Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Archive 152

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Page confusion

Can anyone figure out/unpick what is happening with 2016-17 División de Honór and 2016–17 División de Honor? The edit history of the former says it was moved to the latter title on 1 March, yet both articles still exist separately......? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:12, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

They should probably be merged. If just for the sake of making the edit history complete. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 10:29, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

The former page was turned into a redirect at the time of the move. The original creator then rem'd the redirect and began adding content to the page. Tempted to just restore the redir. but there may be attribution reasons not to. Eagleash (talk) 10:39, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

What even is the División de Honor (apart from being a Spanish competition/league of some sort)? Is it the division below Tercera División? It appears not to have a page. Or is it a subsiduary of División de Honor Juvenil de Fútbol? If it is such a minor competition as to not be notable, since both articles are unsourced I would suggest they are deleted. Black Kite (talk) 10:48, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Appears to be a season for the regional league for Province of Cádiz and Province of Málaga from what I can see unless I am mistaken. Govvy (talk) 11:28, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I've merged all the content into 2016–17 División de Honor, and restored the redirect at 2016-17 División de Honór. Not convinced it's notable though. Joseph2302 (talk) 12:25, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I've PRODded it, and will send it to AfD if the PROD is removed. Black Kite (talk) 14:55, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

It's the sixth level of Spanish football. Individual season articles should definitely be deleted. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 15:30, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

It is the level below the Tercera for Andalusia; there is an article of sorts, covering everything from this level below: Divisiones Regionales de Fútbol in Andalusia. But as has been said below, season articles for this level are not needed on enwiki. Crowsus (talk) 01:43, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Federico Gatti

Gatti spent the 2016-17 season with Saluzzo and Pavarolo. We know he scored 8 goals in 31 apps during the season but we don't know the number of games and goals with Saluzzo and the number of games and goals with Pavarolo. What do I write in his table? Dr Salvus 11:11, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Nothing, I'd just write this information in prose. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 11:48, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

@Nehme1499 do I include the 31 apps and the 8 goals in the career total row? Dr Salvus 11:51, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I've tried a possible solution, using notes. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 13:21, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

rating apps

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but are awards and honours given by the major rating apps (based on stats), worthy of being in the honours section. WhoScored, for example, are one of the major football stat collection and rating apps, and they do their player of the year at the end of the season based on that. Would it be fair to add these awards to the honours section if they are properly cited? TJarrrett (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

No, not at all. GiantSnowman 13:08, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I'd say only if we have a Wikipedia article on the database website itself (WhoScored doesn't). Nehme₁₄₉₉ 13:24, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Not until WhoScored is reported on in the general mass media. --dashiellx (talk) 16:17, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Frederikshavn fI players cat

Is there a players category for Frederikshavn fI players? I couldn't see one. Govvy (talk) 15:03, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

No, not that I can see. GiantSnowman 15:14, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

k, I've created Category:Frederikshavn fI players, there maybe more player articles around to put in it. Danish players from the 1960s maybe when the club was in the top flight Danish league. Govvy (talk) 15:50, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I've added a few players to the category. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 16:18, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

UEFA club competition records and statistics

Please control the page. As some weeks ago, an anonymous Indonesian user added recently biased information in that article, mostly in favour of Chelsea, now inserting information that borders on the ridiculous such as equating results from an under-19 tournament like the Youth League with those of tournaments involving first squads/senior teams like the Champions League or the Europa League. The official UEFA competition records, according the Confederation, its website and its organ house as uefadirect or the Bulletin prior the Internet era, are only related with the senior competitions by gender and the youth competitions, also by gender, are separated. It's not the first time, and since then that user/group of users from Yakarta (Indonesia) simply insist with other bizzare and unsourcered edits and always without supporting them with any WP:SOURCES and, as written in the lead of this discussion, all its edits related with that article are pro-Chelsea (a.e. the user defending the "Chelsea the only one to won twice the CL, UCWC and UEL" unrelevant claim), so they are WP:BIASED due exist a particular interest in make that edits due that user deleting without reason facts. Please, someone check in favour of the aforementioned article, thank you.--Dantetheperuvian (talk) 00:49, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Should we leave empty parameter?

There is some confused edits about this, see [1]. Thanks,Hhkohh (talk) 12:50, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@Qby, J man708, Fauzannaufan, SuperJew, Bmf 051, and Matilda Maniac: Hhkohh (talk) 12:54, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Keep them, we'd have to re-add the parameters anyway when the games will be played. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 12:56, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

The games are cancelled so will never be needed anyway. 182.0.239.249 (talk) 13:04, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Empty but valid parameters should be kept, to encourage the addition of relevant information. However, if the parameters are not applicable and will never be populated then they should be deleted. GiantSnowman 14:10, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@S.A. Julio and PeeJay: So should we remove these empty parameters in FIFA World Cup? Hhkohh (talk) 14:58, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

also @Ben5218 and Centaur271188: Hhkohh (talk) 14:59, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman and Nehme1499: also this ip add twitter report for report. Is it okay? I think we should not Hhkohh (talk) 15:15, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

The AFC already have their own reports, I don't see the need to add a Twitter post. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 15:17, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

See WP:TWITTER. GiantSnowman 15:18, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I like keeping the parameters, but that's also a little OCD on my part ;) If it's a game which is cancelled or has been played and the specific parameters won't be filled (like goals1 or goals2 in a 0–0 draw), then I think it's fine to delete them, but I wouldn't specifically edit either to remove or restore them. About Twitter, it can be used if it's a verifiable source and I'd use it if it's the only source for the information - if there's a more reliable source, such as the AFC website in this case, I wouldn't include the Twitter source. --SuperJew (talk) 20:32, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@Hhkohh: Thanks for pinging :) I have sometimes removed blank parameters in infoboxes, but not football boxes. As of now, I think keeping them (only the applicable ones, of course) is better, for consistency's sake and to encourage editing, though it makes the code a bit more complicated and somewhat awkward. Let editors know that such parameters exist, many of them might not visit Template:Infobox or Template:Football box to discover themselves :v Centaur271188 (talk) 08:21, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Brazilian names

I've noticed a lot of page moves of footballer articles, mostly Brazilian, from the full name to the given name disambiguated by year of birth, e.g. Eurico Alessandro Degaspari to Eurico (footballer, born 1984), citing the reason that these people are most commonly known just by their first name. I'm not at all familiar with Brazilian/Portuguese names, and I can't help wondering that, presented with a list of Euricos, is the general reader really more likely able to identify this person as Eurico (footballer, born 1984) than Eurico Alessandro Degaspari? If this is indeed the case and the family names are really more obscure than the year of birth, then all's well. But if not, these page moves probably should be re-examined. I ask because year of birth is usually quite an obscure piece of information, while for most parts of the world one would expect a person's full name to be mentioned at least here and there (e.g. upon introduction), even if it's not commonly used. --Paul_012 (talk) 09:58, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think many people would know what a Brazilian footballer's full name is (especially where it bears no resemblance whatsoever to their playing name, eg Zico), but presented with a list of, say, Euricos, they'd be able to make an educated guess as to which is the one they are looking for based on their ages..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:01, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Full name should be preferred for Natural disambiguation(WP:TITLEDAB), but only if the name is semi-commonly used in English language sources. Spike 'em (talk) 10:05, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I guess part of the problem is that a lot of these players are on the lower end notability spectrum, and are barely covered in English-language sources at all, so nothing reaches this semi-commonly threshold. ChrisTheDude's point about making an educated guess is probably the nearest thing to practicality then. --Paul_012 (talk) 10:22, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the disambig pages, I don't see the problem of including in the listing all the basic information which would help people differentiate by: I'd suggest full name, year of birth, nationality, position, and club(s). Personally I wouldn't know the full name of most Brazilian players (Ronaldo de Assis Moreira is more a trivia answer than common knowledge), but also given the birth year of a Wanderson doesn't really help unless I already know the player quite well. --SuperJew (talk) 11:37, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Didn't know there were quite so many Wandersons! Neither the full name or the year of birth is an ideal disambig for casual readers trying to find out more from a player whose name they heard mentioned in a TV match, for example. But there's not really any other way. Year is probably slightly easier for editors to avoid having to get the spelling exactly right, eg Conceição. Crowsus (talk) 17:14, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

• Speaking as a Brazilian, yes, the vast majority of the people who are involved with football here in the country know the footballers by their WP:COMMONNAME, not by their full name. Note that I've said common name, not first name, because it may vary (i.e. Róger Guedes - a name-surname compound, Jô - a nickname, Maicon - first name only or Rwan Seco - a name-nickname compound). BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 19:39, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Citations wanted - potential entries for List of footballers killed during World War II

Reposted and updated version of original now archived.

As main contributor to this article, I would like to flag up for attention of others on the project a number of candidates for the list that are already wiki-articled and known or believed to have been killed in or died as a result of circumstances brought on by the war (eg execution, in enemy captivity, effects of wounds etc) but which so far lack a reliable citation regarding their death which is preconditional to inclusion in the list. A few have no death circumstances described in the text of their article but I note have been put on category lists that suggest someone knew/believed they died in wartime circumstances. I also include those whose death circumstances are disputed - see their talk pages for further detail - and are in need of a conclusive ruling in or out.

• Josef Adelbrecht (Austria) - categorised as Austrian military personnel killed in the war. His German wikipedia article states he was killed on the Russian front NW of Moscow.
• Dragutin Babic (Yugoslavia) - there is a source in Croat language but it is unclear to me it indicates manner of death
• Josef Bergmaier (Germany)
• Frans Christiaens (Belgium) - no details in his article but stated in article on his club Lierse S.K. to have been killed in air raid but allegation unsourced. The air raid is not mentioned in the French wikipedia article on the club.
• Jozsef Eisenhoffer (Hungary) - also disputed death circumstances
• Bronislaw Fichtel (Poland) - disputed death date (see talk page)
• Hermann Flick (Germany)
• Josef Fruhwirth (Austria) - categorised as Austrian military personnel killed in WWII. His article in Germany wikipedia has citation to an Austrian newspaper report of his death which I find unreadable.
• Adolfs Greble (Latvia) - Death circumstances presently not in English wikipedia but his Russian wikipedia article (with citations I have not the expertise to copy) states he was arrested in 1940 and for political reasons deported into Russia where he died in 1943. -UPDATE: I have accessed a Latvian language biographical source which I have appended to his English wikipedia article.Cloptonson (talk) 18:25, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I have added him to List.Cloptonson (talk) 21:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

• Nikolai Gromov (Russia) - Russian language profile says he 'died at the front' in 1943 without further detail. More informative sources if found preferred.
• Franz Krumm (Germany)
• Willi Lindner (Germany) - source in German language, not fully clear about death details
• Johann Luef (Austria) - his German wikipedia article indicates he died of wounds in hospital in East Prussia.
• Josef Madlmayer (Austria)
• Vladimir Markov (footballer) (Russia) - Stated in Olympedia to have died in Leningrad in 1942, which coincided with the long running siege of the city. Can evidence be found for treating him as a victim of the siege?
• Alexander Martinek (Austria)
• Otto Martwig (Germany)
• Philip Meldon (Ireland) - disputed death details, not known to CWGC.
• August Mobs (Germany) - said to have been killed in air raid.
• Slavko Pavletic (Croatia) - no death circumstance details given in text but has been categorised as a Croatian civilian killed in the war.
• Jean Petit (footballer, born 1914) (Belgium) - His French wikipedia article indicates without citation or death location given that he was a doctor = probably civilian rather than military - who was killed in a bombardment preceding the Alied invasion of Normandy.
• Alfreds Plade (Latvia) - was added to the list but I have taken it out and copied it on list talk page as the citations used did not indicate how he died or any service. There are two citations in his article on Latvian wikipedia (which states he was repatriated to Germany as a Baltic German, served implicitly in their forces and fell on the Eastern Front) but I find both unreadable.- UPDATE: - I have found a Latvian language biographical page I have been able to add to his article as citation.Cloptonson (talk) 06:41, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I have restored him to the List.Cloptonson (talk) 21:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

• Kurts Plade (Latvia) - Repatriated to Germany as a Baltic German, his Latvian wikipedia article states he was 'killed' (no further detail) in February 1945 in Poznan, Poland. I note his death coincided with the Soviet siege of Poznan.
• Bernardo Poli (Italy) - Italian wikipedia indicates he died in 'an unspecified war accident' serving as an airman. Only citation in English wikipedia does not indicate manner of his death.
• Eriks Raisters (Latvia) - UPDATE: - I have found Latvian language biographical page to use as citation in his wiki article, providing better information on his death circumstances.Cloptonson (talk) 21:24, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I have added him to the List.Cloptonson (talk) 21:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

• Fyodor Rimsha (Russia)
• Janis Rozitis (Latvia) -UPDATE: I have discovered a Latvian language biographical web page I have been able to use as citation in his wiki article. It sheds clearer light on his death circumstances.Cloptonson (talk) 06:28, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I have added him to the List.Cloptonson (talk) 21:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

• Holger Salin (Finland)
• Aristotel Samsuri (Albania) - Reportedly executed in German concentration camp in Greece as a Communist partisan between 1942/1944, but was claimed by the postwar Communist regime of Albania to have escaped and survived before proclaiming him a martyr in 1981.
• Gennaro Santillo (Italy) - Categorised as Italian military personnel killed in the war but no indications of military service on Italian wikipedia. Would like to be more certain of his status (mil or civ) before adding him.
• Otto Siffling (Germany) - It is listed under the list on German Wikipedia, but says he died of pleurisy. I've added it here in case he is found to have served during the war.
• Harry Spencer (footballer) (New Zealand, previously played in England) - There are similarities with a New Zealand soldier known to the CWGC (see talk page of article). Can someone find confirmation they are the same man?
• Aleksandrs Stankus (Latvia) - I have found Latvian language biographical citation and added him to the List.Cloptonson (talk) 21:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
• Erwin Stührk (Germany) - disputable death date, death place given in German war grave site not easy to ascertain as it only gives German form of name rather than its vernacular.
• Ludwik Szabakiewicz (Poland) - disputable death details, particularly date
• Willi Völker (Germany) - uncertainty about death location.
• Karl Wahlmuller (Austria)
• Heinz Warnken (Germany) - German wikipedia gives him as gefallen (fallen) in 1943 but no detail of precise death date or death place.
• Willi Wigold (Germany) - date of death disputed

There may be additions coming onto the list so I encourage watch this space! Others are welcome to add. Please let us know if sources are found and added into their articles.Cloptonson (talk) 09:35, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

@Cloptonson: I have expanded the article of Fritz Dünmann, who was an Austrian footballer who died at Auschwitz in 1942 per the source on Rapid Wien's website. Can you add this to the list? Microwave Anarchist (talk) 22:28, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I have added him to the List.Cloptonson (talk) 06:15, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

WP:GAR

Billy Bremner has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. No Great Shaker (talk) 15:05, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

File:UEFA Youth League Juventus-Zenit, 2021-11-02 04.jpg

Would anyone make a better crop of this photo? I'd like a photo of Ervin Omić to put onto this page. I've tried to do so but I've only made disasters. Dr Salvus 20:41, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Done. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 21:04, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Mirco Lipari

Today, I've created his page but I really don't know how his infobox should be. In 2018, Lipari moved to Juve youth and was then loaned twice in 2019 and 2020 at Empoli youth. In 2021, he was loaned to Juve Stabia with whom he made his pro debut and joined Juve U23 in 2022. Dr Salvus 11:11, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

"Lipari is an offensive jolly who can play as left forward." Is there a reason for this description? REDMAN 2019 (talk) 12:17, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

It seems to be an Italian term - based on the source cited and Google Translate (I don't know Italian), seems the meaning is a "wild card". SuperJew (talk) 14:17, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a way of saying that he's a versatile forward. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 14:41, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I hardly ever use Google Traslate, I'd thought this way to say so existed Dr Salvus 14:50, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

BTW I think the infobox looks fine currently. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 12:18, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I've fixed the article a bit. For future articles, make sure to format the infobox and categories correctly (see the difference). Nehme₁₄₉₉ 12:52, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for my being stupid... Dr Salvus 12:54, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Input requested at United States soccer league system

I would appreciate some additional eyes and input on this page. There are a variety of different IP addresses making the same edit, and so far I have not had any success getting them to engage on the talk page. There is a dispute about which leagues to represent and how they should be represented, so additional perspectives would be welcome. Thanks! Jay eyem (talk) 02:34, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Operating without WP:NFOOTBALL

I really don't understand why all the SNGs are being removed, how do we operate with out NFOOTBALL?? Govvy (talk) 09:07, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Was this decided? Robby.is.on (talk) 09:09, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Go and have a look at WP:NSPORT, BilledMammal is systematically destroying it if you ask me! Govvy (talk) 09:11, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

You mean Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)? I see a ginormous discussion with various proposals but I'm having trouble identifying any outcomes among the giant wall of text. Robby.is.on (talk) 09:20, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

There is this discussion, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Sports notability, however I couldn't take part, because I get lost in it, it was too much. Govvy (talk) 09:26, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

From the TLDR section: "However, there are a couple proposals that received mass participation and have a clear consensus from 2/3 of the participants. In particular, the Main Proposal to abolish NSPORTS received mass participation from nearly 100 editors and was overwhelmingly rejected." That does not square with your claim that "SNGs are being removed". Robby.is.on (talk) 09:42, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I presume Govvy is referring to this series of edits..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:11, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, Proposal 3, which is mentioned here as having consensus, is to remove all appearance-based SNGs (which includes NFOOTY). Spike 'em (talk) 10:22, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

So are we going to see a mass of AfDs? --SuperJew (talk) 10:45, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

It's more likely Proposal 5 that will create a slew of AfDs (plus Proposal 3 mentioned a grandfathering clause). I actually don't have any objection to Proposal 5 because if the only source you can find about a player is an entry on a database, they don't pass GNG anyway. Black Kite (talk) 10:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

