.g. F.C. United of Manchester). For football outside of England, where there is less attention on non-league and semi-professional football, I am not so sure - perhaps the top 6 levels as Julien suggests. Qwghlm 23:18, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I think they're almost identical. A club becomes eligible for the FA Cup if they played in the Vase (or something more prestigious) in the season before and is in an "acceptable league", whatever that is. I agree completely with the definitions for England, but it's going to vary massively for other countries - English football goes down a lot further than most countries before crowds drop to double figures and players stop getting paid, so while level 10 (how convenient :-) ) might be appropriate for English football, level 3 might be appropriate for another country. We could let Wikipedians from each country decide as appropriate, specify a minimum average attendance or have some other criterion such as whether spectators are charged. File:Yemen flag large.png CTOAGN (talk) 23:38, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Just the simple thing that it might be hard to find enough info on a club to fill half of the slots in the infobox should be a good hint when you should not create an article on a club. :) We should not only focus on levels, but also on number of teams. England is a little special, having a lot of single league levels (five, IIRC), while many other countries only have one or two such single league levels, before the league system starts growing sideways.

Swedish clubs down to level 3-4 are perfectly ok, with some notable clubs on level 5. Level 1-4 comprises 134 clubs, with another 144 on level 5. I'd say around 150-200 Swedish clubs including women's clubs (we have a total number of 68 Swedish clubs at the moment, so there is a bit to do), are the absolute maximum number of clubs that are notable enough to be included. That number should also be some sort of standard for other countries that are on the same "football level" as Sweden, such as Bulgaria, Romania, Denmark, Belgium, Croatia, ...

For players, playing in on of the top two levels of Sweden should be enough for notability, while playing in level 4 certainly not is notable. So playing in any of the, let us say 30-40 best clubs should be good for players in the above mentioned countries. Comments on that? -- Elisson • Talk 23:52, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the slow reply - had a busy few days. This sounds fine to me, and if/when someone who disagrees comes along we can always discuss it then. It'll be good to have some rough guidelines in place though. File:Yemen flag large.png CTOAGN (talk) 05:54, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

This discussion over at the talk page of the clubs-subpage might be relevant and also function as a starter in this discussion that I too feel is needed. We need to make out standards for a lot of things, including articles on clubs, players, managers, referees, single matches, single-season reports, venues and much more. -- Elisson • Talk 23:29, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

My proposal about which football clubs should be included in Wikipedia is the following one:

• Teams which play in professional football leagues (Premiership to Third Division in England, Serie A to Serie C2 in Italy and so on);
• Non-professional teams which obtained relevant triumphs (like Calais in France, which played a final of French Cup some time ago, or Vado in Italy, the first Italian Cup winner);
• Teams which played or play in a continental competition;
• Teams which play in a national top division for countries where football is not played at professional level, such as less competitive countries (Malta, Andorra, San Marino...);

About players, I guess it would be better to include just the ones who played in a top division or a national football team. Second-division players, in my opinion, don't deserve to have an article. --Angelo 00:27, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

For footballers, I would say (to use England as an example), anyone who has ever played in the Premier or Football League plus anyone who currently plays in the Conference is worth keeping. ArtVandelay13 10:31, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Conference players - absolutely not. They are simply not notable: How many Conference players can the average football fan name? Unless they have done something truly exceptional (score the winner against a top side in the FA Cup, for example), semi-professionals definitely should not be included. Qwghlm 11:27, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Infobox template for football managers

Football in Wikipedia is quickly growing, and more and more players' articles have a related Infobox in which several interesting information is contained (like career, and more).

So, I propose to make another Infobox for the football managers too. I think people like Alex Ferguson, Fabio Capello and José Mourinho deserve to have one. In the case, we should keep in mind that most (but not all) managers were also players in their past years. --Angelo 16:10, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Angelo, just to say I already created this infobox some month ago for former players who became managers. Have a look at Paul Van Himst for instance. As I don't know much about templates, I don't know if it is possible to remove the players info from the infobox when needed but we could create another template for this purpose. By the way, feel free to improve the existing template as I think it is still not a perfect one. Regards, Julien Tuerlinckx 21:49, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually Franky Vercauteren is a better example. Julien Tuerlinckx 22:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I like it and have put it in Michael Laudrup :) - just one minor thing, perhaps change "managerclubs" to "managerteams" is more logic for national team managers? Poulsen 22:25, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanx, just wanted to say that the current club in this infobox was expected to contain the club/team he manages (maybe we'll have to change it to team too). Retired would only be seen for retired managers. But this then brings a new problem: what about player/managers? Julien Tuerlinckx 08:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh, the "retired" was an oversight by me. Player/managers can just be noted as "Player/Manager" as I see it? - or do you mean the position he played as an active player will be lost? Also, the "Position" shouldn't link to football (soccer) positions as that has no relevance for the position of manager. Poulsen 11:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

