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Forward or Striker

This topic has been discussed on the Liverpool FC article [1] I personally feel that the term forward is far too generic, as a scoring midfield can be classed as a forward but his job isn't to score goals for the team like a 'striker' is. The wikipedia article for striker sub-catagorises 'forward' within that category. Surely the default term should be Striker rather than Forward (see LFC discussion link above) Jamie 12:59, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I take the opposite stance - I think we should make categories as loose as possible, given that a player's roles and positions in football are never fixed. For example, some players used to be out-and-out strikers but as time has gone on they've become supporting forwards or attacking midfielders; some players can play either role depending on their team's current tactic. I think if we get too fine-grained with categorising we can end up with lots and lots of separate categories and different articles, none of which hang together very well. In my opinion, the Striker article should be renamed Forward (football) (and the same done with Category:Football (soccer) strikers). Qwghlm 13:57, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I totally agree with Qwghlm: there are a lot of players able to play both as offensive midfielder and forward (eg Francesco Totti). We should thus use "forward" instead of "striker". --Angelo 15:06, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I have felt similarly and reckon 'forward' helps, as it is a broader term... David Bellion and Jeremie Aliadiere are prime examples of forwards that aren't strikers...not all forwards are strikers... but all strikers are forwards. Spyrides 16:02, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Inherantly there are 4 position a player can become. Goalkeeper, Defender, Midfielder and Striker. From that playeres evolve to fill a position that suits but inevitably they are one of the 4. Right Striker (RS), Left Striker (LS), Centre-Forward (CF) but they are all strikers. All the main footballing club in england classify their players this way. By having broad terminology you are potentially confusing the reader. As an encyclopedia it should always be as precise as possible. A Players whose position is striker but happens to play more as an attacking forward can always be elborated on within an article. I think we should always keep to a specific and accurate defintion.Jamie 17:05, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Looking for precision is what we all want...but how far should we go? I'd love to include all sorts of positions, especially for players before the mid-sixties. Where are the inside left or right half back categories, for instance?? ;-) ...also, not all the main footballing clubs do use the term striker to denote their forwards...if you check some club home pages, you will see even they can't find consensus with the terms strikers, forwards and attackers used. ...And what is a left striker??? If you can find me a professional footballer or manager that uses this as an official term I'll be surprised... Of course some strikers are more suited to play on the left of a two man partnership, normally because they are left footed, eg. Bobby Zamora.. but both of the players of that partnership are strikers or centre forwards. On the other hand, when dealing with a 4-3-3 system, players like Arjen Robben, Damien Duff, or at a stretch Joe Cole could be described as left or right forwards, but never left or right strikers. Striker and centre forward are the same thing, but left or right-sided forward are not strikers, and "A player whose position is striker but happens to play more as an attacking forward" is not a striker, but, you guessed it, a forward. Spyrides 21:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Agreed not all players are strikers. But i'm talking about categorising those players as midfielders, becuase the term midfielder emcompasses attcking midfielders and defensive midfielders. A Formation determines whether that adopt a certain role such as 'forward' but essentially they are midfielders. That leaves the remainer of attacking players 'strikers'. An Attcking position is defined as a striker and within the role of striker comes various forward postions, therefore 'forward' is a sub category of striker. See Link
I feel quite uncomfortable about descibing Arjen Robben as a midfielder, just as I would about Dennis Bergkamp or Teddy Sheringham (in the latter stages of his career). But nor are they out-and-out strikers - they do not bag 20+ goals a season, nor are they expected to fulfil that role. The word 'forward' means anyone who plays in a forward position; the word 'striker' means someone who strikes goals. All dedicated goalscorers play in a forward position, but not all forward players are dedicated goalscorers. Thus, I still maintain that 'striker' is a subset of 'forward' and not the other way round. Qwghlm 09:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


Since when did the quantity of goals you score define you as a striker. A striker can be someone who only scores 10 or so goals for the club. A strikers job is to score goals for the team in any quantity. Sorry but Arjen Robben is a midfielder as defined on the club website: See Link
Everywhere I look apart from wikipedia defines players into those 4 categories - Goalkeeper, defender, midfielder & Striker. Does that not tell you something about player classification within the game. The term 'Forward' is a valid definition of a player, it almost bridges the gap between a striker and midfielder but inevitably you are a striker or midfielder. Jamie 12:30, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
An infobox exists to let you know in more detail which are the favourite positions for a player. It should be implemented on the player's article, and specifically only on it. First we should give a broad view of players, by means of team squads, categories, and so on, thus the four "generic" football positions fits better. Then, to deepen about the detailed position(s) of a player, the article is the best place. --Angelo 16:09, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. I totally believe that some player are a bridge between positions but should be categorised into those distinct positions. Jamie 08:55, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the term should be forward, as this encompasses all eras of football. Historical formations such as the W-M and 2-3-5 had positions such as inside forward etc. which were not strikers, and certainly not midfielders. Oldelpaso 17:59, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Articles for deletion