@ChrisTheDude: Yep, I saw that edit, now I feel somewhat concerned that there will be an attack on the football wiki project! Invasion from the North, South and East??? Govvy (talk) 11:30, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

NFootball is gone? Sure there are a lot of stubs squeaking by, but NFootball entirely just doesn't make sense. --dashiellx (talk) 12:10, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I know noone cares (well, actually most are probably happy), but I am not going to contibute to the project anymore. Not everyone is interested only in Ronaldo, England and USA. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 14:43, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't know you but I'm telling you not to give up.--EchetusXe 15:35, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

• A great step forward for Wikipedia if you want to increase WP:BIAS. They may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. On the other hand, I'm seeing little that indicates that a solitary article on the BBC website about the signing of a player, isn't significant. Nfitz (talk) 15:42, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
  • I suspect this is actually likely to have a worse impact on female players than male players, particularly internationals, as coverage of women's international football seems to be almost non-existent in many countries. On the other hand, it opens the door to thousands of articles on National League footballers, whose articles will be justified on GNG grounds but were often rejected because they failed NFOOTBALL. Unfortunately this whole exercise has been carried out because a small group of editors are very unhappy that there are far more people who want to write about sportspeople than there are who are interested in others, and rather than encouraging more articles on politicians etc, they've decided to try and reduce the amount of sportspeople biographies. Number 57 17:32, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

A decision appears to have been made to remove any guideline that a sportsperson is presumed notable if they've made an appearance in a notable professional competition, and we should rely on the general notability guideline alone. As a result, one editor seems to be deleting paragraphs from the sports notability guidelines at semi-random, with the result that, in rugby union, only an appearance in the women's World Cup makes you notable. No idea what they're playing at. --Nicknack009 (talk) 15:44, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

• Not footy related I know, but WP:NCRIC has been similarly gutted leaving only a line about umpires and a paragraph about notability or qualifying critieria which seemingly no longer apply to anything. Like others here, I find the discussion quite hard to follow but am also not convinced there is a definite consensus. The disquiet here must count for something, and the fact that NSPORTS has been edited to the point where it is not of very much use now. Eagleash (talk) 12:38, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Regardless of the RfC result, WP:BRD follows for policy items. A discussion should be had as to how to change our MOS as per the outcome of the RfC. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:51, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

TBH, I think the part of the RfC close that led to the removal of NFOOTY and other team sport guidelines is highly dubious, and a review should be requested. I skimmed over it, and it looked like a quite clear no consensus outcome to me. Number 57 17:32, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Not to mention that the main two editors re-writing and trimming WP:NSPORT were both big supporters of ditching most of it at the RfC. Still, we've got plenty of articles about moths that someone made a single note of in 1831 to pass WP:GNG, so everyone is a winner, right? Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 17:51, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, a 22-27 vote seems too close to call a consensus to overturn long-standing policies, particularly after the rambling thread of proposals and counter-proposals. Removing the appearance-based SNGs should really have been a separate RfC. Spike 'em (talk) 18:11, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I would have thought (hoped) that at least three admins had worked together on the closure of each proposal too. I've seen this happen before on complex cases/RfCs at WP:AN. Hey ho. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:16, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree. I believe a close by a committee (with an eye toward the bigger picture rather than a laser focus on discussion on the specific proposal(s)) would be better received. Enos733 (talk) 16:34, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

• This seems very bizarre to me... Relying only in WP:GNG would mean that a player who actually is a backup option at FC Barcelona B has more chances on having a page than a backup option for CD Lugo or UD Ibiza, both in a professional division, for an example. BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 18:13, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Another example: Jean Chera, a player who scraps by NFOOTY but does get a lot of WP:GNG (mainly due to the expectations created on his youth, which he never lived by anwyay) is more probable on being accepted than Robson Reis, an actual first-team player for Santos FC, a top tier Brazilian team. BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 18:16, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

The site has gone down the toilet over the last couple of years, first the Olympic vote and now this. This slippery slope was started when we began accepting deletions instead of fighting against them. The football project could be much bigger than it is now, I expect a big contraction and mass AFDs to follow. I'm considering retiring, I see the writing on the wall.--Ortizesp (talk) 00:13, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

On the bright side, User:Ortizesp, with the FPL requirement now gone, look at all the League of Ireland players that I've argued against deletion over the years, despite having one significant reference, that I can now go to WP:REFUND with! Not to mention some up-and-coming players and Isthmian Second Division players in town with a strong local paper! Nfitz (talk) 06:22, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Looks like the AfD wave has started with tennis players: [2], [3], [4], as well as beginning such requests for football players. --SuperJew (talk) 08:26, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Jesus wept. Talk about not wanting to WP:DROPTHESTICK. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 11:57, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

And here we've started with football articles. --SuperJew (talk) 09:35, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

That AfD is a perfect example of how this is only going to increase the systemic bias towards certain countries. We are going to end up in a situation where articles on kids who have played for a grand total of three minutes in the Premier League in England pass muster but players who have played in the literal World Cup do not because they are unfortunate enough to come from Africa, Oceania, etc..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:04, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I can only agree with Chris. There is such a disparity. The criterium shouldn't be deleted at all but WP:GNG should be given more importance Dr Salvus 10:09, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. The online coverage of newspapers in e.g. Africa/Oceania (apart from Aus/NZ) is low, and people are already using this as a basis for deletion (in violation of WP:Offline sources). How the hell are we expected to muster up sources from offline newspapers in countries we don't live in? This will inevitably lead to even more of an Anglocentric bias (since that's where we can easily find online coverage, especially for historic players). Joseph2302 (talk) 10:42, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

If a player has played more than X games, we could decide that he's notable, couldn't we? Dr Salvus 11:20, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

No. The whole point of that RfC was to remove the notion of notability based on a player having played a certain number of games -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 11:21, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Nope, you now need to win tournaments and medals, something that is very difficult in team sports (which have not many medals). It's been thought out in a way to try and tighten some sports e.g. athletics by changing competed to top 8 or top 10, but with no thinking on the ramifications for team sports, where such a notion doesn't exist. Joseph2302 (talk) 12:02, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Does anyone know where it's being discussed? Can WP:IAR be applied here? Dr Salvus 15:22, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

As I said above, I would suggest someone formally requests a review of the close of the part that led to the removal of NFOOTY and all the other team sport guidelines, as it does not look there was consensus for it. Number 57 19:21, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

What are our next steps here? We could fight the result of this (proposal 3 that is - #5 seems more reasonable and much less contentious) as it didn't seem particularly well-communicated to us sports editors, and the consensus seems a little dubious. For team sports, participation in a top-level competition is such an obvious indicator of notability, but we can't use it because a handful of hyper active anti-sports editors are concerned about the hypothetical one appearance wonder article, which seems a rather pathetic pretense to destroy the whole WP:NSPORTS framework. (as an aside, I don't understand why non-sports editors take so much interest in enforcing notability standards that are nonsensical, when this would clearly be best left to WP:SPORTS).

If we are to proceed without a participation-based notability criteria, does anyone have a clue how we are meant to come up with an alternative here? I honestly don't see how any non "participation" criteria can exist for team sports: one based on "holding a record/championship/award" is clearly not a useful measure for team sports and a system based on club honours would be unfortunate for spurs players. It's clear that an alternative is needed though - all leaving notability to GNG would do is take WP:BIAS through the roof. Microwave Anarchist (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the only sensible way forward is for each sport's WikiProject to ignore WP:NSPORT and maintain its own guidelines, based on the specific nature of the sport. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:34, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

From what I can see, BilledMammal's edits - and they are heavily INVOLVED anyway - have been reverted? NFOOTBALL still exists. Also, a side note - if you didn't participate and try and make the case for NFOOTBALL, then don't f***ing moan about it. GiantSnowman 19:52, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I've fully reverted. Also just notices that the edited version of NFOOTBALL says managers are presumed automatically notable but players are not. Absolute nonsense. If anything it should be the other way around! GiantSnowman 19:59, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

This project was only notified of the proposals on 6 February, by which stage the discussions had been going on for eighteen days and were far too long and unwieldy to get a clear idea of what was being proposed, much less join in the discussion. The discussion should be relisted, with all relevant Wikiprojects invited to participate from the start. --Nicknack009 (talk) 20:01, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

No, the project was notified on 19 January, when the discussions began - see this and this. GiantSnowman 20:05, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman: I speak only for myself here, but I'm pretty sure this thread here is the first I heard of this discussion (I guess I've been less active in the last couple months) and the discussion is such a mess I'm not sure I could have participated. Microwave Anarchist (talk) 20:23, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Seconded, I was aware of Billed Mammal's attempts to AfD 'historic' international players and that they were disappointed with the results but not aware of anything further until this thread; thus presented with a 'fait accompli'. Eagleash (talk) 00:19, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

The whole RfC was flawed from the beginning, when notifications to NSPORTS projects were labelled as canvassing in an attempt to bring in partisan editors. The whole thing grew out of control into a monster walls of text, including constant replies and questioning on every comment by a couple of users who were working to push it through (BilledMammal has 128 comments and RandomCanadian 66). The whole thing was positioned to destroy NSPORTS, and not to improve it. --SuperJew (talk) 07:10, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Such a conclusion is at best motivated reasoning (and incorrect - see [5]); and at worst it is a borderline personal attack against BilledMammal and me. I'd suggest you change your tune. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:33, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

With NFootball back, perhaps we should discuss ways to improve it so we don't have to go through this again? --dashiellx (talk) 20:07, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

it is back - at least in its current form - only temporarily. There will be changes, but we don't know what they will be yet until the RFC closer actually implements the close. My view on how we come back from that? Overhaul WP:FPL, removing a number of leagues where players do not meet GNG. Whatever happens, NFOOTBALL will need to be tied much more closely to GNG from now on. GiantSnowman 20:18, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman, there's still such as disparity. A league composed by lots of teams could have teams with high notability (for example teams with a huge historical importance or for their being a reserve team) and ones with low notability. Dr Salvus 23:27, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I was just thinking, if NFOOTBALL is removed from NSPORT, we can simply slap NFOOTBALL in a project page here and evolve it how we see fit. Govvy (talk) 23:37, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

• As I see it, the only realistic course of action here is to accept the outcome of the RfC, and maybe try to come up with something new, better, to solve the issues that were identified (the amount of digital ink spilled here certainly shows there is some willingness to do something about this). Of course, it's possible to pretend like nothing happened and "slap NFOOTBALL in a project page", but that would be counter-productive (more an example of "burying one's head in the sand like an ostrich") and will rightfully be disregarded as a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:40, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

FYI - Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)#Protected edit request on 9 March 2022 (3). Jevansen (talk) 01:41, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

• I guess we need to cut down the FPL list to ones where unequivocally everyone passes GNG. We could also mintain a separate list that says "players who compete in this league are often notable but there are exceptions", though that bit is less of a priority than getting some guidelines re-accepted, which is a way better solution than having it all nuked. Joseph2302 (talk) 09:05, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

• There's also been discussed elsewhere (cannot remember where off hand) changing appeared to appeared in multiple seasons, to remove the people who play a couple of times ever (and are the kind of articles this WP has deleted hundreds of in the last year). Joseph2302 (talk) 09:08, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I do share the concerns of a lot of people here and hope we don't see AfD flooded indiscriminately with nominations without any indication of actual WP:BEFORE. Thankfully, it doesn't look like it has happened. I do believe that WP:FPL needs some sort of review as some of the leagues on there don't seem to be reliable predictors of GNG. I'm a bit concerned that this guideline alteration may lead to a lot of professional women's footballers being deleted just for being stubs. I've created a few hundred recently but it can be quite difficult when a lot of the in-depth coverage is hidden behind a paywall. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 10:17, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

The criteria for WP:FPL needs to be changed from 'fully professional' to 'players and managers in this league regularly receive significant coverage', in-line with GNG. I have been suggesting this for years! Some leagues can possibly be added (maybe League of Ireland in last few years?), some will remain unchanged (top European leagues), others will have to come off (Bulgaria? Myanmar? Vietnam? etc.) GiantSnowman 10:35, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with GS above; I personally have never really understood why our criteria to assume GNG was based on pro leagues, when we have entries such as the Greek 2nd division, Japanese 3rd, Polish 2nd, Ukrainian 3rd which have nothing to do with presuming automatic notability of individual players. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 11:37, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I also agree above with what GS said, the top National League also receives a lot of coverage, lots of players and the league it's self is very well covered by the media in this country. Govvy (talk) 11:48, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Nehme1499: (ec) I think it dates back to the very early days of WIP, when a small number of editors, who possibly weren't brilliantly clued up on the intricacies of football across the world, came up with the rather simplistic "the pro leagues" as a guideline for all sports...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 11:52, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

What do we do when there are some teams who have lot of coverage but play in a non-notable league, or vice versa? Dr Salvus 13:26, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Players might individually meet GNG, but there should be no automatic presumption of notability for playing in a league/competition unless 90%+ of teams/players get that level of coverage. GiantSnowman 14:25, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

A review of the closure that removed NFOOTBALL has been opened at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#NSPORTS closure review. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:31, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

• Wikipedia has way too many articles on football players. We need to severly reduce that number, and we need to reduce it now.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:37, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
• It is time for Wikipedia to get rid of substandard articles, and articles on sports people are the main cause of substandard articles. People should not be considered notable just because they kicked a ball in a few games. No where else do we consider everyone who just gets paid to be notable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:39, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Well that's your opinion. I think Wikipedia doesn't have enough articles on football players. Also there's no space or size limit as it is an online encyclopedia. --SuperJew (talk) 20:41, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

The idea that someone can be considered notable for sitting on the bench in 1 game is ludicrous. In the overly inclusive field of film we require significant roles in multiple productions. We really need to scap this ludicrous one game rule.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:46, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I think you got it wrong. The player is considered notable for actually making an appearance, not for sitting on the bench. Chus Ruiz, for an example, was on the bench for 36 league matches for Mallorca and Alcorcón before actually making an appearance recently. Only after that, he had an article about him created. BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 21:03, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Plus, to be honest, a lot of articles were (and are) deleted for the cases where some player appeared once or twice in a WP:WPL but then went on to have a career where WP:GNG was not covered. That's why I still don't see why the change in the guidelines might be a way forward rather than backwards. BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 21:18, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Why @Johnpacklambert:? Because you say so? Football is by far the most popular sport in the world, and the most popular sport in most countries. Every country in the world has a league. Why is it unreasonable to have a large amount of pages?--Ortizesp (talk) 22:46, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Ortizesp, I guess he was talking about the pro leagues with a low notability. Dr Salvus 22:53, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think so, I don't think he cares about sports in general. He's trying to use arguments used against other sorts of articles that he cares about (like film) and applying them here more "equitably". I'm not opposed looking at changing from WP:FPL, but not from terrorists who just want to delete all sporting articles for no discernible reason.--Ortizesp (talk) 23:00, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, at this point I agree with everyone, should be topic banned as Govvy has said above Dr Salvus 23:08, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

• I think no less than three games should be enough to make someone notable. We also need to majorly cut back on the number of legagues that make someone notable after playing in that many games. Also the old worlding is not clear that someone actually has to play. Also, I think we need to come up with something that better approaches a notable contribution than just being on the filed for a few minutes.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:17, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

• three is no better than one. GiantSnowman 21:24, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

(e/c) People should not be considered notable just because they kicked a ball in a few games. Billions of people disagree ([6], [7]). Whether you like it or not, football has insane viewership and media attention worldwide, even if it boils down to just "kicking a ball". Nehme₁₄₉₉ 21:20, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with John. We're an encyclopedia, not a sports provider. The criterium shouldn't be deleted but we do should re-write WP:NSPORTS. en.wiki is one of the fewest Wikies which allows the creation of kids who have played one minute in a league forgotten by everyone but professional. I am not talking about the Serie A, Premier League, Liga or Bundesliga but I am talking about the 3rd Ukranian league or the 2nd Greek league Dr Salvus 21:28, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

yes, agreed - and I will be putting forward proposals tomorrow once I've had a think. GiantSnowman 21:30, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I also agree with that. Some leagues are not guaranteed of notability, but as I've said before, NFOOTY was a good thing to avoid the creation of a 15-year-old kid who impressed in a bunch of matches for Barcelona or Real Madrid and is receiving tons of media coverage, while some dude who plays 20 matches in Segunda División for UD Ibiza gets deleted. BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 21:32, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

No, ultimately, it is media coverage that demonstrates notability. What we need to do is ensure that our presumed notability guidelines are tight so that players who are making 20 appearances are also getting media coverage. GiantSnowman 21:34, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

GiantSnowman is right in regards to that it is media coverage that demonstrates notability. A 15-year old who has received significant coverage in global and/or national sources over a significant period of time (few years? At least not over a couple of weeks) is very likely notable, regardless of how the rest of his career pans out. For instance Isak Hansen-Aarøen, who has yet to play a fully pro game but has had significant coverage in the Norwegian national media since 2014. On the flip side, should a modern day player who debuts in a fully professional league, but does not have any significant coverage on him despite all the online coverage we have today, be considered notable? In my honest opinion, he shouldn't because while his league and team might be notable, nobody has yet to take significant note of him. With the impending death of print media and the wealth of online coverage today for football, in both english and non-english speaking media, should we have any problem finding significant coverage for notable players of the last 5-10 years?