You remind me of an old problem I had foreseen some time ago. The position field becomes quite ambiguous in the situation of the manager infobox since it could be interesting to keep the position he used to play, and so we could not put "manager" in the position field. Maybe we can just put both things... Because, you know, some people are better known as footballers than as managers and thus a people looking for a former player article would not find the position of the player at the right place. Thus, maybe the best solution is to put something like Position defender (as a footballer) </br> manager. This would also suit well to player/managers if we just put Position defender/manager in this case. Julien Tuerlinckx 17:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Article notablility (see Article deletion above)

As there'll probably be a lot of discussion on this, I've set up a page at /Notability for it. File:Yemen flag large.png CTOAGN (talk) 06:33, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

On a related note, I've nominated an Arsenal youth player for deletion, as he seems to have vanished from the face of the earth - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Armand Traoré. Qwghlm 17:42, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

The debate on the notability page has stalled lately, but we should move to get a consensus on these issues. AfD's such as Duke William CSA FC are not reaching a decision. Browsing the New pages log I'm seeing articles such as Paul Adcock, a player with a handful of pro appearances, and proper notability guidelines would be very helpful. Oldelpaso 10:56, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Tierney Weighting System

Tierney Weighting System - what do we reckon? To me, it just looks like one non-notable guy's attempt to rank football clubs - it seems arbitrary and probable original research. I'd nominate it for AfD but I'd like a wider opinion first. Qwghlm 11:49, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

This article is a firm candidate for speedy deletion. Google says: "Rory Tierney" = 126 hits (from forums); "Tierney Weighting System" no hits. Mariano(t/c) 12:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd have to say original research. No hits for the system, and the first hit on "Rory Tierney" is to a football tipping site... AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 12:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it really meets any of the criteria for speedy deletion, but is definitely deletable the long way under original research (as "a synthesis of established facts in a way that builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing the synthesis to a reputable source") Qwghlm 12:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

The article has been listed on Articles for deletion. Qwghlm 13:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Clubs in player bios

I thought I'd open a discussion about how to refer to clubs in player bios - quite often users write the full club name, including F.C. every time, which, while providing total clarity, doesn't necessarily read very well. An example is Andy Bishop. I think, once the person has been established as a footballer, you need only enter the 'common' club name, e.g. York City. You can even go further than that - football has its own disambiguation system, so you can refer to Northampton Town as simply Northampton, as there is no ambiguity, but, say, Manchester City have to be differentiated by their neighbours. Of course the links themselves would always go to the full club name, which would provide any more information the users need. But I think doing it this way would make a lot of the articles read better. ArtVandelay13 13:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I quite agree with that. I even think this should be the case in every football related article (competitions (except maybe in the former winners section), clubs, managers, players (except maybe in the infobox)). Julien Tuerlinckx 21:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

And BTW this would mean I'll have some work to do in the articles I created... Julien Tuerlinckx 21:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Another notability-related AfD

I have nominated some more non-league footballers' bios for deletion - please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gloucester City footballers. All comments welcome. Qwghlm 18:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I have nominated an article about Massimiliano Tacchinardi, a guy, just famous for being brother of Alessio Tacchinardi, who played two times for Inter Milan before to actually disappear from the football world. --Angelo 19:47, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Holding role needs help

I just came across this article, and while I was able to do somewhat to help it, it needs the attention of someone who knows more about soccer(see, you can tell I don't, as I call the sport by the wrong name... ;-)). Thanks for all your work! The article on Football (soccer) positions was quite helpful to me. JesseW, the juggling janitor 07:58, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I think this article should be merged into and redirected to Football (soccer) positions. Oldelpaso 13:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually I think it should be merged into Midfielder. Football (soccer) positions could do with being rewritten in summary style and appropriate Main article: links added to each section. Qwghlm 13:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Qwghlm. Merge Holding role with Midfielder and then we should try to shorten down the actual Football (soccer) positions article and moving most content to the articles on the positions themselves. -- Elisson • Talk 14:29, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd go along with this too. I'd also like to see the stubs hole (soccer) and striker merged into something like forward (football) as there's some overlap between those positions - there are plenty of people who can play in either role and definitions of "striker" vary. I'll put some merge tags on the articles; it's probably best to discuss merging on those articles' talk pages. File:Yemen flag large.png CTOAGN (talk) 07:03, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Thinking about it, Oldelpaso might have been right. Football (soccer) positions hardly has any content if you ignore the lists, so we could probably merge all of the individual position articles into that and make a really good article. I'm not sure what we'd do with positions that don't really exist any more though (wing-half, outside-left), maybe a History of football (soccer) formations article could cover it? File:Yemen flag large.png CTOAGN (talk) 07:12, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

English non-league football collaboration

I think there's enough interest in English non-league football for a monthly collaboration now, so I'm thinking about setting one up. Would anyone have any strong objections to it being part of this WikiProject (I know some people on here aren't overly keen on the subject)? I could set up a sub-project or separate project, or even just run it from my user page. I'm just trying to get some opinions on what would be most appropriate, but I think some sort of noticeboard for people working on non-league articles would be useful so I'm leaning towards a sub-project. Anyone who'd be interested in contributing, please leave a message on my talk page. File:Yemen flag large.png CTOAGN (talk) 14:35, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I won't claim too much knowledge in the area, but I would like to contribute. A sub-project is a good idea in my opinion. -Aabha (talk) 04:33, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Forest Green Rovers Players