Rather than clutter this talk page every time a football-related article is nominated for deletion, I've added an Articles for Deletion section, where a list of current football-related articles that have been AfD'd can be kept. Let me know what you think... Qwghlm 21:42, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

User:Ed g2s

User Ed g2s (talk · contribs) keeps changing templates with no previous discussion despite being warned before. Check his contributions. Lesfer 16:20, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, he reverted (rightfully), a template back to a previous original version. It was the user (haven't bothered to check who) that implemented the changes a while ago that did so without previous discussion. -- Elisson Talk 17:29, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Including changes in Template:Football squad start and Template:Football squad mid? Lesfer 17:39, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, those I did not know about. I only saw the change to the club infobox, which was a rightfull revert, the others I don't support. -- Elisson Talk 18:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Canadian category confusion

Can somebody familiar with football (soccer) standards take a look at Category:Canadian soccer players. It doesn't make sense to me that its a subcategory of Category:Canadian Soccer Association and Category:Canadian National Team. Obviously a person can be a Canadian soccer player, without being on the National Team. Also, I presume that if you're with the National Team, you're automatically with the Canadian Soccer Association. I made Taryn Swiatek, and thought she would go in Category:Canadian National Team, but I see nobody else is put there. So, I put her in Category:Canadian soccer players. But, I'm not clear on how this is expected to work, or what's done elsewhere. --Rob 09:07, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the two categories from Category:Canadian soccer players. These two categories are not used and not needed so I've also speedied them. -- Elisson Talk 11:12, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Also, I'm wandering, given the very broad term "soccer players", do we have a clear standard that says it only means *elite* players. For instance, would a person famous for other reasons, who played soccer at a lower-level ever be included in this category? --Rob 06:23, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Only professionals. -- Elisson Talk 09:40, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

FIFA 100 or Pelé list

Why in almost all of the articles about a player named into that list is a mention about it?. I don't know if that list have a good reception on you guys, but I don't know any good football fan that have some respect for it. The point is that if nobody with a little knowledge aout it really accept that Mia Hamm, Nakata and Hong Myung-bo (what is that, he really play football?) are better than Jairzinho, Law, Salas and Riquelme, why is there a mention about being in a "list that nobody respect". I would be happy editing those phrases that mention "he is included in the FIFA 100 list elaborated by Pelé". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bauta (talkcontribs)

I see no problem with it. If you propose that only awards and titles that are "respected" by the general public should be mentioned, you are out on deep POV waters. -- Elisson Talk 18:21, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
But in terms of universal knowledge it's a big mistake to make that list a kind of "price". No problem with a lot of awards that I don't like generally, but to have a bussiness minded list as a kind of medal to put in the jacket?. There are a lot of lists that are much more well accepted. --Bauta 01:42, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Yashin nickname

Now, into Yashin. In the english article he is nicknamed "officially" "black panther" and says "also called him "Black Spider" and "Black Octopus" , but in the french and spanish articles he is named "black spider". It's the first time that i know about that "black panther" nickname (no word about octopus), my question is: does anybody of you know him as black panther? maybe is a matter of location and english talking places know him as black panther. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bauta (talkcontribs)

The "black panther" seems to be the most common nickname ([2] [3] [4]), while the two others also seem to have been used, but not to the same extent. -- Elisson Talk 18:21, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, I don't know how they call in England and USA, so no problem with that. It would be perfect to know how they call him in the Soviet Union. But at least in America, France, Italy and Spain he's better known as Spider.--Bauta 01:47, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Yashin... Ah yeah, you mean the Ragno Nero (Black Spider)?!? Yes, in Italy he's mainly known as Black Spider. --Angelo 02:22, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Football squad templates

Ongoing discussion here: Template_talk:Football_squad_player#Header_colour. ed g2stalk 15:49, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Use of FC / F.C.