I do however agree with those here that worry about the historical players who are likely to be notable but sources might not be easily found online and I think that NFOOTY could be very important in "protecting" those articles. Regarding the thresholds, there are others here that are much more qualified than me to figure out tight guidelines for professional players, but the one I can comment on is regarding national teams players. When it comes to football, I mostly write and edit articles for players from Iceland, a non-english speaking country where football is the number one sport and gets alot of coverage. Its men's and women's national teams have participated in major competitions (World Cup and European championships). All major media publications have a large online presence and all major printed media from the late 1800's to today is available online. Its top-tier leagues are not fully professional (men's top tier is close though) but get alot of coverage (live games, post game shows, alot of articles etc.). Despite that, playing a few games for the national team doesn't tend to translate into the player in question having significant coverage. Usually these are players who have played well lately and get a chance to play in a low importance friendly where the manager is testing new players and not using the regulars. Now, while it is an interesting test case due to the popularity of the sport in the country and the availability of print and online sources, I'm not suggesting we base a national team threshold solely on that. I would however be interested to know if we have a similar situation somewhere else which we could research, that is a country where football is fairly popular and print and online sources are readily available. Alvaldi (talk) 10:00, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Quote: Wikipedia has way too many articles on football players. We need to severly reduce that number, and we need to reduce it now. This from Johnpacklambert really does disturb me. There are millions of football players who are notable on this planet. You want to purge it? If you act like that you don't belong on wikipedia. You should be perm topic banned from anything related to this subject with that attitude. Govvy (talk) 21:35, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

• there is no reason or justification to have the number of articles sourced only to a sport stat website that we have.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:37, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I think what people are forgetting is that we are an enclopedia. We are supposed to have lots of information, topics, and articles! The issue is poorly written, poorly sourced micro stubs about players who played for 2 minutes 15 years ago - and the problem is not players who played at historical times and/or in countries where online media coverage does not (currently) exist. I only wish those who are trying to delete so many articles spent as much time trying to improve them... GiantSnowman 21:39, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

My issue has always been with microstubs for people who want to bump up their created page count and do the absolute bare minimum. When I create a player article, I try to make sure there's a decent amount of information (at least 1-2 decent sized paragraphs), multiple sources, etc. Creating an article with "AA BB is a professional player for Team FC" is not an article, IMO. I feel like there should be a size and reference minimum for new pages. I feel like that could go a long way to reducing the creation of microstubs sourced only to a database with no real encyclopediatic value. For example, here's an example of a short article I recently made for a player who made his FPL debut in a cup match a couple of weeks ago. Is GNG fully met on this one, could be debatable and with only one appearance so far (league season doesn't begin for another few weeks, but the cup match happened already), but at least 11 sentences in the body with some actual information on the player with 10 reference links (some passing mentions, others with more depth). I feel like that should be a minimum - if you're going to "create an article" actually "create an article". This is my first comment on this topic, like others have said there's just been so much text when I discovered it that it just became a little overwhelming to delve into and figure out what was going on with all the proposals.RedPatch (talk) 22:25, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I tend to agree with this, but I don't think the solution is to blindly delete 10s of thousands of pages - if we are honest with ourselves, if we follow the RFC exactly thousands of pages are going to be requested to be deleted. We are dealing with unreasonable folk who are inherently against sports articles in general. The other fact is that with more research and time, tens of thousands of these pages could be improved, we just don't have the time or the will to do so. What I always liked about Wikipedia was the width and breadth of articles, and I found it too restrictive, not too lenient. Maybe there's a process to split off the sports section to a new Wikipedia affiliated site.--Ortizesp (talk) 22:46, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Yep, the solution isn't to delete all the articles having a few sources (as there are so many lazy editors – like me – who just put two/three sentences in the article). But when's obvious they do fail WP:GNG, the page should not exist here at all even though they meet NFOOTY Dr Salvus 22:59, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I also agree, blindly deleting tons of articles isn't the solution. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place, where I think we can all agree that the present approach definitely needs reworking, but the proposed deletion solution also isn't great. I wasn't saying 3 sentences is lazy, at least it's something and will have an actual fact in it. I refer to the articles that are 1 sentence long with no body section and say nothing more that XYZ is a footballer. I don't have a specific number as to what a minimum sentence count should be, but it is definitely more than 1. RedPatch (talk) 23:00, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think following GNG to a tee is a solution either, there's players that are obviously notable, but we won't find sources because they are historic, or from underrepresented nations. If a player appears in the WC or has 50 + caps, they are inherently notable whether we can find a Zimbabwean newspaper or 1930s Italian newspaper covering them or not, but those players would still be deleted if we follow GNG to a tee until we find a source. Ortizesp (talk) 23:07, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Ortizesp, in order to avoid these problems I'd use a modified versione of NFOOTY here.

For me, it could be

If a player has played for the national team and in some leagues, he becomes notable

If a player has only played in a pro League whom we've decided it's not notable but has played more than X games in the league he becomes notable Dr Salvus 23:28, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I'd be open to a hybrid solution like this, but again, I don't think that's what the anti-sports terrorist committee have in mind. Ortizesp (talk) 23:30, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

How else do you write an article about somebody, if you don't have sources from which to write it from? WP:V is fundamental to everything on Wikipedia, and we don't write stuff just because we "think" that it is "obviously notable". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a participation award, and what might be "obviously notable" to some is unsustainable drudgery to others. This might have worked 15 years ago, when Wikipedia was just beginning and people needed to have indications what to write about, but obviously that is not sustainable nor desired anymore (is it really productive when you have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 "articles" which all read the same as each other with the name/date of birth changed, and which provided absolutely no other information, because sources "might exist"?). There is no other field where people get articles just because somebody can document that they existed and did their job. When, however, the issues with this get pointed out, people accuse others of being anti-sport fanatics and bury their head into the sand instead of trying to implement a fix (or often, positively inhibit any such attempts, as can be seen from the whole recent mess). And then people wonder why stuff is as it is. I'm not defending anybody on either side (some people might have been a bit too extreme), but ignoring the problem or actively attempting to bypass resolution attempts (and calling other people "anti-sport terrorists", which is very WP:BATTLEGROUND) is not going to make it go away. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:37, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

As the community has proven in the past, it is against articles that scrape by on minimal appearances without GNG and has actively voted to delete them. But notice that all 18 of those articles that you linked were ALL created by ONE SINGLE EDITOR, pumping out a new "article" every two minutes on the same day (I checked the article history for each). That editor has since been restricted from creating new articles that are less than 500 words. I think we can all agree that the quality of those articles is not up to the standard of the project (unless they can be greatly improved). But to me it seems you're trying to lump all of us who support NFOOTBALL in some way (most of us want some level of change already to make it more stringent and close unsuitable article creation loopholes) as the same as that editor who has been banned from article creation (who reveled in the loophole of being allowed to create thousands of microstubs). Notice I said mere posts above that there should be a minimum article length. If there's a minimum article length, no-effort microstubs wouldn't get created. Seems like this is a missing the forest for the trees situation, where because one editor greatly abused the system, everyone else is apparently guilty by association. I have no issue deleting micro-stubs that have no substance, but to say that NSPORTS needs to be completely and utterly scrapped because of the abuses of one/few is an overreaction. There's a better way. What is that better way is up for debate, but there has to be one somewhere in the middle. Throwing a stick of dynamite at it is not the only way. Here's an example of that editor's microstubs that I greatly improved Mauro Cichero (footballer, born 1951), I found it looking like this originally. The original form I found it in, sure not worthy of an encyclopedia entry, but it's current form, I think it's a worthy article. That's why I'm in favour of some rules for article creation, so it has some substance before being accepted. Now I can't go and fix every microstub on wikipedia, but we could do a "starting now" thing where new articles have to meet the new, more stringent, criteria, while the old ones can get looked at on a case-by-case basis because mass-deletion without any regard is excessive. Wikipedia is simply too large to fully fix all historical articles at once. RedPatch (talk) 00:19, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

It should be obvious to you that the sporting community is open and willing to change. There's been numerous changes to WP:FOOTY and notability criteria to placate your side. WP:V of course is important, but these changes aren't encouraging WP:V, they are encouraging deletion of what could be positive articles without the opportunity to expand. And I've been fighting this anti-stub mentality for years, I think something is better than nothing. Ortizesp (talk) 00:24, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@RedPatch: But to me it seems you're trying to lump all of us who support NFOOTBALL. When these articles where nominated for deletion, editors of this Wikiproject (including the culprit, but plenty of others too) almost unanimously got out all sorts of arguments, mostly procedural in nature, to not delete it. Those same editors who also opposed any attempt to tighten or rewrite the criteria as they stand. So, I'm not accusing anyone of group-think or the like, but it simply is a fact that members of this project (among others) have not so far been very conducive to attempting to resolve this issue. "Mass-deletion without any regard is excessive", maybe, but doing nothing about the problem isn't going to make it fix itself. And comments like "Oppose, I see no problem with NSPORTS personally.--Ortizesp (talk) 19:32, 23 January 2022 (UTC)" (from the RfC) do not seem like they even want to acknowledge that there is a problem, much less how it should be solved. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:58, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not really active in AfD, RM is where I look at more, but your argument seems to lie squarely with what happened in the past. Several editors in this discussion have been in favour of updating and improving it. Today is March 11, not January 23. People's opinions can change. Maybe two months ago they would've voted like that, but today they may change their views. Just in this thread in the past day, several editors have agreed that changes need to be made, but seems like you're holding onto the scorched earth mentality because of what was said in the past must still be true today. Even just reading this thread today, I've started to change what I would've done in the past with articles. Heck, I know I created some articles (in good faith) in the past in the last few months after players made their first appearance (and I still looked for and found some other references to make a decent stub not a micro stub) that in hindsight might have been better to not create/postpone making and maybe even need to be relooked at for inclusion. In the future, I may hold off on creating similar articles if I view it as not worth an article (based on my newfound realizations). I was unaware of this whole NSPORTS discussion until this thread which was made on March 7 and I've started to realize that I'm going to give a much stronger consideration to articles I make in the future and that's an example of my opinion changing in four days because I recognize the points made by the other side have merit that the NSPORTS is flawed. But 'flawed' is not the same 'complete garbage'. Flawed means there are positive merits, but with some issues that should be improved, rather than to just completely trash it. I never made articles maliciously, it was all in betterment of the project (which is one reason that I put effort into articles that I create so they're not crappy unhelpful microstubs). I don't know what the best solution is, but it's somewhere in between the original NSPORTS and scorched earth. Some editors here have made proposals to make some changes and make some headway, but you're holding fast to the 'everything must go'. Somewhere there's a compromise that makes wikipedia betterRedPatch (talk) 01:49, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm curious though, is your issue mainly with microstubs based on a minimal effort or just that you don't want all these sports articles as a whole. For example, I mentioned earlier about an article Cale Loughrey that I made last month about a 20 year old player who just signed and made his debut. The article contains a fair amount of information and various references. Is that an article you feel is just 100% needs to go or is it mainly the articles like "the 18" you referenced earlier? GNG is subjective by nature, so I'm trying to see your view. What's an acceptable article vs what isn't. I know you don't like "the 18", neither do I, but what's the line for merit/unmerited? RedPatch (talk) 01:58, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I haven't been advocating for scorched earth, at least not recently (heck, I've even given some thought about the subject on the project of the one sport which I do kinda follow a little bit; and I've even proposed a compromise for the current situation at NSPORTS). NSPORTS isn't complete trash, but there are indeed significant flaws with both its contents and how it is applied (or misapplied) in practice which have been on the radar for a while, though any change has been difficult to achieve because of stubborn opposition to such change. Hopefully at least now some people will have realised that there needs to be something done. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:59, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Re. your question: that article seems fine to me at a quick glance (at least, there clearly has been some effort expanded into making; although the depth of the coverage is maybe marginal [there's no biographical information beyond the infobox basics, for example], but hey, not every article needs to be FA-level). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:03, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Seems like we're a bit on the same page. I've been operating based on what was in this thread, which is why I believed you had the scorched earth mindset. The Village pump thread is quite simply too long and overwhelming to me to go through, so I don't really know what you said in it, but based on this thread I guess I just assumed you wanted scorched earth. My bad. But seems like some progress is being made. I'm all for fixing NSPORTS (at least more specifically NFOOTBALL for me), just what's the best way needs a bit more time. Internet discussions can be hard. Cheers. RedPatch (talk) 02:06, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately there are uses who are going after a 'scorched earth' policy, which is just putting people's backs up... GiantSnowman 08:56, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Equally unfortunately, there also are users who are going for a "bury head in the sand" approach, and you don't have to search very far (I think the only sensible way forward is for each sport's WikiProject to ignore WP:NSPORT and if NFOOTBALL is removed from NSPORT, we can simply slap NFOOTBALL in a project page here and evolve it how we see fit are both from this very thread; and you can of course find comments of a similar nature at the AN thread: The whole thing was a joke and should be overturned and handled in a completely different way going forward, ... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:10, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. Editors from both sides need to realise that a) participating in football does make somebody notable but that b) the scope of the automatic notability is currently too wide, and many leagues will need to be removed from WP:FPL. GiantSnowman 13:13, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Should we create a subheading to discuss changes to WP:FPL? Perhaps something like maximum of the top division only for most countries (then select countries such as Spain, England, etc. will have some lower divisions) which will remove leagues such as Chinese third tier, Japanese third tier, Greek third tier, etc. Could tie that to a Club League coefficient or something. Also, someone mentioned international caps with regards to friendlies, we could perhaps tie that to participating in an 'competitive match cap' (ie. a WC qualifying match is notable, a random friendly isn't). RedPatch (talk) 13:37, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea. Maybe split it into two subheadings, one discussing the leagues, other discussing international caps? Alvaldi (talk) 13:46, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I just want to point out that it.wiki (which already had stringent requirements for presumed automatic notability of footballers), have recently amended their notability requirements even further (see page). I think it's a good example to follow if we wanted to do something similar (of course, we'd have to thoroughly discuss the exact numbers and percentages). Key points I can see are:

1. Friendlies for national teams are not counted for notability purposes: this would cut down on quite a few 1-cap subbed-in players in unremarkable friendlies
2. Percentage brackets for appearances, dividing leagues into tiers (for example, playing 10% of the games available in a single season in a top-tier league, such as England, or playing 25 games in a 2nd-tier league, for e.g. the US, or 90 games in a 3rd-tier league, such as Northern Ireland)
3. A much smaller pool of leagues from which playing confers notability. Notable exclusions are all leagues below the 2nd level (so the League One, Serie C, 3.Liga, etc.), and only a few dozen 2nd-level leagues (Championship, Serie B, ...) are included (as opposed to what we have now). Nehme₁₄₉₉ 15:05, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I honestly do not like the it.wiki criteria as they're too strict. There could be players who do meet GNG but haven't got a page due to the bad criteria. I'd suggest an hybrid beetween the fr.wiki criteria and the actual en.wiki criteria. Dr Salvus 15:19, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I also don't like it.wiki's strict approach. We can just re-adapt it our own way with different numbers. If a player fails NFOOTY but passes GNG, he'd still get an article (contrary to it.wiki where we had to wait for Sandro Tonali to make 50 Serie B appearances, despite having clearly been notable well before passing the threshold). Nehme₁₄₉₉ 15:35, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

In addition, the criteria are also difficult to understand Dr Salvus 15:44, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Percentage brackets seem way too complex. We need a list of leagues where almost everyone (99%+) will meet GNG, and possibly a list where a reasonable number (80%+ for example) would likely be notable. The international suggestions seems reasonable though, to get rid of any 1 international players. Joseph2302 (talk) 15:46, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, a player can also do meet NFOOTY but we should always make sure they meet GNG Dr Salvus 15:55, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@Dr Salvus How is the fr.wiki criteria constructed? Alvaldi (talk) 15:47, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Also just because someone doesn't meet WP:NFOOTY (in whatever form that takes in the future), they can still meet WP:GNG and have an article created about them. That's always been the case on en.wiki. Joseph2302 (talk) 15:49, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

(e/c) I don't think we can make a binary classification of leagues. Sure, I can separate England and Lebanon into distinct categories, but what about Ireland, or Serbia, or Egypt? Italy, Morocco, Palestine and Vanuatu are clearly in four different situations. Idk if it should be percentages, or specific thresholds, but dividing countries into more than two tiers (pro / not-pro), maybe also based on UEFA/whatever coefficients for example, is a good idea imo. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 15:50, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@Alvaldi when I can be with the PC, I'll describe the fr wiki criteria Dr Salvus 15:58, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@Alvaldi. On fr.wiki, the leagues are divided into 4 categories. A player becomes notable when they meet one of these criteria

Criteria for the male players who play in the category 1 countries

• Has played for the national team (or for the U21 team)
• Has played for a youth team who reached the final of an international tournament
• Has been the best goalscorer of the first or in the second division
• Has won the first or the second division
• Has played 10 matches in the first division
• Has played 30 matches in the second division
• Has played for a team who reached the final of the national cup
• Has played a match in the UEFA Champions League/European Cup
• Has played a match in the semi-finals of an international club tournament

Criteria for the male players who play in the category 2 countries

• Has played for the national team
• Has played for a youth team who reached the final of an international tournament
• Has played 30 matches in the first division
• Has won the first division
• Has been the best goalscorer of the first divisison
• Has won the national cup
• Has played a match in the UEFA Champions League/European Cup
• Has played a match in the semi-finals of an international club tournament

Criteria for the male players who play in the category 3 countries

• Has played for the national team
• Has played for a youth team who reached the final of an international tournament
• Has been the best goalscorer of the first divisison
• Has won the national cup
• Has played a match in the UEFA Champions League/European Cup
• Has played a match in the semi-finals of an international club tournament

Players who play in a category 4 countries are notable only if he's played for the national team

Criteria for the female players who play in a pro league

• Has played for the national team
• Has played for a youth team who reached the final of an international tournament
• Has been the best goalscorer of the first divisison
• Has won the national cup
• Has played a match in the UEFA Women's Champions League
• Has played a match in the semi-finals of an international club tournament

Women who play in a non-pro league countries are notable only she's played for the national team.

I'd suggest an hybrid beetween their and our criteria Dr Salvus 18:08, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

The above suggestion would still have some major issues: not all first divisions are equal (the depth of coverage is not the same in all countries, nor in all time periods, and I'm not sure how strongly the number of games relates with coverage - sure, those who have played hundreds are far more likely to have it, but as the threshold gets lower and lower there are always more and more exceptions); nor are even all national teams equal (this applies to sports other than football too - I'd expect there to be far more coverage about players (and the team itself) of the England cricket team than of, I don't know, Japan national cricket team or even Canada national cricket team (for very obvious reasons). Now, football might be the most popular sport on the planet (cricket is second, fwiw); but surely the situation can't be that different: there are clearly some countries where there's going to be less coverage. To take an extreme example, only a few players of this national side even have articles - they are not fully professional, btw, and those that do often have articles which are not much better than the infamous mass-created stubs.