You may have noticed the entire Forest Green Rovers squad has been added to Wikipedia, all by the same user. I think this is a good thing, but they are a bit of a mess. Anyone else interested in helping tidy them up? I've done a few. ArtVandelay13 15:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? I noticed your list of FAs, are there any others? Please post your suggestions here. Thanks a lot! Gflores ^Talk 17:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Bobby Charlton and FIFA World Cup might be worth a look. Oldelpaso 18:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, nice job, they both look A-Class to me. As a Northumbrian in exile, I particularly liked reading about Bobby Charlton. If you want to add more, feel free to update our list directly. Cheers, Walkerma 03:08, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Template standardization

Please have a look at my proposal on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Templates and leave your comments on it. -- Elisson • Talk 19:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Not many seems to be interrested in this, but I'd like to hear your opinion on the matter. I've created a fully working system that I currently use on articles related to Swedish football, but it would be good to reach a concensus wether or not we should try to convert all templates to that standard. -- Elisson • Talk 21:35, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Non-league project

I've created this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Non-league football and listed it as a subproject. CTOAGN (talk) 20:31, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Season date consistency

One thing that I find awkward throughout football related articles are the myraid ways that people represent seasons. There's 2005-2006, 2005-06, 05-06, 2005/2006, 2005/06, 05/06 and then the hyphen can end up being replaced by a minus, an endash, an emdash or some other variant and that's all before considering the addition of whitespace! While each of these is valid and I can see situations where diversity is useful (eg shorter versions for use in tables, longer for titles), perhaps agreeing on a common style for normal use would be beneficial? My personal preference would be for 2005&ndash;06 (2005–06). Veila 05:09, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Mmmm, I think it's a false problem. Anybody should feel himself free to use his favourite format. I prefer to use 2005-2006 and 2005/2006, anyway. --Angelo 00:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Season article titles generally use e.g. 2005-06 with a hyphen - which I prefer (short and avoids slashes, which I think are ugly). But, as with Angelo, I don't think it's the biggest problem that needs fixing right now. Qwghlm 18:09, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I understand that it's not the most pressing matter but I'm not advocating a clean up of current articles, simply a style guide point that can be used going forward. It's exactly the kind of detail that can be done correctly many different ways but consistency is a useful (and attractive) thing. Veila 06:32, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I too prefer a hyphen (not &ndash;), and dislike slashes, and it seems almost all articles use this format (except for example the seasons in Yugoslav football), so it isn't a very big problem. However we should have a manual of style on it, which in this case would be to use the hyphen it seems, and only the last two digits in the second year (unless there is ambiguity if doing so) -- Elisson • Talk 18:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Johan though I concede an endash would be better in the articles paragraphs (neither tables nor titles) because if I'm right this avoids the 2005-06 to be cut at the end of a line, which would look ugly. But since it hasn't been done for most articles, I'm not sure it is worth changing this. And on top it would mean that for linked seasons, one should write [[2005-06 in English football|2005–06]], which would lead to some confusion. But to me we should change the slashes that look not so good as you (nearly) all think. Julien Tuerlinckx 21:11, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I too would like to see the endash be used in-text, if possible, but as for article titles, the hyphen is better as it is more used when searching and writing (when not thinking about the endash). It should be mentioned as an option in the style guide to use the endash in-text. -- Elisson • Talk 21:30, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Page moves

FYI, their was a move of two articles Republic of Ireland national football team and Northern Ireland national football team to Republic of Ireland national soccer team and Northern Ireland national soccer team. Their is currently a discussion to move the two articles back to their previous names. See:Talk:Republic of Ireland national soccer team and Talk:Northern Ireland national soccer team. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 00:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Stupid Question?

Yes i'm new to all this. Just done some minor editing on a few Football pages - but i'd like to get involved with the Football project. First steps: Am I literally just adding my name to the participants section on the main page?--Cavs 17:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes. :) And place discussions at the bottom of the talk pages. ;) Welcome to the family! -- Elisson • Talk 17:28, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Why thank you. I just realised this was meant to go at the bottom after looking at all the dates of the posts...My apologies!--Cavs 17:30, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

F.C. United of Manchester

Kingjeff has decided to make major "improvements" to this page without discussing them anywhere first. Could you add it to your watchlist and revert any blanking/general nonsense as necessary? Thanks, CTOAGN (talk) 23:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Football manager infobox2

I have created an alternative version of the football manager infobox, named {{football manager infobox2}}, just for resolving the issue about unknown or missing info about the playing career of a manager. --Angelo 23:25, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Nice job. And of course not every manager has been a player. Julien Tuerlinckx 21:22, 9 February 2006 (UTC)