One of the objections in the FLC for List of football clubs in Europe is inconsistency in the use of FC / F.C. We have F.C. as the standard for clubs with English names, but should this also apply to teams using FC as a prefix or with non-english names (e.g. FC Basel)? Oldelpaso 11:55, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

BIG NO. :) Most non-English clubs never use punctuation in these kinds of abbreviations (see for example how the official FC Basel site explicitly writes FC without punctuation several times). Do even English clubs use it most of the time? I've seen an old discussion on this somewhere which I can't find at the moment. I'd even like to see (even if I know that it would probably never happen) a move of all English clubs so they use FC instead of F.C. See for example how UEFA treats these abbreviations. -- Elisson Talk 12:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm very much in favor of eliminating the punctuation like UEFA do. Much cleaner in my opinion. -- JoelCFC25 18:32, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I've done a quick survey of club websites. Most English club sites are run by premiumtv.com, who use FC. Of those Premier clubs with different hosting providers, FC was used by Chelsea, Fulham, and West Ham. The sign on Everton's ground uses FC. The Scottish sites I looked at also used FC. Several clubs did not have an obvious example of either on their site. I didn't see any sites using F.C. From this brief sample your position appears to be preferable, but given how long it would take I wouldn't support a switch unless someone created a bot to do it. Oldelpaso 15:13, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Despite my earlier findings, I've remembered some English clubs that do use F.C., how could I of all people forget this example. Oldelpaso 19:39, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Although that doesn't necessarily mean that they tend to use punctuation (their official site, for example, uses FC and not F.C. in the title bar). The punctuation is also seen in for example AIK's and Djurgårdens IF's badges, while the clubs never use punctuation on their official websites. -- Elisson Talk 19:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
In Italy it's quite commoner to use F.C. instead of FC. --Angelo 16:16, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
True, and then it should stay so. I've also noticed that Norwegian club articles seem to use punctuation, however when looking around on the Tippeligaen clubs' official websites, none use this form, they are either using no punctuation or nothing can be found on their sites. This is less than 50 Norwegian club articles so I guess a move of these should be considered. -- Elisson Talk 16:36, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

In Belgium F.C. is generally used. Julien Tuerlinckx 17:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Hooliganism

Although it's not something we like to dwell on, football hooliganism is (or has been) a reality and is IMO worthy of noting in encyclopaedic articles on related football clubs. I was doing some vandalism fighting a few days ago and ended up caught up in what appears to be an edit war on the Galatasaray article. While I believe that hooliganism is noteworthy, I also think it's very important that we maintain consistency and NPOV, and ensure that sections on hooliganism are in keeping with the rest of the article they appear in.

The Galatasaray edit war seems to be limited to a group of three or four editors, so I thought it best to come here and ask for:

  • opinions on the inclusion of hooliganism sections in football club articles (or placement of such content elsewhere in the encyclopaedia) in general
  • a wider team of people to work on the Galatasaray article, so that the article isn't dominated by a handful of editors quibbling among themselves (and controversial issues can reach a meaningful concensus)

While I'm here, I'd also like to congratulate you all on the project. On the whole, the football articles I've seen in Wikipedia are excellent; well maintained, informative, and impresseively well-balanced. Well done, and thanks in advance for any help you can provide on the above. -- Waggers 13:28, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Naming convention for tournaments

Let's discuss at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Competitions#Naming convention for tournaments. --Pkchan 18:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for final standardization of navigational boxes

Read and comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Templates. -- Elisson Talk 18:02, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Plagarism?

Sorry, I don't know where to post the links, world-foot.com is using your content [5] [6] No link to wikipedia, no GFDL notice. The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.248.190.101 (talk • contribs) .

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details). The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.79.155.36 (talk • contribs) .
I've sent a mail to the author of the blog. Let's see what happens next. -- Elisson Talk 18:33, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

idea to clarify i see that you are speaking about copyright with that blog  !! and you know that wikipedia is an opensource and a free encyclopedia and anyone can copy ,modify, derive all the text ...so, can you explain what is the problem with that blog?

You may want to read for example Wikipedia:Verbatim copying. Just because Wikipedia is open source and free and all that, does not mean that anyone can use the content in any way. The GFDL specifies that one must both provide a GFDL notice and a link to the full GFDL text, and also a link back to Wikipedia as stated in Wikipedia:Copyrights. The site in question does neither of this. – Elisson Talk 23:49, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Liverpool F.C./You'll Never Walk Alone (song)

May I request that everyone add the Liverpool article to their watchlists? For about the past month and a half we've had anonymous IPs target the "Club Culture" section and vandalise to say that Celtic were the first to sing YNWA, without sources. I've since semi-protected the page twice, but both times after it was unprotected the vandalism came back. Blocking these IPs would do no good, as they are AOL-like IPs. Everyone please add the article to your watchlists and revert the vandalism? NSLE (T+C) at 01:12 UTC (2006-03-05)