I'd think that simpler but stricter criteria would make more sense and would be more likely to be accepted by non-project hardliners. There's nothing that prevents adding a note "players who have played international football for lower-ranked countries, or who have played in the top division of such countries, might have sufficient coverage to justify an article, but it should not be presumed to exist without further proof". Even if the criteria are a bit too strict, those that still meet GNG can get an article, and those who don't won't become indefinite dead ends which can't be expanded and which won't be deleted or redirected or merged to a more appropriate target article/list. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:46, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think we should touch WP:FOOTY unless we get a green light from the greater community that this will go forward. The last thing we want is to spend time making these rules, and then having them overriden again by some other notability ruling. And I don't agree with criteria limiting international footballers, since they play in the exact same structure as other larger national teams. If your proposals are put into place, the vast majority of sporting articles are going to come from male western nations, at the expense of tons of other similarly notable players in other regions that play in the exact same system.

Also, please stop using me as an example for NFOOTY posters when generalizing. My views are my own, and don't align with many of the other posters in the project. I honestly believe 90 per cent of the sporting articles can be greatly expanded (and that there are thousands more that could be created), and that the project is 1/10th as big as I'd like it to be, but those are my own individual views. I'd appreciate if you'd stop using my views to denigrate the views of others NFOOTY posters who view things differently. You've already indirectly quoted me 3 or 4 times. Ortizesp (talk) 19:43, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

If your proposals are put into place, the vast majority of sporting articles are going to come from male western nations, at the expense of tons of other similarly notable players in other regions that play in the exact same system. Simply not true. As one can see, most microsstubs and notability-problematic articles are about male athletes from western nations (see, nobody has even bothered creating such stubs for the Seychelles national football team, which is a clear example of a non-western nation...). As for "similarly notable", the exact example I've given (where players aren't even paid, have difficulty getting time off their regular jobs to represent their national team, ...) shows that this idea that international footballers from all countries are "similarly notable" is pure fiction and more likely clouded by personal prejudice. Criteria need to be robust and not too open to misuse. Otherwise, if no true attempt is made to address the fundamental issues with the criteria, you will have failed to address both the microstub and the AfD problems. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:36, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this. As you can see from my user page, I try to create articles for international footballers from all nations of the world, where possible. I agree with Ortizesp's assessment that limiting criteria for international footballers will have a detrimental effect on non-western nations. It is understandable that a lot of smaller nations do not have fully professional leagues in place, but this does not mean that the love for the sport does not exist in these countries. I would imagine that, among football fans in Jamaica, DR Congo, Ghana, New Zealand, the players of their respective national team would be well-known. Probably not as "well-known" as the English national team players, but I think it is unfair to discredit the incredible achievement of being called up to an international sports team simply because you view football from a western perspective and are expecting the notability of Cristiano Ronaldo for a player like Elijah Tamboo. Simply put; if you are called up to the national football team of Djibouti, you are notable within footballing circles in Djibouti.

I think that your comment "most microsstubs and notability-problematic articles are about male athletes from western nations." is untrue within the Wikiproject for football. I think there are proportionately a lot more microstubs for players of non-western nations, as information is harder to come by. Microstubs for English footballers do exist, but are a lot harder to find than microstubs for footballers from Aruba. Davidlofgren1996 (talk) 00:37, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

That's just not what notable means on Wikipedia. Notable means "has been deemed noteworthy by reliable sources", not "meets an editor's personal criteria of what is noteworthy or not". If no sources have written signficicant caverage about a subject, then they are not notable, no matter who they were or what they did. And again, there's quite a difference between being called up for a major national football team where there is fierce competition, where there is strong media coverage for every game, where fans turn up in the thousands or tens of thousands for every game (you could insert many countries in this description: Brazil, England, probably even a few African ones); and competing for a lesser side where the whole population of the nation might number in the tens of thousands, where the sport is clearly non-professional (I'm not making anything up, see [8]). The two are simply not comparable, pretending otherwise is bordering on delusion. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 04:58, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

If people can hold their horses for a few days, I will be putting together an initial proposal in the next 48 hours (I am away tomorrow otherwise I would do it then). Essentially it is a tightening of the 'current' guidelines, a much trimmed down WP:FPL. GiantSnowman 21:51, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

• Just to add my two cents, I think "Wikipedia has way too many articles on football players. We need to severly (sic) reduce that number, and we need to reduce it now." this quote from Johnpacklambert is incredibly unhelpful to the discussion. It shows a clear bias against football articles, and to follow it up with "It is time for Wikipedia to get rid of substandard articles is, in my opinion, anti-encyclopedic. It is arguable that most articles on Wikipedia, especially most stubs, are "substandard". I don't follow Johnpacklambert's activity, but I don't imagine he is taking this kind of approach for articles on other topics besides football. As objectively the largest sport in the world, there is naturally going to be a disproportionate number of articles on the topic, compared to other sports or topics.

The topic is a difficult one and, as argued above, you could get a player in the English sixth division getting a lot of coverage in local online newspapers, while a player in the top division in Bolivia, for example, fails to pick up any coverage even after picking up 50+ appearances. Can we have a "minimum number" of appearances before someone is deemed "notable"? Can a footballer who never plays professionally be deemed "notable" enough for an article? And if GNG supercedes all, why do we have individual Wikiprojects? Do rivers meet the standards for GNG? I don't think they do, but there are 1,933 articles for rivers in Romania alone.

I have seen articles recently be nominated for deletion for footballers who have represented their country at international level. This means that they are one of the top ~23 footballers in their entire country. If this doesn't confer notability, I don't know what does. Davidlofgren1996 (talk) 16:34, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I tend to agree, I'd like some sort of protection for international athletes. I've made articles for players that have made AFCON and older World Cups, and those references for them are hard to come by. I do think as a a community we have to make an effort to improve the microstubs, and have a higher quality threshold for new articles, and would be open to that being part of the proposal. I don't agree with putting in new rules that is going to cause thousands of pages to get AFD'ed.--Ortizesp (talk) 19:03, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Absolutely, here's three examples of South African footballers who played in the 40s and 50s who scored multiple goals each for their nation and would undoubtably have had articles written about them in national newspapers, yet barely anything online exists about them, and they would fail GNG ([9] [10] [11]). I agree that we should put an effort into improving microstubs, and I think you're right, the amount of articles that would be taken to AfD under the new proposed rules would be in the thousands. Davidlofgren1996 (talk) 19:34, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't there to right great wrongs or to recognise achievements, however great or small they may be (since what a "notable" achievement is, unless there are sources to back it up, is nothing more than personal opinion). If there are no sources from which to write an article, or nobody has access to the sources that might exist, then, too bad, life isn't fair. There probably won't be articles at AfD in the thousands (given how much people rise up in discontent even for a few, let alone "thousands"), but it would also help, quite a lot, if there were not microstubs by the tens on thousands in the first place and if steps are henceforth taken to resolve this (it's possible to boldly redirect stuff which clearly doesn't meet the guidelines without having to resort to AfD, for example). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:43, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I never said anything about writing any wrongs or recognising achievements. My point is that these people were notable in their own right during their time. Is South African soccer of the 1950s a relatively niche topic? Yes, but for god's sake this website has articles on draughts players from the 1800s! ([12], [13], [14], etc.). Microstubs are a problem, yes, and it would be better if all articles were expanded beyond a simple "John Smith, born 1940, played for Scunthorpe United", but I'd argue it's better to have the stubs to expand on, than have nothing at all - and based on the plethora of microstubs from all variety of topics, it seems I am not the only person to think this.

If we choose to take a few football articles to AfD for failing GNG, it opens the door for starting AfD discussions for not thousands, but literally millions of other articles. The question remains: is it better to have less information compiled than we possibly can, or more? Wikipedia's About page says "Wikipedia is an online free-content encyclopedia helping to create a world where everyone can freely share and access all available knowledge", so I would argue that my views are in line with the spirit of the website. Davidlofgren1996 (talk) 00:00, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

@Davidlofgren1996, There's a limit for everything. Some years ago I played for some local teams and there are also some sources which say so but I don't have an article about myself and if I had it, it would not make any sense. Again, we're an encyclopedia, not a sports provider Dr Salvus 00:31, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

@Dr Salvus Well, if you have received significant independent coverage in multiple reliable publications over a significant period of time then you just might be notable. Alvaldi (talk) 09:42, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Alvaldi, I am not notable at all. I only played in youth teams forgotten by God and I've only received a very low coverage. If I'd had more coverage I would surely not have played in "local teams" Dr Salvus 09:48, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• As someone who frequently edits in Africa topics, and has experienced the SPORTS side of Wikipedia now since the Olympics notability discussion, I can only say I find the WP:BIAS arguments somewhat misinformed at best. It was last reliably reported in 2013 that most African newspapers lacked an online presence. While this might still be the case buy and large, more media has come online since then, and in some places this is not an issue. Nigeria, for example has an extremely vibrant online press. Covid also forced some print publications to go online or go out of business. I have never seen a person who complained about BIAS (usually in AfDs such as this one) demonstrate an actual attempt to search for coverage of a player in African media. I see it abused as an excuse for keeping standards low so that permastubs can be created with database citations and subsequently abandoned. Sometimes it comes across as disingenuous attempt, merely an attempt to preserve football articles because someone likes football, not because they really give a crap about BIAS. If one has ever actually tried to read African media, they might notice that most African countries have at least one or two online media outlets, and that those outlets have dedicated tabs for sports coverage (overwhelmingly football/soccer). For example, LeFaso for Burkina Faso, Iwacu for Burundi, Digital Congo and Le Potentiel for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, The Standard for Kenya, and The Citizen for Tanzania. I suggest compiling all these resources in a central location for the benefit of project members. I will happily assist in that effort, since it can lead to better articles and less acrimonious discussions about notability. But please for the love of God stop wailing about BIAS without actually trying to see if the nonWestern sources available to you actually cover the subject in question. Chances are that if they don't, there might be a reason for that, even if you think that's unfortunate. -Indy beetle (talk) 03:45, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@Indy beetle: Adding the sources would be great! Here Is a great place to add them (I'm thinking perhaps a re-ordering is in line - to have it divided by associations - will have a look after my exams). --SuperJew (talk) 05:56, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, those all seem like hyper specific sources, these are much more general resources and might require a more generic section. -Indy beetle (talk) 01:01, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

• What is clear is that the current NFOOTBALL too often leads to us deleting articles that pass the technical limits of it on people who played in very few games and got very little notice. What would make sense is to up the minimum for games to at least 3, but maybe with a caveat that play of less games in fully professional leagues may show notability if there is sufficient GNG coverage, but that such is very rare.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:25, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
• On the issue of sources, people really should find reliable significant coverage sources before they create an article in main space, not the other way around.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:25, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

New NFOOTBALL guideline proposed

I have put together a new guideline proposal. It can be viewed at Wikipedia:Notability (sports)/Association football and discussed at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)/Association football. Godspeed! GiantSnowman 12:40, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Ukraine national football team

Reportedly, the Ukrainian Football Federation has annulled Anatoliy Tymoshchuk's records with the national team, therefore leaving Andriy Shevchenko as their leading appearance maker.

How does the community believe that this should be displayed:

1. In the infobox (do we show Tymoshchuk or Shevchenko)
2. In the records section (use of strikethroughs)

Felixsv7 (talk) 09:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure we should do anything - he was still capped 144 times, despite what the UAF is trying to retroactively change. --SuperJew (talk) 09:39, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

It should display Tymoshchuk, as he's the holder in all reliable sources, despite what the UAF is trying to do. We are not a subordinate of the UAF, and so don't need to mirror their decisions. I note Shevchenko is currently listed in the infobox, this should be changed back to Tymoshchuk, probably with a note explaining the UAF thing. Joseph2302 (talk) 09:43, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

agree - the UFF cannot unilaterally make this decision just because of politics. maybe include both players with a note explaining why? GiantSnowman 11:15, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Keep Tymoshchuk's stats. If we remove them, we would be saying one of two things: (1) Tymoshchuk did not appear in those 144 games, but other players did (which is wrong), or (2) those games are not official (which is also wrong, since they count for other players). It's very inconsistent to remove his stats for purely political reasons. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 11:36, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

There is not enough information here, but I am inclined to leave all the stats and just stick to the prose. Govvy (talk) 12:30, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, no government can change if a player was on a pitch 10 years ago. No matter what they do after their playing days. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 17:44, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• If we were to start editing Wikipedia to follow the actions of such bodies, we'd have to delete Leon Trotsky. Let's wait until the war is over, and free speech is restored in Russia. Nfitz (talk) 07:01, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

• Until free speech is restored in Russia? 2603:7000:2143:8500:D19C:A36E:6A3A:C15E (talk) 09:56, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Euro golden shoe edits

Hello there, could some regulars here patrol the European Golden Shoe? A user is adding lots of repeat info which is already there?? is it really needed to mention the same rankings twice? Idk if it should stay or not, but seems odd to have it as it is right now. Gonna ping some regulars here. Speun (talk) 20:09, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

@SuperJew, GiantSnowman, and Nehme1499:

I have reverted to what I think is a good version, and warned the two users in question. GiantSnowman 20:13, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

We need further eyes on the article as a whole - this is a FA which has clearly been neglected. GiantSnowman 20:26, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, GS! Seems like they went on a rampage with that editing. Good to see you take action. Speun (talk) 22:02, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Tuttocalciatori.net

Should we really consider this website as a reliable source? I often see a lot of unupdated information (there could be info which hasn't been updated for 6 or more months) Dr Salvus 11:47, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Out of date is not the same as unreliable... GiantSnowman 14:20, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Can we say unreliable for this season? Dr Salvus 14:34, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Fabio Miretti

Today, Allegri's had the courage to field him for some minutes and to let him make his Serie A debut. Miretti had arleady debutted for Juventus in a Champions League match in 2021. Should there be 2021 or 2022 in his infobox next to "Juventus"? Dr Salvus 20:50, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

He debuted for them in the Champions League in 2021, so it should be 2021. RedPatch (talk) 21:50, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with RP. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 11:38, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

2021, the year his senior career began. GiantSnowman 12:34, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree too, even though the info box is used for League stats Dr Salvus 13:54, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Whilst we only display league stats in the infobox, it is used to summarise the player's career. A player who spends 3 years only playing Cup games would still have a line entry. GiantSnowman 14:19, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman what's confusing on having "2011–" on his career. Shouldn't the infobox summarise the player's career? If he's played a game (it's going to be two or three) with Juve U19 this year, why should there be 2011–2021? I could understand if we put 2011–2022 (since I know Juventus' bad mentality with youth players and I'm sure that he'll be loaned) Dr Salvus 14:29, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

There is a perennial discussion about that point on this page (see archives 133,135,140 as a start) : the status quo seems to be that Youth career is marked as finished as soon as a senior appearance is made. This is not a convention I agree with, and you will need a wider discussion if you want to change this. Spike 'em (talk) 14:54, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Because the infobox is a summary of a career and this is the neatest way of displaying it. What about a young player who is with the youth team 2006-2011, then makes his senior debut in 2011, and then returns to the youth team for two matches in 2012 for fitness, then re-joins the senior team, but then goes back to the youth team for one match in 2014? GiantSnowman 15:06, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

If Miretti is loaned (I guess it's going to happen) this year and no longer plays for Juve U19, will we be allowed to put 2011–2022? Dr Salvus 15:19, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

No, because his senior career has already begun! GiantSnowman 16:50, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the outcome of the RfC on the youth career in the infobox was "no consensus"; consensus doesn't default to the (so-called) "status quo". Nehme₁₄₉₉ 16:41, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

There is no consensus to change. GiantSnowman 16:49, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

There was never any consensus to begin with, as this is the discussion you are referring to when talking about "status quo". Nehme₁₄₉₉ 17:17, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Is his covid diagnosis being in the article really necessary and in its own section by itself? He missed a week. We don't need to mention every player who caught covid in their article. RedPatch (talk) 16:29, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

We need to find a consensus for it. This evening, Shall we open a new discussion? I do not agree that a youth career ends when he makes his professional debut as well as I don't always agree that a career ends with the last match with the youth team (for example, Spinazzola played some games with Juventus U19 after his cruciate injury during the 2018–19 season in spite of his being 25 year-old). Dr Salvus 16:54, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

The original RFC (posted by Nehme above) did originally state that a further discussion was needed with narrower choices (2or3 instead of 7), which we never followed through with. However, given the current FPL league review and discussion going on, I don't think now is the time to re-open a new discussion. Let's finish that big discussion before a new one begins. RedPatch (talk) 18:08, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

These multiway RfCs rarely lead to clear consensus. I'd go for one to clearly find out if there is a consensus that the current way is valid and take it from there. Spike 'em (talk) 18:45, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest a new solution:

• A player ends his youth career when he makes X apps with the first (or the reserve) team during a season. So, we could say that Miretti's youth career has arleady ended even though he plays Juevntus U19's matches in the Youth League.

