Talk:Henrik Larsson/GA3

GA Review

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Reviewer: Lemonade51 (talk · contribs) 16:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

With regret, I have chosen to fail this article as I feel it doesn't meet the criteria. It is unfortunate that this the third time the article has failed at this stage, but I believe a thorough review with a simple 'on hold' would be of no use; much more work is needed and it cannot be done in a week or so. Given Larsson is such a celebrated footballer, not only at Celtic but in European football, I naturally would expect a comprehensive entry about his life and career, but this isn't the case.

My main concern is with WP:WEIGHT and WP:BALANCE. I feel Larsson's time at Feyenoord has been given undue weight, when you consider he played over 100 games for the club. The section alone reads a tad disorganised to me (compared to how the Celtic one is structured); it summarises how his goalscoring record improved in subsequent seasons and then what he won. Prose needs considerable work, as does referencing throughout the article. My issues and suggestions are as followed:

• I would advise you to firstly have a look at other football articles, which are of GA or FA standard. Compare the style and structure, look at its reviewing process and take some ideas on board. Bert Trautmann and Thierry Henry are two good examples of how a football player article should be structured. I managed to get Dennis Bergkamp to GA status last year, which should help you understand what is required currently.
• Although the lead has somewhat been expanded from its last review, it still lacks relative balance. Ideally there should be no references here for one, because it acts as a summary for the entire article. The section about his international career is very brief; given he played over 100 games for Sweden, I would expect more. "He was known as an excellent striker whose main attributes were his goalscoring prowess and on-field intelligence", reads as if Larsson is deceased and the citation given doesn't support any of this – it's a player profile from 2002.
• "He watched UK league football on television", could that be made more specific? Was it Scottish, or English? It doesn't help that the source doesn't seem to load on the computer I'm writing this on.
• "Larsson began playing at lower league Högaborg when he was six–years old", six years old is not hyphenated, six-year-old however is. Notice the difference.
• "Larsson took time to adjust to working and living in a foreign country and could only muster a modest 6 goals in 27 appearances in his first season", is muster the correct word in this context? It reads sports journalse, and there are several instances of this scattered across the article ("chalking up a brace", "notched up eight league goals"). Take care with describing events on an encyclopedia entry – I know this can be difficult and you may fall into the trap of writing like a sports journalist (like myself), but practise generally makes perfect.
• No dab links, but plenty of dead ones. Several sources are Bare URLs – the links are copied and pasted and inserted between the ref tags. The problem with this is they are susceptible to link rots and bots cannot archive them, in the event of sever issues. The GA criteria moreover expects references to be stylised consistently – in this case, they aren't.
• "Despite achieving a Scottish record of nine points in the group stage", needs to be cited.
• "After parachuting from the UEFA Champions League", not sure what that means.
• What makes this a high-quality, reliable source? Likewise this, this or this?
• Publications (newspapers, magazines) should be italicised and have locations added. Note that the former is already done if you use the cite news template and use the work/newspaper paramater. For ones where the location is given in the title, I would advise you to remove them (ie: The Birmingham Post) for reasons obvious. Swedish sources, or ones written in Swedish should have a language parameter added to inform the reader.
• I believe a playing style or style of play section is a must for articles aiming for GA or FA standard. See the Bergkamp article, or Ashley_Cole#Style_of_play to get a flavour of what I mean.

That is as far as I went reviewing. The rest of the article continues to have prose, styling and referencing issues and it would be time-consuming if I listed them all. I would advise you to focus on expanding the article and making it as comprehensive as need be, specifically his time at Helsingborg and Feyenoord. I know this may be difficult (and a bit rich, given the Bergkamp article has his time at Ajax condensed to a paragraph), but I'm sure Larsson has an autobiography (which Bergkamp doesn't have), describing his stints there. Moreover, I'll be more than happy to dig around and find some sources if need be. You then need to go over the sources and make sure the material in the article is covered by the sources. Perhaps after get it reviewed here before sending it for another GA nomination. Feel free to have this article reassessed if you think the review is wrong. Lemonade51 (talk) 16:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)