I support instantly reverting any unsourced assertion on the article and have added that article to my Watchlist. Yet I would also like to see the anon user's aseertion openly discussed on its talk page. I have restored the latest of that user's claim on the talk page and raised a point of policy there. Hopefully that will make him behave more reasonably in the future. --Pkchan 04:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup subpage

I created a subpage for listing football articles which require cleanup. Oldelpaso 20:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Football match template / manual of style

I posted a comment here a few days ago, without response:
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Matches#New ideas
Any comments?
Slumgum 22:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Linking "relegated"

The term "relegated" appears on quite a lot of football pages without being linked. In USA, the concept of relegation is unknown. It is not practiced in any of the leagues here. I'm an American myself, and have interest in and knowledge of football far more than most of my countrymen, yet still I wasn't aware of this concept until recently. Based on this, I think it's worth linking "relegated" as standard practice. Perhaps we could put in a bot request to link existing usages. Pimlottc 15:09, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Good suggestion. Wiggy! 19:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Player Stats

One thing I'd advise against is the use of career stats for current players (as David Raven) - it's the kind of information that goes out of date every three days, and there are other sites dedicated to football stats (such as Soccerbase) that are much more suited to this sort of information. A link to the player's Soccerbase (or equivalent) profile is more useful, I think. ArtVandelay13 16:20, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the use of stats is important in a biography of a footballer, as it can show the longevity of their career and value to their team, simply by showing how often they play. As long as stats are accurate and are dated (to show how recently they were updated) they can be useful. It's up to individual editors whether they want update stats frequently or not. I much prefer the infobox for use of stats as it's very concise, even though it only shows league stats. Other stats tables are becoming too disparate in layout and content. -- Slumgum | yap | stalk | 22:12, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Positions (role) on squad player template

What about adding some positions in these templates?

What do you think? Lesfer (talk) 16:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The issue was in past times discussed here. Have your say there. --Angelo 16:54, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Oops, I didn't know about that. Thank you, but there's no point is discussing such a recent issue again. Specially when consensus has already been reached. Lesfer (talk) 18:05, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

World Cup 2006

I think it would be sensible to have written, between the time when the squads are announced up to the start of the World Cup, an article on every player and manager (and maybe referee) in the World Cup. Is this a plausible plan? Or is the third choice Togoan goalkeeper not notable enough for an article? --Dangherous 12:07, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree (apart from the referees part), and I've created an area in my userpage for listing 2006 World Cup related articles before the time when the squads are announced and FIFA World Cup 2006 (squads) can be created. Oldelpaso 15:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

User:Joycie 15

Joycie 15 (talk · contribs) has been continually adding badly-formatted articles for a whole range of blatantly non-notable semi-pro and amateur footballers (e.g. Johnnie Joyce) from Western England (playing for the likes of Winchester City, Fairford Town etc.). Despite my request to stop, the user continues (adding another 20 today). After I brought attention to it, admins have banned him/her for the next 48 hours, but they might decide to keep on adding once the ban is up. I'm getting tired of adding delete tags to all these article - could others here please help me out and keep an eye on any additional contributions this user makes? Thanks. Qwghlm 00:14, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I've tidied up a few of the entries that are worth keeping. I would agree with all your deletion notifications. ArtVandelay13 09:51, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Champions League article

Please comment here, thanks! jacoplane 08:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Opinions please!