Even though his youth career has already eneded, I'd keep 2011– instead of 2011–2021 as he does still play for Juve U19. Dr Salvus 06:57, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

yeah it should really depend on if theyre still playing for the youth teams or not, and if/when they sign their pro contract. now if they debut at 17 nd never play for the kids again then fair. but if they debut at 17, then make no appearences for 2 years their youth career should still overlap for those two extra years.Muur (talk) 01:01, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Two managers at the same time for a club

Today, a Brazilian club named Floresta announced a manager called Raimundo Wágner for the second division of the Campeonato Cearense. However, the club also kept their current manager, Ricardo Drubscky, for the 2022 Campeonato Brasileiro Série C. How should we display them at Template:Floresta Esporte Clube managers? This considering that Drubscky was already in charge before Raimundinho arrived. BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 02:08, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

similar to {{Charlton Athletic F.C. managers}}, though they went from 2 managers to 1, in the early 90s. Spike 'em (talk) 07:18, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Seasons pages

Can I make a suggestion to add a column for "managers" on the List of X F.C. seasons pages. I'd personally find this useful to see how a club fared under a certain manager and then fared before / after said manager, etc. Perhaps it's a niche, trivial request, just putting it out there. 2A00:23C8:4F05:9001:7872:8D2D:BA7A:1915 (talk) 16:58, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

This is already done for some clubs, e.g. Southampton (see List of Southampton F.C. seasons. Daemonickangaroo2018 (talk) 09:26, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Category:Italian Scottish footballers

Category:Italian Scottish footballers - I've never seen a category like this before, is it worth keeping? I'd say no... GiantSnowman 09:25, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

No, all of Category:Italian Scottish sportspeople should be deleted. Individual entries should have Category:Scottish footballers and Category:Scottish people of Italian descent. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 10:27, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks - at CFD, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2022 March 23#Category:Italian Scottish footballers. GiantSnowman 11:12, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Angel Chibozo

Ten days ago, Chibozo was called up by Benin. Made he an appearance, what will we write in his infobox at currently club? In spite of his talent, Chibozo has neither played for Juve U23 nor for the first team. Here's his sandbox. Dr Salvus 23:33, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

It'd be similar to Marcelo Flores. You can leave the senior career section blank. RedPatch (talk) 00:54, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Jermain Defoe info box stats

Because he just retired, I just added the total together, but after having a read through the talk page... Well, it seems there were periods when it was on-loan for short periods with some clubs, i.e Portsmouth and Tottenham that seem to have been combined at some point. Shouldn't that be checked out and redone on the info box to show that? I am somewhat confused by what is going on with the stats there. Even the stats table further down the page doesn't reflect these small loans before the contracts were made permanent. What to do...! Govvy (talk) 11:37, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

If a player signed on loan, even for a short time, the infobox should reflect that (see e.g. Nahki Wells) and the stats table should also reflect that these were separate spells. GiantSnowman 22:05, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I really can't believe I've only just noticed the problem, someone had removed years four from the info box. I had to restore it. We really need to add a note next to it. As for the other stats table, that needs sorting also and I am not up for that. Govvy (talk) 10:08, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the stats table should be as it is, four years ago, on Wilfried Zaha, I made this edit informing that the season was a loan spell before I was reverted with the explanation "Signed permanently *during* that season". I'm not certain if the same thing applies to Jermain Defoe which I have now noticed he started off at Portsmouth on loan. I do agree that loans and permanents are separate entries even if it was just one appearance. Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 16:20, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

On a different note, does Defoe's article really need all those sub-headings for individual seasons? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:30, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Suspended contracts

Players in Ukraine and Russia who have "suspended contracts" have been signing for other clubs in Europe on deals until the end of the season. Should we consider these transfers to be loan deals, since their contracts have not been officially terminated with their respective Eastern European clubs? Paul Vaurie (talk) 14:53, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

A terminated contract is not a transfer or a loan! :/ Govvy (talk) 20:11, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Termination vs suspension, mate. They aren't terminated. Paul Vaurie (talk) 22:28, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

There was a discussion here about the time FIFA introduced the rule, a couple of weeks back, at the time there were no actual players who already used the rule yet, and there was no consensus reached on what the infobox should say. For example, Transfermarkt lists the players who suspended the contract already, but did not sign with any new club yet as "special leave". Once a player signs for a new club, they just list it as "loan". I think we can just do the same, and possibly put the notes after the word "loan", or just leave it as "loan" in the infobox and put the full explanation (with the citation for the FIFA rule) in the body of the article. I think that would be clear enough. Geregen2 (talk) 22:59, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Here was the original discussion RedPatch (talk) 11:59, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

National team results history

It has been observed that on page India national football team results a 'new standard' was adopted. Example (India national football team results (2010–2019)). In this standard, the game results are not marked in colors according to the results (red for defeat, yellow for draw and green for win). I wanted to know the source of this standard and if it was discussed here previously.

Footy2000 (talk) 19:51, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

So long as the colours used to represent wins/draws/losses meet MOS:COLORS, I don't see any problems in using them. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 20:33, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Could someone check the edits on the pages such as India national football team results (2010–2019), as it seems there are too many links to the same set of articles being added.... Spike 'em (talk) 18:50, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Err, yes Footy2000 the table you're adding is almost exactly duplicative of {{India national football team results}}, which is currently displayed at the top right of the page. Alyo (chat·edits) 18:54, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Why don't I see no such table? Footy2000 (talk) 05:43, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

The sidebar template doesn't show up on mobile so that might have something to do with why you can't see it. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 12:52, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Coming back to the original discussion,Stevie fae Scotland Alyo let us try to establish a common consensus on should the results in result pages should include result coloring or not. Footy2000 (talk) 10:25, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Yemeni stadia

Are Althawra Sports City Stadium and Ali Mohsen Al-Muraisi Stadium the same place? They appear to be in the same location on the map but I don't know if one is an old stadium that was replaced by the other or if they are just different names for the same thing. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 21:00, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

According to the Arabic wikipedia, they are the same stadium. I've been bold and have proceeded to merge the two. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 12:38, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Nehme Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 21:14, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Category:European sportspeople of Democratic Republic of the Congo descent

Are the above and its subcats not overcategorisation, being a triple intersection of origin, occupation and descent? Crowsus (talk) 00:56, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

• I think so, don't think they are necessary. I've seen them a lot recently, and am not a huge fan.--Ortizesp (talk) 06:51, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

  Agree, looks like OVERCAT to me. GiantSnowman 21:51, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Sites for stats of youth international players

Where do I find a site which indicates the number of caps and goals of a player in the youth teams? I only know the one for Italy but I'd also like to find the ones for other teams Dr Salvus 19:19, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

You can try looking in the federation's official website. Otherwise, Global Sports Archive is a good option. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 12:35, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

@Nehme1499 I'd forgot to say I was looking for Matias Soulé who played a friendly game for Argentina U20 yesterday (look here) but I can't find his stats at afa.com.ar. I've had a look at GSA but it doesn't look like it's a good site because it doesn't show the friendlies Dr Salvus 16:27, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

You won't find any website with all youth matches (especially friendlies). GSA is especially useful for me since, as opposed to Soccerway, they also have youth stats for non-European/South American national teams. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 21:32, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

@Dr Salvus:, for Portuguese players (from the U15s to the U23s), extensive coverage here (https://www.fpf.pt/pt/). In the top-right corner, go to "pesquisa" (search in Portuguese) and type the surname of the player you want. --193.137.135.2 (talk) 10:20, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Hoffenheim

When you are talking about TSG 1899 Hoffenheim, what do you refer to the club as? Paul Vaurie (talk) 22:11, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Apparently, "TSG Hoffenheim" should be the correct way to refer to the club. In subsequent mentions, "Hoffenheim" can be used. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 22:21, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

The club itself seems to prefer 1899 Hoffenheim, so that's what I generally use. Sir Sputnik (talk) 22:38, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

What Sir Sputnik seid. It's 1899 Hoffenheim. Kante4 (talk) 10:45, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I based what I said on the German wiki article for the current Bundesliga season.

275 results for "Hoffenheim", 274 results for "TSG Hoffenheim", 212 results for "1899 Hoffenheim", . Nehme₁₄₉₉ 12:16, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Notability of Tosh Farrell

Hello people, just went across this article about Tosh Farrell, who apparently was nothing more than a (youth) coach at Everton. No references, no real content there, so I am honestly considering nominating it for deletion. Any feedback from here? --Angelo (talk) 08:07, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Definitely nominate for deletion. Seems unlikely anyone would be able to produce enough convincing evidence to keep, but if there is some, that should prompt them to do so. Crowsus (talk) 08:42, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Citations wanted - potential entries for List of footballers killed during World War II

Reposted and updated version of original now archived.

As main contributor to this article, I would like to flag up for attention of others on the project a number of candidates for the list that are already wiki-articled and known or believed to have been killed in or died as a result of circumstances brought on by the war (eg execution, in enemy captivity, effects of wounds etc) but which so far lack a reliable citation regarding their death which is preconditional to inclusion in the list. A few have no death circumstances described in the text of their article but I note have been put on category lists that suggest someone knew/believed they died in wartime circumstances. I also include those whose death circumstances are disputed - see their talk pages for further detail - and are in need of a conclusive ruling in or out.

• Josef Adelbrecht (Austria) - categorised as Austrian military personnel killed in the war. His German wikipedia article states he was killed on the Russian front NW of Moscow.
• Dragutin Babic (Yugoslavia) - there is a source in Croat language but it is unclear to me it indicates manner of death
• Josef Bergmaier (Germany)
• Jozsef Eisenhoffer (Hungary) - also disputed death circumstances
• Bronislaw Fichtel (Poland) - disputed death date (see talk page)
• Hermann Flick (Germany)
• Josef Fruhwirth (Austria) - categorised as Austrian military personnel killed in WWII. His article in Germany wikipedia has citation to an Austrian newspaper report of his death which I find unreadable.
• Nikolai Gromov (Russia) - Russian language profile says he 'died at the front' in 1943 without further detail. More informative sources if found preferred.
• Karl-Richard Idlane (Estonia) - Death cause and death dates (both in 1942) disputable.
• Karl Kanhauser (Austria/Czechoslovakia) - German wikipedia states without citation he was drafted into the German army towards end of WWII and deployed to Yugoslavia where he was reported missing, no final year given.
• Franz Krumm (Germany) - There is a link to the German Volksbund website but it does not directly connect to his details and I lack expertise to interrogate the site.
• Willi Lindner (Germany) - source in German language, not fully clear about death details
• Johann Luef (Austria) - his German wikipedia article indicates he died of wounds in hospital in East Prussia.
• Josef Madlmayer (Austria)
• Artur Marczewski (Poland) - his Polish and German wikipedia articles state without citation he disappeared in January 1945 following Red Army advance into Poland, where he had been working for the Germans as a factory official.
• Vladimir Markov (footballer) (Russia) - Stated in Olympedia to have died in Leningrad in 1942, which coincided with the long running siege of the city. Can evidence be found for treating him as a victim of the siege?
• Alexander Martinek (Austria/Germany)
• Otto Martwig (Germany)
• Philip Meldon (Ireland) - disputed death details, not known to CWGC.
• August Mobs (Germany) - said to have been killed in air raid.
• Alberto Nahmias (Greece) - death circumstances disputed; his English article gives two different years of death in 1980s without source. His Greek wikipedia biography states he was arrested by the Germans in 1942 because of Jewish origins and further trace was lost, possibly because of being put to death. Can someone find sources that settle this?
• Slavko Pavletic (Croatia) - no death circumstance details given in text but has been categorised as a Croatian civilian killed in the war.
• Jean Petit (footballer, born 1914) (Belgium) - His French wikipedia article indicates without citation or death location given that he was a doctor = probably civilian rather than military - who was killed in a bombardment preceding the Allied invasion of Normandy.
• Kurts Plade (Latvia) - Repatriated to Germany as a Baltic German, his Latvian wikipedia article states he was 'killed' (no further detail) in February 1945 in Poznan, Poland. I note his death coincided with the Soviet siege of Poznan.
• Bernardo Poli (Italy) - Italian wikipedia indicates he died in 'an unspecified war accident' serving as an airman. Only citation in English wikipedia does not indicate manner of his death.
• Fyodor Rimsha (Russia)
• Holger Salin (Finland) - No decisive date in most wikipedias. His Finnish wikipedia article gives 27 October 1943 but the Finnish language sources are subscription required.
• Aristotel Samsuri (Albania) - Reportedly executed in German concentration camp in Greece as a Communist partisan between 1942/1944, but was claimed by the postwar Communist regime of Albania to have escaped and survived before proclaiming him a martyr in 1981.
• Gennaro Santillo (Italy) - Categorised as Italian military personnel killed in the war but no indications of military service on Italian wikipedia. Would like to be more certain of his status (mil or civ) before adding him.
• Otto Siffling (Germany) - It is listed under the list on German Wikipedia, but says he died of pleurisy. I've added it here in case he is found to have served during the war.
• Harry Spencer (footballer) (New Zealand, previously played in England) - There are similarities with a New Zealand soldier known to the CWGC (see talk page of article). Can someone find confirmation they are the same man?
• Erwin Stührk (Germany) - disputable death date, death place given in German war grave site not easy to ascertain as it only gives German form of name rather than its vernacular.
• Ludwik Szabakiewicz (Poland) - disputable death details, particularly date
• Alexandre Villaplane (France) - more sources could be added.

To the unnamed user who added their name to this list - his wikipedia article has three citations that support his stated manner and date of death. I am happy to add them to supplement my use of Olympedia on the article list.Cloptonson (talk) 17:53, 28 March 2022 (UTC) - UPDATE - I have added all three citations against his death in his wikipedia article and on the List.Cloptonson (talk) 18:16, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Apologies for the/my confusion, i did not realise this list only contained subjects regarding a given criterion (in this case, sources regarding manner of death). Sorry again, only wanted to help; all the best! 193.137.135.2 (talk) 09:09, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

• Willi Völker (Germany) - uncertainty about death location.
• Karl Wahlmuller (Austria)
• Heinz Warnken (Germany) - German wikipedia gives him as gefallen (fallen) in 1943 but no detail of precise death date or death place.
• Willi Wigold (Germany) - date of death disputed

There may be additions coming onto the list so I encourage watch this space! Others are welcome to add. Please let us know if sources are found and added into their articles.Cloptonson (talk) 17:54, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Bristol City first playing venue?

I am confused, where did they play from 1894 to 1904? I was reading Bristol City F.C., but it is completely unclear at that time. Govvy (talk) 17:31, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Seems to be St John's Lane. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 17:54, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

lol, @Nehme1499: I don't know how I managed to miss that, I must be going nuts, either that, or wasn't clear enough on my first read. Govvy (talk) 20:24, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

New standard

Hello. I wonder why user @PeeJay: is adopting a new standard for articles like 2021–22 UEFA Europa Conference League in the box, putting Tammy Abraham (Roma), and explaining that it's more useful to know which club he plays for than his nationality. I disagree. Firstly, this is a major change and I think a suitable talk here is the right place to establish what to do first. Secondly, to check for whom a player plays for there is the table below. What do you think about? We have got multiple articles with the same standard and it's displayed as Tammy Abraham (7 goals) for istance.--Island92 (talk) 13:15, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Since when is it a new standard to follow MOS:FLAG? Also, isn't it more useful to know which club the player plays for than to know what nationality he is? By your same argument, I could say you could use the table lower down the article to find out what nationality he is... – PeeJay 13:33, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong. This is not an argument. Since I joined Wikipedia, my experience matches with this standard through these articles, as well as international articles such as UEFA Euro 2020 where you can see the same standard. Now, out of the blue, with respect, you're making a major change which is needed to be talked right here, before ultimately implementing it in these pages.--Island92 (talk) 13:40, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

I would agree with PeeJay, it's more relevant to know which team(s) the player scored the goals for. In the case of club competitions, they aren't representing a country so it doesn't really mean anything to tell us someone's sporting nationality. I think it would be more useful and informative for readers to change it in this way (club competitions only of course). Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 13:55, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Even in international competitions it might be useful to add the name of the country instead of just expecting readers to be able to identify a minuscule flag by sight, but I'm glad you see my point at least as far as club competitions. – PeeJay 14:00, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

To be fair, I was more meaning that we don't currently identify clubs for club competitions but we do identify nationality (with the flags) for international competitions so we should change it to identify clubs instead for club competitions. I wouldn't be averse to changing it for international competitions to actually name the country/territory instead of the flag. It would clear up confusion on articles like 1973 Oceania Cup where one of the top scorers is Tahitian and another is from New Caledonia but, at the time, they both competed under the French flag so it looks like they played for the same team. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 14:15, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Did the two flags exist in 1973? If so, I'd put them instead of one of an European country... Dr Salvus 14:19, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

No, it would be historically inaccurate to do that. French Polynesia didn't adopt the flag that the Tahiti national football team competes under until 1984 and New Caledonia didn't adopt the second of the two flags it now competes under until 2010 (the other being the French flag). Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 14:54, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Ok, only when there were an ambiguity, I'd write the country he played for. Dr Salvus 15:01, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

(ec) I 100% agree. The important information is the team the player was representing. Their nationality is really of little relevance in this context -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 14:02, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah. Flags should not be used for decoration and should be removed. Readers would be interested to know the team he played for. Dr Salvus 14:14, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Island92 here. This is a standard that has been in place for years, and it is assumed that it will be discussed extensively before changing it. I suggest either removing the flag completely or sufficing with the name of the player only because adding the club will make the infobox too big if the name of the club is long like Borussia Mönchengladbach.--Sakiv (talk) 16:18, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Sakiv, a long club name isn't a major problem as we can allow the name to be wrapped or move it into the next line entirely. This is routinely done for the "currentclub" parameter when a players is on loan. Robby.is.on (talk) 16:29, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

As said above, the reader can see the club the player plays for in the scorers table below. This is not difficult and we do not have to provide every detail to the reader.--Sakiv (talk) 16:31, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

the club is far more relevant to the article than the player's nationality. Spike 'em (talk) 21:07, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Why do I feel like it depends on my opinion? I just gave my opinion and we haven't reached anything yet.--Sakiv (talk) 21:13, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm with PJ: team is far more important, and flags shouldn't be used unnecessarily in infobox. MOS:INFOBOXFLAG: Generally, flag icons should not be used in infoboxes, even when there is a "country", "nationality" or equivalent field: they could be unnecessarily distracting and might give undue prominence to one field among many. Spike 'em (talk) 16:20, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

What is the final conclusion of this talk? @PeeJay: has already put the new model. Island92 (talk) 00:19, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Are you seriously saying you still don't agree with the change? Why not just agree, withdraw this discussion and let everyone move on with their lives? We gain nothing by your continued opposition. – PeeJay 01:02, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Basically, we haven't reached anything yet. And you are already ahead with this change, which I'm free to disagree, because it's my free thought about it. Does it really matter to you only because I'm the only one who doesn't like it? Rather than withdrawing the discussion after only two days a final decision should be made. It's major change. Looks like you want to implement it at all costs, at the same time without taking care of previous editions or similar. For many years we had a model, that means you are likely to deal with someoneelse (IPs I assume first) about this major change. Island92 (talk) 01:36, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The discussion indicates a consensus in favour of the change. Robby.is.on (talk) 11:57, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I can only see this in the box, is it only the box we are talking about, not in the Scorers table at the bottom? Crowsus (talk) 12:04, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, only the infobox. If the flags must be kept in the infobox, it should not be at the expense of club information. All of this info is included in the stats tables at the bottom of the articles anyway. – PeeJay 19:43, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Categorise male footballers in the same way that we categorise female footballers

Further to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 188# RfC: Categorise male footballers in the same way that we categorise female footballers, should we start a WP:BOTREQUEST to re-name the categories and change the cats on affected articles? GiantSnowman 20:33, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Pinging @Gunnar Larsson: who I note has been doing this work manually (by creating new categories) which I don't think is the best way to do it... GiantSnowman 20:47, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Agree. You might think that, e.g. "English footballers" consists of every footballer who has English nationality yet in the categories you don't see any female footballers. I certainly prefer not wasting time by changing the categories from "English footballers" to "English men's footballers" since there are far too many of them! Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 20:53, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. I had no plan to edit 100,000+ pages or so :-D, but was not sure how to make sure that the RfC was actually acted upon, so hoped editing some would help triggering others to act :-) Anyway, please have a look at the categories that I created and check that they makes sense (so that a bot can create the equivalent categories for other nationalities). Gunnar Larsson (talk) 21:03, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Might be a bit of a stretch, but this could probably be done with Cat-a-lot. Might want to make sure everything is cosher before pressing the button on each one though! Did we have a specific naming convention in mind? Is it English footballers -> English male footballers and both that and English female footballers as a subcat of a new English footballers cat? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:16, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

I believe there are over 185,000 men's footballers on Wikipedia, this would be too much to do with Cat-a-lot. A bot request would probably be ideal. And yes, in the future the category "English footballers" will diffuse into "English men's footballers" and "English women's footballers". S.A. Julio (talk) 06:35, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Any reason why we are using "men's" rather than "male"? The teams are "men's", because they are a collective, but surely other categories talk about individual people as "male" or "female". See Category:Male artists or Category:Female pool players, etc. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:29, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The consideration that has to be made is whether we are defining them by sport (players of [men's] football vs players of women's football) or by gender (footballers who are male vs footballers who are female). From my reading of the discussion, the majority view appeared to be in favour of the latter: that it is the same sport but women essentially play in a different league system; so in that case the categories should be named Fooian male footballers and Fooish female footballers (with additional existing considerations on the name of the sport in each place). However, some may feel the opposite to the above, that men's football and women's football are separate sports. I think further discussion is needed to establish consensus for the naming so there is consistency across the 200k+ articles involved. Crowsus (talk) 09:22, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

What would the logic be for their being two separate sports? There is literally no difference in the rules, the playing equipment, or anything else..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:29, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

yep, I can't argue with that (although to be honest I don't think it would hurt to tweak the rules a little in terms of slightly smaller goals and pitches due to the farcical stuff you see with high shots at times which can spoil what is an otherwise enjoyable spectacle, but such changes would make it even harder for women to be able to find facilities with those dimensions) but then we should also be renaming the existing Category:English women's footballers to Category:English female footballers, etc. Could be part of this same process. Crowsus (talk) 11:14, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I thought the opposite from that RFC: that we were meant to be doing it as men's football and women's football, not by gender (in fact, I was specifically told this in response to a question about transgender athletes and how to categorise them). Joseph2302 (talk) 09:31, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

So if, in some unusual turn of events, a woman played in a men's league, she would be categorised as a "men's footballer" based on that. Hmmmm, I guess I can kinda see the logic, but it seems like that would be introducing unnecessary potential confusion to cover a quite unlikely possibility. Not sure about trans athletes - how are such individual categorised in other sports? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 11:18, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I have only looked at British cyclists, but all are in gender cats other than Philippa York and Ed Le Brocq who are trans (M to F and F to M respectively) [edit, not sure why Le Brocq actually has the category, its not his job, he is a musician and recreational cyclist]. Quinn (soccer) is non binary but still plays with the Canada women's team so remains in Category:Canadian women's soccer players. My own opinion would be that the placing in the Fooian Bahers parent cat (neither male nor female) kinda covers the circumstances, but if that is not considered acceptable either from a trans POV or a technical 'no individuals in container categories' POV, we could also create Fooain transgender Bahers for each sport alongside male and female, as and when notable trans participants appear. Crowsus (talk) 11:46, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

WP:CATGENDER is pretty much where we need to look. The only example is Category:male golfers. However, it's a bit of a weird one, as the team games are all over the place, such as Category:Women cricketers, Category:Female players of American football, Category:Women's Australian rules footballers, Category:Female goalball players, Category:Ladies' Gaelic footballers or Category:Female rugby league players. I smell another RfC on a consistent naming convention for both individual and team based categories (and, those where you do both, like bowls or tennis.) Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:14, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Agree its all kind of a mess. I would refer back to the proposal, which included in the summary "Note that this consensus applies to association football only due to the scope of the RfC" - so since we are at the football project, and different sports seem to have different rules on categorisation on Wikipedia, let's see if we can get the footballers sorted, and folk can get involved in other sports' equivalent debates later if they want to. Crowsus (talk) 12:44, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The RFC nomination also said should we have "men's footballers" categories to match the "women's footballers" categories that already exist? To me, this means the agreement was, at least implicitly, to do it this way e.g. Category:English women's footballers and Category:English men's footballers. I believe that is also the correct way to do it, as by gender (male/female) has potential issue for people who are transgender/non-binary e.g. I belive it is correct for Quinn (soccer) to be in Category:Canadian women's soccer players, as they play for the Canadian women's soccer team, but it would be incorrect to have them in Category:Canadian female soccer players, because their gender identity is non-binary. If we're doing it as male/female footballers (based on their gender), then we'd need to have addition option(s) for people of non-binary gender. Joseph2302 (talk) 13:06, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the main issue is that the main take away is that we have a male counter category to female players. Personally, I'd have thought that category:Male football players, and category:Female football players has a natural middle ground of simply category:Football players. What we are toying with is the use of the gender divide in the sport as the main means of distinction between the two categories. In my eyes, there are a few distinct configurations for people playing sport

1. Fully or partially mixed sport, things that have some gender based events, but also open competitions. See table tennis, bowls, cue sports, etc.
2. Individual events, separated by gender - say martial arts, luge, marathon, etc
3. Individual or team events, separated by gender - athletics, swimming, etc.
4. Team events, seperated by gender - rugby, football, Grid Iron football, etc.

I'd be up for coming up with a naming convention for all of these, whist out of scope of this RfC, it would be a bit crazy to make changes to thousands of articles to the wrong category name. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:13, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

We need a proper discussion and a decision on what this is for: players of football by gender and nationality, or players of two different gendered football sports by nationality. Clearly there are opposing views on the subject. Not sure if this current chat is sufficient to be that discussion. As far as Quinn is concerned, in the first option they could either go in the parent ungendered cat or we could create a non-binary & transgender cat (or separate ones if really necessary?) to sit alongside male and female. And in the second option, as you have pointed out Joseph, Quinn is a player of women's football so no issue there. Crowsus (talk) 15:30, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the new category needs to be Category:X men's footballer? I suggest we move to that format in-line with the RFC and then we can work out if we need ti move them to 'male' and 'female'. GiantSnowman 18:45, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I just wanted to make a comment from a practical point of view. I have no inclination towards male or men's. My only concern is that, once we actually move "X footballers" to (for example) "X men's footballers", most editors won't be aware of this, and they will continue to categorise new articles under "X footballers". Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Nehme₁₄₉₉ 18:50, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

No, but people will learn eventually, and if it is a container category only there might be a way to have a bot fix it by correcting the categories on affected articles? GiantSnowman 20:07, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Thing is, just for Category:English footballers, we are talking about editing over 20,000 articles. We should really avoid disruption editing (what is probably hundreds of thousands of articles) twice. Is it really going to hurt to work out what a suitable name is first? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:52, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, according to the RFC and the long-standing 'women's footballers', it should be 'men's footballers'... GiantSnowman 20:06, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The RFC as stated was "should we categorise men's footballers the same as women's footballers"? The RFC outcome was yes, so we should do the thing the RFC agreed to, instead of changing both and causing potential gender identity issues by trying to classify everyone to a binary gender. Joseph2302 (talk) 20:13, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I would be fine with things being sorted by the gender division of the sport, rather than by gender (if that was the consensus), but surely "men's footballers" literally means footballers that belong to men? The "men's national team", or even "men's team" does make sense, as it is a team belonging to men (or made up of men). The word men is plural (lots of old English words that end in "en" are plurals), I don't really see how it can be used correctly when talking about one person. You'd need "player of men's football" to be grammatically correct, similar to Category:English players of English billiards. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:38, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree that, grammatically, it should either be Category:English players of men's football (if we are dividing by sport) or Category:English male footballers (if we are dividing by gender). "Women's footballers" always sounded weird to me (a bit like saying "the footballers of women"), but idk maybe grammatically it's correct. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 22:43, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Footballer Buckingham 1901

I have down one season for a player with the surname Buckingham who played for Tottenham for just one season, the 1900-01 season. Anyone able to look that up? It wouldn't be Vic Buckingham father "William George Buckingham" would it? Govvy (talk) 12:27, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

NFOOTBALL now removed

Further to the recent RFC on NSPORTS, NFOOTBALL has been removed from that page. I invite further comments at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)/Association football on a replacement. GiantSnowman 12:22, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I personally think it should be restored considering how floored that RFC is. Shame really, without the football guideline, interpretation is just being used without guidance, you might as well have the kids run the house instead of the adults. Govvy (talk) 13:59, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

WP:NFOOTY should exist while the sports forgot by everyone (except USA and Canada and) can remove the criteria. Football is much more important than American football, baseball or basketball (or other American sports only followed in North America). I'll write further comments today Dr Salvus 14:11, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Players who've been loaned from a team who bought him on loan

Giovanni Giovannino

Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
2019–2020	Juventus U23
2020–	Juventus
2020–2022	→ Genoa (loan)
2021–2022	→→ Vicenza (loan)
*Club domestic league appearances and goals

If the team A lend a player to the team B who lend him to the team C (with FIFA's new rules, this can no more be possible but it has appened in the past). I'd suggest a double → next to the team C to indicate that he was loaned by a team who borrowed him. Dr Salvus 20:30, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Do you have an example? Nehme₁₄₉₉ 20:36, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

@Nehme1499: I remember that there have been some players who've been loaned to a team who borrowed him but I don't remember who. Follow the example of a player I've invented: Giovanni Giovannino. Giovannino played the 2019-20 season with Juventus U23 but as Juve always loan their best talents, Giovannino was loaned to Genoa for two years. In 2021, Genoa decided to loan him to Vicenza. As he was loaned by a team who borrowed him, he'd have a double → next to Vicenza. (Yeah, I know it's a irrealistic story)Dr Salvus 20:55, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Ok, but I have never heard of this. I'm not saying it has never existed, but I'd rather see a practical example. Maybe there were other technicalities involved (co-ownership?). Nehme₁₄₉₉ 20:56, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

yeah I've never heard of a player being loaned out by a club they were already on loan at - and the double arrow is not ideal. GiantSnowman 21:08, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Ok, but following Giovannino's example, I would not want to indicate that Giovannino was loaned by Juve to Vicenza. Are there any alternatives? Dr Salvus 21:11, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

This seems like finding a solution for a problem that doesn't seem to exist. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 21:47, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Look Nehme1499, I've just found an example: Fernando Torres joined Milan from Chelsea in 2014 in a biennial loan (with option for a third year). However, Milan loaned him to Atletico Madrid for 18 months to have Cerci on loan in January 2015. Dr Salvus 21:57, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Milan purchased Torres one year into the loan, and loaned him out a few days later. His infobox represents the situation correctly. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 21:58, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh yeah. Sorry for my always being idiot and distracted. I want to discuss about a similar thing at this point: Ihattaren has played his first two games with Jong Ajax (their reserve team) this month. I don't know if there should be an arrow as he hadn't been loaned to Jong Ajax but he had to Ajax (with whom he hasn't played yet) Dr Salvus 22:07, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Both should have arrows. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 22:16, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

one situation that it could work in is something like Yaya Sanogo who played for both ajax and jong ajax which technically is being loaned to two teams at once? so youd have the double arrow for jong ajax.Muur (talk) 02:41, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

A single arrow for both is fine. He's on loan from Juventus to (Jong) Ajax, not from Ajax. A double arrow is also confusing to the average reader. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 07:09, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

MOS:TOPRESENT

The (almost) universal practice is that in a player infobox, we show the dates for his/her present club as something like "2021– ". Unfortunately, that seems to be contrary to MOS:TOPRESENT which says "Do not use incomplete-looking constructions such as 1982– and 1982–... ", with the suggestion that we should use "(1982–pres.)". Where does that leave this project (and many others)? --Daemonickangaroo2018 (talk) 06:34, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@Daemonickangaroo2018 it is not a law. If we think it's fine here, we do it here. Dr Salvus 06:55, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Guidelines are there for a reason so I'd support updating infoboxes to show 2020–pres. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 07:35, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Saying "we can ignore elements of the Manual of Style if we feel like it" isn't a great argument...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

This was discussed recently here. --SuperJew (talk) 07:41, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

(e/c) This topic was discussed here and, more recently, here. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 07:42, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Guidelines are not mandatory - many WikiProjects do not follow it - and there is talk at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#MOS:DATETOPRES in infoboxes about changing the guideline to reflect usage, as opposed to amending tens of thousands of articles for no apparent reason... GiantSnowman 09:12, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm glad that we are looking to update the guidelines rather than just not following them. If we have guidelines, they should either be followed or be updated to represent changes to consensus. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 09:44, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

International career statistics

Hi! I have some thoughts regarding international career statistics. If a player has not played for the national team for a year (or multiple years) and then makes a return, should the years in between really be included in the statistics table? Take the Swedish footballer Gustav Svensson as an example. He was not even called up to national team during 2010–2014. Despite that, these years are included in the article. To me, it seems that you just make the table unnecessarily long by adding these rows. It's not like in the "Club career statistics", where a player can miss an entire season but still belongs to a club. You don't "belong" to your national team in the same way. I have noticed that @BarryHero, who also makes edits on Swedish footballers, has added these "empty" rows to many articles. Has a consensus in this question been reached in earlier discussions? // Mattias321 (talk) 13:48, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Mattias321, it's correctly written. He debuted in 2009 and retired 2021, so just fine Dr Salvus 13:57, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I know that the years are correct, but the table structure doesn't seem optimal to me. A more extreme example is Magnus Eriksson. He has two caps, one in 2014 and one in 2021. What is the point of including 2015–2020 in the table? // Mattias321 (talk) 14:14, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I fully agree Mattias, there is no point whatsoever in including four or five consecutive rows of 0s. I could understand one row if they were absent for a year or a row with "2010–2014, 0 apps, 0 goals" so readers understand their was a gap between caps and don't just assume they were in consecutive years. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 14:03, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

To me, an empty row reads as "we don't know whether they played or not that year; we have no info". I'd rather rowspan the 5 empty years in one row, and call it 2010–2014 if it's too much of a hassle (I personally prefer just indicating five consecutive rows of 0s). Nehme₁₄₉₉ 14:13, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

See here, which ended in, yeah, not sure. Kante4 (talk) 14:13, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Agreed with SFS and Nehme1499 Dr Salvus 14:26, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

we should include the 'empty' years as, like Nehme says, otherwise it indicates lack of knowledge. GiantSnowman 21:09, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Ok, but what about situations where a player has been a part of the squad after he played his last international match? Take Pontus Jansson as an example. He retired from international football in 2021 and was a part of the squad during that year. However, he played his last match in 2020. Should 2021 (0 caps, 0 goals) be included in the table? To me, it makes more sense to include that year compared to "in between years" where a player wasn't even part of the squad. // Mattias321 (talk) 12:03, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. While the infobox should have the year he debuts and the year he's last fieldedm, I'd agree to put this in the table below. Dr Salvus 12:21, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports has an RFC

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 19:20, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Angel Chibozo

Chibozo hasn't played for Juve U23 yet but Nehme added it anyway. Hadn't we decided that we'd only put the starting year when a youth player debuts with the first/reserve team? Dr Salvus 07:31, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

He is part of the roster and has an assigned number. It doesn't make much sense to say that he doesn't play for any club. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 07:39, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

When Chibozo makes his debut, will we be allowed to change "2021-" to "[the year he debuts]-"? Dr Salvus 07:50, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I would say so, yes. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 07:55, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Having a squad number is not indicative of being a squad member. Why does he need a senior career in the infobox if he is still a youth player? GiantSnowman 09:13, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Again with this... because the two can overlap. And yes, of course having a number means that you're a squad member. What else does it mean? Nehme₁₄₉₉ 09:34, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

This is only for this moment. When he debuts (I hope as soon as possibile and that won't be loaned), we'll put the year he debuts. Dr Salvus 09:43, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

and what if he never makes his debut? GiantSnowman 09:57, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman: It's not going to but here it could be better if the current team weren't shown. Dr Salvus 10:05, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

A 16 year old gets a squad number to sit on the bench one game a season - is he a first-team player now? No, of course not. The same applies here. GiantSnowman 09:58, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