I am currently editting the Liverpool FC article. Someone is persistently adding running commentary of liverpools season progress to the main article, which in my opinion is both messy and out of place. I am of the opinion that on 'significant' events should be included in the article not who the game is against and what the current league points and position is. Just really would like to see a few opinions on the matter in case my thinking is wrong. Thanks Jamie 19:16, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Very much agree with your position, addition of minutae about recent events happens on a number of articles and can be frustrating. Some of the edits to Robbie Fowler when he rejoined Liverpool were ridiculous. The article should be an overview of the club over its 100 odd year history; Wikipedia is not Wikinews. I was going to suggest putting a comment in the markup to discourage such edits, but Aabha already did it. We'll just have to make sure plenty of us keep it on our watchlists. Oldelpaso 19:37, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
As already stated on the article talk page, I agree with Jamie (and Oldelpaso). – Elisson Talk 20:06, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
The situation is little like that described above by JamieStapleton. Indeed, I had stated on the talk page, "Whilst I agree that Wikipedia should not be used to give a blow by blow account of each sporting event and risk becoming an online scores reporting repository, I do see genuine merit in an article being up to date and reflecting significant events as they happen. There is no need to wait until the end of a season to say that a team has reached its best/second best position in ten years and could possibly reach its best position ever in a particular league. Such events must surely be of interest as well as being significant and germane."
Please see the relavant talk page for a true account of the facts.
Personally, I have not included any specific matches in this respect. I simply want to include a paragraph to show that this team has reached the 70 point mark for only the second time in 10 seasons and only the third time since the introduction of the Premier League. Alias Flood 20:36, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I have just found that this information, i.e. Liverpool reaching the 70 point mark for only the second time in 10 seasons, has been cited as a "significant landmark" and can be found at Benitez' Reds on landmark course. As this is verifiable, are there still objections? - Alias Flood 22:16, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Got to agree with Jamie. I don't know whose fault it is, but the article is far too heavily biased towards the present. The silliest example is the resigning of Robbie Fowler taking as much space in the article as Hillsborough. I like OEP's idea of keeping the article on his watchlist - I tried keeping similar edits out of Manchester United when I was thinking of getting it on FAC but had to revert them every couple of days so now I tend to just go through it every month or two and tidy it up. Having a list of heavily edited football articles and asking people to keep them on their watchlists would help a lot, and I'd definitely join in with it. CTOAGN (talk) 22:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Club landmarks, such as points totals, etc, are interesting and informative in general to fans. To the average reader this will not register as an informative or memorable fact, certainly not an encyclopaedic fact. The article will continually grow but we must make efforts to filter out information that is trivial and ensure more meaningful information is included. Jamie 17:00, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
And if including record points and similar, do it to in an article Liverpool F.C. records, as it has been done with two of our FA's, Arsenal F.C. and IFK Göteborg. – Elisson Talk 17:24, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I've set up an Articles that need watching section on the project page. Hopefully that will help. CTOAGN (talk) 16:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

footy-stub on Stubs for deletion

There is currently a proposal on Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion to rename {{footy-stub}} and its descendants to {{soccer-stub}}. Oldelpaso 18:12, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Go forth and object! Budgiekiller 18:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Splitting off history sections from club articles

I've felt for a while that this is more trouble than it's worth. When it was done at Manchester United it led to us having long histories of the club on two pages that largely repeated each other and this seems to be happening on the other pages. Article length isn't that big an issue - the reasons for the old 32k limit are no longer relevant and it's now just a suggestion. W. Mark Felt passed WP:FAC at around 80k so it shouldn't prevent an article becoming featured. I've noticed people are starting to do this with more articles and would like to suggest you leave it until it becomes essential (maybe when it gets to the point where you could split the history into two articles without them looking too short) to save yourself the bother. Most people who read the club article will want to read the history (and users who aren't experienced on WP might not click on the main article link) and the club's history is probably the most relevant thing about the club so there are other reasons to leave it in the club article. CTOAGN (talk) 17:11, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the splitting of Manchester United into several history pages of ~10k each overdoes it. Speaking more generally, perhaps the club template should be revisited to suggest recommended proportions for each section, as other than the squadlist it is the same as it was when it was created, and just says what sections to put in rather than any suggestion as to what to do with them. Size is not necessarily a problem, but long articles are sometimes only long because they contain verbose waffle. Having said that, FAC seems whimsical when it comes to article size. Oldelpaso 10:37, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I still do think it is worth splitting off histories. The 32k limit is no longer a technical problem but it is still good to keep the size of articles down; the Arsenal F.C. article has a very short section on the club's history but all the other information means the source wikitext is at something like ~40k and the HTML version at 130k. Re-merging History of Arsenal F.C. into it would double it in size. Length is not just a technical issue, it is also one of readability and usability - speaking personally, over-long articles put me off reading. Also, remember that not everyone who uses WP has access to super-fast broadband connections.
However, I will agree that some club histories have been split off very badly. Often the history has been split off but the section in the original article has not been suitably abridged (e.g. Newcastle United F.C. and to a lesser extent Liverpool F.C.). Which means you have the problem of two very similar texts being updated in parallel. To solve that problem, summaries should be kept deliberately brief and only rarely updated with latest results and happenings.
Also I agree with Oldelpaso that Man United's history was split too finely; it should have been in one or two articles at most. Also it's compounded by the fact that History of Manchester United is acting as a summary for all those subarticles, and it in turn is being summarised in Manchester United F.C.#History, so you are having to watch three articles at once. Perhaps if you merged the subarticles into just two (pre-1969 and post-1969, maybe?) and turn History of Manchester United into a simple disambiguation page between them, it would make life easier. Qwghlm 22:22, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I completely agree with Qwghlm. – Elisson Talk 11:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)