A 32 year old goalkeeper sits on the bench the whole season. Is he a first-team player? Yes. What's the cutoff? 1 game? 5? 38? Nehme₁₄₉₉ 09:59, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Nehme, here I gotta agree with GS. A third choice GK cannot be compared with a youth setup player... Dr Salvus 10:03, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Maybe, but what's the limit? If someone made 6 bench appearances, is he a first-team player? Nehme₁₄₉₉ 10:05, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Could depend from the age, the matches played in his career, the matches played with the coach, the matches played during the season, the call-ups and the matches played with the youth team. For example, in my insignificant opinion, Soulé and Miretti can't be considered as a first team player as they were only humiliated by Allegri when he had to courage to field them for 2 minutes. They're also young players who also play for Juve U23 (and for Juve U19 in the Youth League). Dr Salvus 10:12, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Your argument is exactly why I think we should work based off contracts --SuperJew (talk) 10:10, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@Salvus: so what you're suggesting is for me to take a look at all this information, check the percentage of games played at youth level, at reserve level, at senior level (both during the player's career and under a specific coach), and then come up with a solution? I don't think this is doable at all. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 10:15, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Apart from big clubs giving 15 x 17 year-olds a professional contract and they end up nowhere near the first team? Misleading information for readers. GiantSnowman 10:15, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Nehme, could we say a player is aggregated to the first team for ever when he overtakes a number of matches played with the 1st team composed by X minutes? (I also prefer being called Doc instead of Salvus) Dr Salvus 10:24, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

We need to look at the case of each player individually, looking at the context of their 'bench' appearances. A backup goalkeeper being on 40 times? clearly a member. A 17 year old appearing once? Clearly not. GiantSnowman 10:27, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

But also a player benched 12/13 times who's never played more than 5 minutes on aggregate and who always plays with the reserves/youth squad cannot be considered as a 1st team player, just like all Juve's youth players who can never play with them due to a bad coach afraid to field them Dr Salvus 10:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

This is just your interpretation. I can't do the same interpretation for Lebanese league players: I just take the information from reliable sources (such as national-football-teams.com, Soccerway or Global Sports Archive). All three list Chibozo as a Juventus U23 player btw. Doing anything else is OR imo. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 10:45, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Nobody is doubting he is contracted to Juventus, which is what the sources are essentially showing. The databases do not have the nuances that we do. GiantSnowman 11:01, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

But I'm arguing that we don't have these nuances for situations outside of the top 5 European leagues. And even when we do, the situation is still subject to interpretation. I might interpret 7 bench appearances as enough, another person might argue that the player is strictly a youth player. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 11:07, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

So, can't we decide our nuances? I'd suggest something based on the bench appearances with the 1st team, the number of minutes played with the 1st team and the appearances with the reserves/youth team. Dr Salvus 11:20, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Read my comment above where I tagged you. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 11:23, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

And, as I previously stated, we don't have youth team statistics for 99% of countries. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 11:24, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

hence why we close the youth career, and start the senior career, when they make their senior debut - the easiest way around it... GiantSnowman 11:25, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Ok, sorry. But we're talking about a player who hasn't even been fielded once for a professional match. And as GS stated above, there's a 0,000000000000001 % possibility that he'll never play. As he wasn't called up so many times (as far as I remember but I always check Juve U23's call-ups for each match). So, I would not add anything about his professional career which doesn't exist (neither his current club, nor the timestamp next to Juventus). He only plays for the Primavera side and so I'd put Juventus Primavera in the current club and the number he uses to play with the Primavera side Dr Salvus 11:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

That's what you do, but many of us are still not sold on that idea. A youngster who makes his debut in the League Cup but continues to spend most of his time playing for the under-21s isn't a senior player. – PeeJay 14:28, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

PJ is right. A player could also be fielded as the first team had 304047743939 injuries or the coach simply did turnover but he'll play the rest of his next two seasons with the youth team. However, as Nehme said above, this cannot he done in the leagues like Lebanon as there is not enough information about the Lebabese youth players. Dr Salvus 15:00, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, we've moved slightly off topic, and we've re-hashing the 'youth career v senior career' argument, which isn't actually what this discussion started as. The issue is - Chibozo has not made his senior debut, and yet Nehme believes that he should be classed as a senior player (which, interestingly, contradicts his position on the 'youth career v senior career' argument!) — Preceding unsigned comment added by GiantSnowman (talk • contribs)

How so? Both youth and senior careers would remain open. I don't see the contradiction. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 19:35, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

• Has Chibozo ever played for Juve U23? No
• Who does he play for? Juventus Primavera
• How many times has Chibozo been called-up this season by Juve U23? Twice
• Why is he notable? Because he played for Benin in March
• Should there be any information about his professional career (which does not exist yet)? No

I'd add the information related to the Primavera instead for a team they've hardly ever been called-up also to players like Leonardo Cerri, Zsombor Senko, Samuel Iling-Junior, Filippo Fiumanò, Ervin Omić as they've hardly ever played for Juve U23 in this and in the last season Dr Salvus 20:32, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand. All those players have made their debut for the U23 team; what's the issue? Nehme₁₄₉₉ 21:00, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

They've played the larger part of the two seasons with Juve U19 Dr Salvus 21:01, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

So if someone played more games with the national U21 team, but has also played a couple of games for the senior national team, you're telling me that the player isn't a senior international? This discussion is escalating way too much. We started with A and are talking about F. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 21:16, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Why are you conflating club and international careers? GiantSnowman 21:19, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Division 1 Östra

The article Division 1 Östra has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

looks to fail WP:NSPORT, A Swedish league, I could not find a related Swedish Wiki, nor could I find any significant references that were not mirrors.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeepday (talk • contribs) 17:59, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

RfC: Notes for cups in club statistics table

Following these two discussions (1, 2): should there be a note, which lists the cups, next to "National cup" and "League cup" in a player's club career statistics table? Nehme₁₄₉₉ 14:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Rupert1904, GiantSnowman, Mattythewhite, Dashiellx, Felixsv7, ItsKesha, Microwave Anarchist, Spike 'em, and Muur: courtesy ping to the involved editors in the two discussions. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 14:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Examples

1) Without notes

Appearances and goals by club, season and competition

Club	Season	League			National cup		League cup		Continental		Other		Total
		Division	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals
Wiki City	2010–11	Second Division	15	10	0	0	0	0	—		0	0	15	10
Template Rangers	2011–12	First Division	0	0	0	0	0	0	—		0	0	0	0
Career total			15	10	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

2) With notes

Appearances and goals by club, season and competition

Club	Season	League			National cup		League cup		Continental		Other		Total
		Division	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals
Wiki City	2010–11	Second Division	15	10	0	0	0	0	—		0	0	15	10
Template Rangers	2011–12	First Division	0	0	0	0	0	0	—		0	0	0	0
Career total			15	10	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Comments

• With notes: the average reader won't be aware of each country's national cup. Some countries, such as England, even have multiple domestic cups, which adds to the confusion. Having a note listing the cups involved is clearer. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 14:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
• With notes: agree with Nehme1499. In addition, I'd also use the notes instead of the name of the cup if the player has always played the same cup. Dr Salvus 14:34, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

  I'd also use the capital C in "Cup:. It'd be less ugly Dr Salvus 14:37, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

  "cup" is not a proper noun, so it's correctly written in lowercase. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 14:45, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• With notes as people shouldn't be expected to know what the cup competition is (especially in countries that have multiple cups, and for players who've played in multiple countries, and therefore multiple different cup competitions). Joseph2302 (talk) 14:43, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
• Literally don't care - as long as people don't edit war over it. GiantSnowman 14:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
• With notes: It does no harm to help the general reader understand what the football reader might take for granted. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 14:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• The harm I see is that redundant notes clutter up tables and make them harder to figure out. Most of us at WP:FOOTY are very familiar with the tables but for others, adding unnecessary complexity comes at a cost of readability. MOS:OVERLINKING quotes a study which states that "simply adding more links does not increase the overall number of clicks taken from a page. Instead, links compete with each other for user attention". Similarly, unnecessary footnotes would compete with necessary footnotes for user attention. Robby.is.on (talk) 15:03, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• Without notes Some countries […] have multiple domestic cups. There is only one national cup and league cup per country. We should only add notes where ambiguity exists. Notes for the "Other" column will clarify if there are cups beyond the national and league cups, for example the EFL Trophy in England. the average reader won't be aware of each country's national cup. If readers want to know the exact names of the national and league cups they can look them up, no need to clutter up the tables. Robby.is.on (talk) 14:56, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• A reader might be confused on whether England's national cup is the FA Cup, FA Trophy, EFL Cup, EFL Trophy, etc... See Malaysia for example, who have the Malaysia FA Cup and the misleading Malaysia Cup (which is actually a league cup). If readers want to know the exact names of the national and league cups they can look them up: following that logic we should also remove the divisions, as readers can look those up as well. I don't see how removing information can be more useful than adding it; a small hatnote isn't particularly cluttering. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 15:06, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• following that logic we should also remove the divisions No, there's a difference: Countries have different league tiers, we need to spell out which tier a player has played in. In the case of Germany, for example, it could be the Bundesliga, the 2. Bundesliga, the 3. Liga, etc. A reader might be confused on whether England's national cup is the FA Cup, FA Trophy, EFL Cup, EFL Trophy, etc... If we assume a significant chunk of our readers doesn't know the difference between national cups and league cups, wouldn't the elegant solution be to link "National cup" and "League cup"? We have a League cup article which lists the league cups for all the different countries, we'd just need one for "National cup". Robby.is.on (talk) 15:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• This won't work - how are you going to link 'National Cup' to cover a player who has played in England, Netherlands, Germany, France etc.? GiantSnowman 15:30, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• I think he means we would link to an article called National cup (or National cup (association football)), which covers the general topic of national cups in football, similarly to league cup. I wouldn't be opposed to this solution. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 15:32, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• Right. Thanks, Nehme1499. Robby.is.on (talk) 15:33, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

All the trophies you've mentioned are League cups (except the FA Cup). A reader, especially for the players who play in the lowest leagues could not understand in which cup he played in. This is the reason we do need notes Dr Salvus 15:35, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

There were 3 replies in a few minutes so I've written this comment without reading them Dr Salvus 15:39, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• With notes: However, I'm not sure I like the note being in the table header. I would prefer it in the detail with the apps stats. I believe there was an example of this. --dashiellx (talk) 15:41, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
• With notes: But I'd prefer using Tooltip rather than efn. But not vehemently Felixsv7 (talk) 16:02, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
• Without notes: There already exists distinct national cup and league cups columns. To Nehme’s argument that some countries have multiple cups, that’s why we have these separate columns. Adding a note here is redundant. If we combined national cup and league cup into one column, there would be a discussion to be had about the usefulness of these notes. But as it currently stands, they are separate.

Further, the note is isolated and has no frame of reference to which clubs or seasons they are in reference to. A list of a number of different cups adds no clarity to a reader. It adds ambiguity and creates confusion. Take Álvaro Morata, Pedro Pereira and Douglas Costa’s stats table for reference. These notes are on an island and I do not think a listing of cups brings value or any level of further understanding to the average reader. These notes also don’t accurately reflect the trajectory of any of their careers and movement between countries and their respective domestic cups. Morata is currently playing in Italy but the last cup in his “National Cup” note is the FA Cup in England. You say your edits are better for the average reader but I can’t believe I am the only person who thinks the average reader would be confused by that?

It’s a stats stable. We shouldn’t just add notes for the sake of adding notes. Where do we stop with notes? Should we also have a footnote that says in Costa’s table that only Brazilian clubs play in a state league? Or on Morata’s that only England has a League Cup of the countries he has played in? For Pereira, should we also have notes that Serie A is the first division in Italy, Serie B is the second, EFL Championship is the second division in England, etc?

While I don’t necessarily love the the appearance of all the notes and footnotes in Continental and Other columns as they are very busy, they are necessary because those columns are a catch all. It’s the best solution we have found without creating a stats table with an egregious amount of columns. A European club can now compete in three different continental competitions in a single season as no less than 10 are doing so this year with the introduction of the Europa Conference League (including Celtic, FC Midtjylland, FC Flora, Slavia Prague and more). Therefore, notes are needed in this scenario to indicate which competitions these stats apply to. Same in the case of the Other column; Bayern Munich played in three different “Other” super cup competitions in the 2020–21 season so this note adds value.

I appreciate that Nehme is attempting to clear up a supposed issue and help the average reader but I firmly believe this note is counter to that goal. Rupert1904 (talk) 16:36, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• With notes as others have stated this is clear an unambiguous. Would add that I would use the names of the cup directly in the header if they have only played in one country (i.e. the display at Trent Alexander-Arnold rather than Luca Pellegrini). Microwave Anarchist (talk) 18:36, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Microwave Anarchist - I think linking the cup directly is fine and unambiguous when a player has only played in one country like TAA. The issue I and other editors have is when the player is moving countries as noted above and has a footnote on his article with a list of a ton of different cups that have no specific relation to any stat or season. Rupert1904 (talk) 19:23, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
    • @Rupert1904: sorry, my comment was unclear. As stated, I think in cases where the player has played in more than one country, there should be a note in the header so it's clear what competition the column is pertinent to. Having said that, I have no preference between the note being in the header or in the body as proposed by dashiellx, but it should be consistent. Microwave Anarchist (talk) 21:24, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
• With notes per Nehme1499, Joseph2302, Struway2 and Microwave Anarchist. LTFC 95 (talk) 20:12, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
  • No one who has said with notes has addressed my legitimate concerns/questions above. Rupert1904 (talk) 19:16, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
• With notes but I wouldn’t mind either way. SlySabre (talk) 14:02, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Novocastrians ?

Does anyone know anything about a football team called Novocastrians? Is it an old name for Newcastle United, or a really old team from the Newcastle area? Govvy (talk) 18:50, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

It's definitely not an old name for Newcastle United, who have always been called that. Where have you seen such a team mentioned? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 18:57, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Worth noting, of course, that Novocastrian means "of or relating to Newcastle", so the term could have been used by a writer as a rather flowery way to refer to Newcastle United or another team from that area, without it having been their actual name...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 19:05, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

The Spurs Alphabet, the early players, I read one played for Novocastrians, 1900, late 1890s, and when I googled it, there was Old Novocastrians, but that club sounded not that old, founded in 2013! There was a rugby club, but really, I don't see anything for a team over 120+ years ago with that name, somewhat confusing, somewhat intriguing. Govvy (talk) 20:21, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Can only presume that it was an extremely minor local team...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:30, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

When I was at Newcastle University in the early 90s there was a team called the (Old?) Novocastrians which was an alumni team from the university and played in a minor local league. Black Kite (talk) 07:47, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

just a point of information. There is a Newcastle in Australia. People from there are also know as Novocastrians. They play several versions of football there. Maybe one of those teams is or was known by that name. Having written that, I did some digging. The Newcastle Knights, a rugby League team, apparently has that nickname. HiLo48 (talk) 07:42, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I would say it's unlikely that at the turn of the 20th century Spurs signed a player who had previously played in New South Wales, but stranger things have probably happened..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:02, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Novocastrians: home ground, Lincoln Road Ponders End, who played London League, London Senior Cup, FA Amateur Cup is a bit more likely. Cattivi (talk) 10:31, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I see them there, there was a note in the 1901-1902 section. (Two clubs left the section during the season, with their playing records deleted as a result. Novocastrians withdrew, while Millwall St. John’s departure was the result of their being suspended by the London F.A., though what ‘crimes’ had been committed are unclear.) Maybe the club didn't last very long, bit of a strange one. I think you're right, makes more sense to be a London club, after seeing that. Still strange to find not much info about it. Feels like this has left more questions than answers! A Newcastle historic name.. a club playing in London... :/ Govvy (talk) 13:42, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Maybe a club for/started by exiled Geordies in London? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 13:57, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

It very likely had some sort of association with the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne. Former students are know as "Old Novocastrians". The club could have been founded by a former student in London. Similar to how Hanwell Town F.C. was founded by resident Geordie rail workers. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 18:28, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Roberto Onorati

On the Italian Wikipedia, there is a picture of Roberto Onorati. It says the the picture can be copied to Commons. Can someone help me how to do this? Paul Vaurie (talk) 17:49, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

If I'm not wrong, this cannot be uploaded there as it violates the copyright (in the USA), while it's in the public domain in Italy Dr Salvus 18:25, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

It can be copied to Commons "solo se l'immagine è precedente al 1976" (only if the image was taken before 1976). Onorati's picture was taken in 1993, so it can't be moved. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 19:44, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

National youth squads: making editing easier

Hi there. The other day I updated the squad on England national under-20 football team to reflect the changes made to the squad during the international break (injury drop-outs, new call-ups etc). As ever, it was a bit of a faff. The main issue is that the current squad and recent call-up sections use different templates - {{nat fs start no caps}} and {{nat fs r start}} respectively (n.b. senior national sides use {{nat fs g start}} for the former). You have to fiddle round adding the fields that do/don't appear in the respective templates. And even then it's not perfect - for instance, the consensus established many years ago was that we would use a template without caps/goals for the squads beneath under-21 level, as these totals were hard to verify. However, {{nat fs r start}} which we need to use to list the latest call-up, doesn't have the ability to drop caps/goals fields. So they have to be filled out with dashes, for the most part.

A solution I discussed as long ago as 2016 (blimey) was creating a new template covering all potential bases in a national squad template. I think there's two possible ways you could go with that, and I'm not sure either are feasible, but hear me out!

Option 1

List which fields you wanted at the top of the template. So something like this (and this isn't properly styled, but you'll get the idea)

Number=No; Pos=Yes; Name=Yes; Age=Yes; Caps=No; Goals=No; Club=Yes; ClubNat=Yes; Latest=No

Fields listed as no will see those columns omitted, and if you copy across a player listing with, say, their latest call-up into the current squad then it simply wouldn't show as you've selected no in the "latest" field at the top of the template. It would also allow you to leave dormant empty fields in place for use in certain circumstances. For instance, you might think numbers are irrelevant outside of major tournaments so choose to omit them. But then when the tournament comes round, you can just change the settings and type in the number rather pasting "|no=" into every player listing.

Option 2

This would be fairly similar but you wouldn't list your choices at the top. Instead the template would simply omit a column if none of the player listings contained a particular field. So in this instance if you moved a player with a recent call-up field into the current squad, you would need to remove that field.

Are either of these options possible and do we have an users with the expertise to make them? @Sygmoral: was kind enough to do some work when I suggested something similar to this in 2016, but the templates they created now seem to be deleted and I'm not quite sure if they're exactly what I'm proposing here.

Other things that might make editing easier

So here are a few things that would make editing easier even if we don't amend the templates.

• If a player withdraws from a current squad with injury, leave them in place rather than move them to the recent call-ups section (while still adding an "INJ" subscript). This would mean you have to shift fewer players around, and not have the scenario of moving a player out from one squad only to restore them to the next one. You might make an exception to this for major tournaments and use the existing style.
• List the squads called-up in the last year in prose at the top of the section. This is a format in place in the squad section of England under-19 cricket team. This makes things easier as you can hold all your previous squad references in the prose section - a frequent issue is that a player in the recent squads section gets called-up for, say, a squad in March and their listing contains the reference for all players called-up to a squad in September. You unthinkingly remove the recent call-up and then realise your mistake and have to go back and restore the reference. It also means templates are more readable when editing because they only contains the <ref name=OctSquad/> type listing (you might even choose to omit these on a per player basis and just have one reference at the top - I think that's probably fine). A further benefit is giving a simple summary of a side's season.
• A secondary change you make if you did the previous bullet is to not list each individual opponent and the exact call-up dates in the recent call-up section. Because it's listed above the template you could simply say "October 2021" rather than "v. Italy, Czech Republic, 7–11 October 2021". This might make the templates more compact and easier for users to read (especially on mobile) and, again, make them more readable in edit mode.
• This last one is a style point, but I'll throw it in anyway. The standard prose in the recent call-ups section is: "The following players have previously been called up to the England under-20 squad in the last 12 months and remain eligible." I'd like to change that in youth squad articles to: "The following players have previously been called up to the England under-20 squad in the last 12 months and remained eligible for the latest squad." I'm not quite happy with that wording and maybe someone could suggest a neater version, but the reason for my suggested change is as follows: from July to the call-ups in September you frequently see recent call-up sections wiped. I can see why users do this, a new season has started, the players listed have mostly moved up an age group (i.e. under-18s to under-19s) and so are no longer eligible to play. But that's also true of the majority of the players in the latest squad, and we don't delete that. I think it looks odd, and it would be better to leave those players in place to give a true reflection of the players called-up in the previous season, up to the point where we get the first squad of the new season.

Right, I think that's enough for people to chew on. Let me know what you think. Also pinging @Slater583: as they do more of the heavy lifting on the England youth articles than I do! Cheers, HornetMike (talk) 14:12, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

• Hey, I agree with the sentiment. Removing some complexity would be appreciated. I'm fine with either option propose. Regarding the sub proposals, I dont' agree with the first point. I agree with the second point, we can put "October 2021" rather than "v. Italy, Czech Republic, 7–11 October 2021". And I'm not opposed to the third, but I'm not strongly for it either. I reckon keeping eligible players saves some time, but I don't expect this will be used often enought to make a tangible difference.--Ortizesp (talk) 16:52, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

senior team articles with youth/u tournament wins

I'm just curious. Why do we add olympic wins to the articles of the first team senior squad, when it has been classified as a youth tournament since 1992? Especially when olympic squads have their very own article for exactly that? The same can be said for wins at the Mediterranean Games, which has been a youth tournament since 1991. I would understand if there was consensus on adding the youth olympic wins on the senior articles, if the olympic teams didn't have their own articles.. but they do.

Take Spain national football team as an example only, their three olympic medals won since 1992 is listed on there, and their three golds from mediterrenean games as well. It seems kinda wrong to add those honors to the first team senior squad articles, when they... you know, didn't win it. Olympic wins after 1992 should be listed on their respective articles, not on the senior squad article. The mediterrenean games should be listed on the appropriate youth article for that national team, no? Not saying that I decide anything here, but it's just something I noticed and I did my research on it as well. Is this something that editors or IPs have simply done because why not, or is there some consensus on it? Can someone help me out here? Speun (talk) 10:20, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree: senior honours should be listed in senior teams, youth honours in youth teams. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 10:28, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

So do I. Dr Salvus 10:58, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Agree: for men's teams post-1992, the Olympic tournament was won by the under-23/Olympic team, not the senior team. So should be listed on the under-23/Olympic team article (if it exists), not the main team. So Spain national under-23 football team not Spain national football team. (Note: this doesn't apply to women's football, where the teams are usually the full national teams). Joseph2302 (talk) 11:12, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Another agree here, Olympic wins after 1992 should go to respective Olympic sides.--Ortizesp (talk) 16:53, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

So it seems like we all agree that youth honors belong on the youth/u articles and not on the senior articles. Thanks to all of you for your replies! :) Speun (talk) 10:47, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Mattia Del Favero

Mattia Del Favero spent the 2018-19 season with Juve U23, the 2019-20 season with Piacenza, the 2020-21 season with Pescara, the first half of this season with Cosenza and returned to Juve U23 in January. Between 2019 and 2022, he was always on loan from Juve with whom Del Favero has never played with. However, he'd sometimes been called up since 2015 by the 1st team. Should his table stats have a row for "Juventus" at its top? Dr Salvus 21:00, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, if only to reflect the infobox. This is standard for other players on loan from a parent club but who have never played. GiantSnowman 18:58, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Loaned players

As we arleady know the end of a player's loan, we could arleady write the end year in the footballer's infobox. For example, Nicolò Fagioli was (unfortunatley) loaned in August 2021 but we arleady knew that his loan would end in June 2022. Why don't we arleady put 2021-2022 next to Cremonese? The reader will understand that he's still a Cremonese player if reads the current club in the infobox. Dr Salvus 20:52, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think so. Gerard Valentín was loaned to Lugo in 2019, for only six months, and later his loan was extended for another season. He never even returned to his parent club (Deportivo La Coruña), so I'm guessing it's best to leave "in the open", aside from clear special cases (loan with a mandatory buyout clause at X date). BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 21:06, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Could the players loaned this January until June have 2022 next to the club who borrowed him and with no dashes if they were loaned with no options to buy? Dr Salvus 21:18, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

What i've seen is that the spell is kept open until the loan is over. Kante4 (talk) 21:19, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

yes, this is what we should do - adding the 'end' year implies the loan has finished. If it is ongoing leave it open. Some loans end early or are extended. GiantSnowman 21:24, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Nico Estévez

@A1exlatham2580: is constantly changing Nico Estévez's infobox by saying that we should include 2021 for his FC Dallas appointment, when the 2021 season was clearly over. What input should appear in the infobox, 2021 or 2022? To me, the correct approach would be the same as in Brazilian managers, when they are appointed for the ensuing season (i.e. Jorge Sampaoli's appointment for Santos in the 2019 season). BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 18:38, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

2022, which is when his career with them began. GiantSnowman 18:53, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh and editor is a sock, so reverted and blocked anyway. GiantSnowman 18:54, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Surely if he joined the club in December 2021, it should be 2021, even if no matches were played until 2022? That's what we would do for players that signed on that date. Joseph2302 (talk) 19:37, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

If I'm not wrong, the football market starts in January so should be 2022 Dr Salvus 19:43, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

No, it's not - a player might sign the contract in December 2021 but it won't start until January 2022. GiantSnowman 21:25, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

It depends on what the contract says. If the guy signed in December, but could only start being included in official matches from January, it means that he was effectively employed from 2022. If he joined in December (for e.g. as a free agent), and he could have played right away (but didn't because there were no matches to play), I would put 2021. It really depends on the fine print in the contract details I guess (which clubs such as Juventus show, not sure about others). Nehme₁₄₉₉ 22:27, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

MLS contracts are for a full calendar year (Jan-Dec) to align with the season (March-December). So 2022 is the logical choice to align with that. Happens all the time, lots of out of contract t players will sign contracts in late December that take effect January 1.RedPatch (talk) 22:51, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Citations wanted - potential entries for List of footballers killed during World War II

Reposted and updated version of original now archived.

As main contributor to this article, I would like to flag up for attention of others on the project a number of candidates for the list that are already wiki-articled and known or believed to have been killed in or died as a result of circumstances brought on by the war (eg execution, in enemy captivity, effects of wounds etc) but which so far lack a reliable citation regarding their death which is preconditional to inclusion in the list. A few have no death circumstances described in the text of their article but I note have been put on category lists that suggest someone knew/believed they died in wartime circumstances. I also include those whose death circumstances are disputed - see their talk pages for further detail - and are in need of a conclusive ruling in or out.

• Josef Adelbrecht (Austria) - categorised as Austrian military personnel killed in the war. His German wikipedia article states he was killed on the Russian front NW of Moscow.
• Dragutin Babic (Yugoslavia) - there is a source in Croat language but it is unclear to me it indicates manner of death
• Josef Bergmaier (Germany)
• Jozsef Eisenhoffer (Hungary) - also disputed death circumstances
• Bronislaw Fichtel (Poland) - disputed death date (see talk page)
• Hermann Flick (Germany)
• Josef Fruhwirth (Austria) - categorised as Austrian military personnel killed in WWII. His article in Germany wikipedia has citation to an Austrian newspaper report of his death which I find unreadable, I can only make out he died on the 'Ostfront' (Eastern Front).
• Nikolai Gromov (Russia) - Russian language profile says he 'died at the front' in 1943 without further detail. More informative sources if found preferred.
• Karl-Richard Idlane (Estonia) - Death cause and death dates (both in 1942) disputable.
• Karl Kanhauser (Austria/Czechoslovakia) - German wikipedia states without citation he was drafted into the German army towards end of WWII and deployed to Yugoslavia where he was reported missing, no final year given.
• Franz Krumm (Germany) - There is a link to the German Volksbund website but it does not directly connect to his details and I lack expertise to interrogate the site.
• Willi Lindner (Germany) - source in German language, not fully clear about death details
• Johann Luef (Austria) - his German wikipedia article indicates he died of wounds in hospital in East Prussia.
• Josef Madlmayer (Austria)
• Artur Marczewski (Poland) - his Polish and German wikipedia articles state without citation he disappeared in January 1945 following Red Army advance into Poland, where he had been working for the Germans as a factory official.
• Vladimir Markov (footballer) (Russia) - Stated in Olympedia to have died in Leningrad in 1942, which coincided with the long running siege of the city. Can evidence be found for treating him as a victim of the siege?
• Alexander Martinek (Austria/Germany)
• Otto Martwig (Germany)
• Philip Meldon (Ireland) - disputed death details, not known to CWGC.
• August Mobs (Germany) - said to have been killed in air raid.
• Alberto Nahmias (Greece) - death circumstances disputed; his English article gives two different years of death in 1980s without source. His Greek wikipedia biography states he was arrested by the Germans in 1942 because of Jewish origins and further trace was lost, possibly because of being put to death, although also said to have emigrated post-war. Can someone find sources that settle this?

NB - The nearest named individual recorded from Greek Jews listed in the Testimony Pages of Yad Vashem is an Alberto Nachmias (sic), born in Greece, died at Auschwitz, age given as 42 but no birth or death date given. However out of the estimated 6M Jews killed in the Holocaust only 4.5M are known to Yad Vashem.Cloptonson (talk) 18:53, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

• Slavko Pavletic (Croatia) - no death circumstance details given in text but has been categorised as a Croatian civilian killed in the war.
• Jean Petit (footballer, born 1914) (Belgium) - His French wikipedia article indicates without citation or death location given that he was a doctor = probably civilian rather than military - who was killed in a bombardment preceding the Allied invasion of Normandy.
• Kurts Plade (Latvia) - Repatriated to Germany as a Baltic German, his Latvian wikipedia article states he was 'killed' (no further detail) in February 1945 in Poznan, Poland. I note his death coincided with the Soviet siege of Poznan.
• Bernardo Poli (Italy) - Italian wikipedia indicates he died in 'an unspecified war accident' serving as an airman. Only citation in English wikipedia does not indicate manner of his death.
• Fyodor Rimsha (Russia)
• Holger Salin (Finland) - No decisive date in most wikipedias. His Finnish wikipedia article gives 27 October 1943 but the Finnish language sources are subscription required.
• Aristotel Samsuri (Albania) - Reportedly executed in German concentration camp in Greece as a Communist partisan between 1942/1944, but was claimed by the postwar Communist regime of Albania to have escaped and survived before proclaiming him a martyr in 1981.
• Gennaro Santillo (Italy) - Categorised as Italian military personnel killed in the war but no indications of military service on Italian wikipedia. Would like to be more certain of his status (mil or civ) before adding him.
• Otto Siffling (Germany) - It is listed under the list on German Wikipedia, but says he died of pleurisy. I've added it here in case he is found to have served during the war.

UPDATE - It appears he has been taken off that list in German wikipedia so it may be safe to assume he has been ruled out as a war victim.Cloptonson (talk) 08:54, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

• Harry Spencer (footballer) (New Zealand, previously played in England) - There are similarities with a New Zealand soldier known to the CWGC (see talk page of article). Can someone find confirmation they are the same man?
• Erwin Stührk (Germany) - disputable death date, death place given in German war grave site not easy to ascertain as it only gives German form of name rather than its vernacular.
• Ludwik Szabakiewicz (Poland) - disputable death details, particularly date
• Willi Völker (Germany) - uncertainty about death location.
• Karl Wahlmuller (Austria)
• Heinz Warnken (Germany) - German wikipedia gives him as gefallen (fallen) in 1943 but no detail of precise death date or death place.
• Willi Wigold (Germany) - date of death disputed

There may be additions coming onto the list so I encourage watch this space! Others are welcome to add. Please let us know if sources are found and added into their articles.Cloptonson (talk) 18:29, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Tarik Muharemović

This player has never been called up by Juve U23 and nor has he with the 1st team. Should he have his number with Juve U19 (the team he plays for) or no numbers at all? Dr Salvus 12:50, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

No number. GiantSnowman 12:58, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Template:Belgian FA player

Yesterday night, I created this template. However, there's a problem I can't solve. I first used the template at Koni De Winter but it added this category Category:Belgian FA template using numeric ID. Can anyone fix this? Dr Salvus 08:19, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

First of all, you have to create a request for a new property at Wikidata, as you are currently using one that belongs to Soccerway's template. Furthermore, your syntax seem fine. BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 16:03, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't know how to. Can anyone else explain me what should be done and do what you've said? Dr Salvus 16:07, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Done, there was already a property related to a template from the Belgian FA in the Wikidata, I've just linked them and fixed the template. About the cats, they needed to be created to feature as "hidden". Now the page will not show the cat (it will only appear when editing). BRDude⁷⁰ (talk) 16:24, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Dr Salvus 16:25, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Leonardo Spinazzola

In late 2018, he played two matches for Juve Primavera after an cruciate injury. Should there be Juventus and next to it 2018 in his infobox (youth career section)? Dr Salvus 08:08, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

No. A 25 year old playing with the youth team as part of coming back from injury is not a youth career! GiantSnowman 08:18, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand why we keep brining back the topic of the youth career in the infobox in the form of small unrelated discussions. We need an actual RfC for this. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 23:06, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I'd only asked just to know what should be done in this situation. Dr Salvus 06:21, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, we should make a final RFC and then just add to template somewhere for clarities sake.--Ortizesp (talk) 16:59, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

What is the minimum standard for page creation now in light of the RFC eliminating appearance criteria

I know GNG has always trumped all, but in light of that is there/should there be a minimum standard for quality/quantity of references for new articles. Given the current time of the year, many North American leagues that were on the WP:FPL list have just started up leading to several new articles being created for many players (likely many creators may be unaware of the RFC). I give myself a high standard and have only created articles for players where I could find multiple non-trivial sources so that GNG could undoubtedly be met. Here are my recent creations: Luka Gavran, Kairo Coore, Jacob Carlos, Zakaria Bahous, and Alonso Coello Camarero. I ensured there were multiple non-database/stats page references beyond a passing mention as my criteria for creation (Note for that last article on ACC, everything that's unsourced+the picture were not added by me, but what I assume is a family member based on the username).

Comparatively, here are some recent articles not created by me that contain minimal referencing and/or referencing primarily based on Stats Pages/Player Database/Team profiles: Tyler Moss (soccer), Eduardo Jesus, Daniel Bloyou, Samuel Owusu (footballer, born 2000), where the articles basically read as "In 20XX, he played A games for B team scoring C goals. In 20XX, he played X games for Y team, scoring Z goals."

I know my own standards for articles I create are high, but just wondering what is the minimum? Are those other ones sufficient or should there be more in there to be created (ie. surviving AfD). For example, there are other players who've made their debuts, who if I could not find what I deemed to be sufficient sourcing, I did not bother to create articles for, even though I could have used database/stats pages/trivial mentions for. RedPatch (talk) 20:42, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Sourcing only to stats sites etc. is not enough - WP:NBASIC applies. GiantSnowman 20:47, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I think overall we need to bring up our own standards. One liner microstubs sourcing only Soccerway aren't good enough, we have to meet WP:GNG as it stands. When I first started I was guilty of making some of these same microstubs, so I'm working on improving my old pages and I'd encourage anyone else who creates pages to do the same. And I think I've seen some improvement from other page creators as well, so I guess that's good news.--Ortizesp (talk) 16:09, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Philipp Beigl

Hello, Football folks,

This article is tagged for CSD G4 deletion because it was deleted in an AFD in 2020 but I think he might qualify now as since then he has played for professional soccer teams in the U.S. I just wanted to get a second opinion here about whether there have been sufficient enough changes in the past two years that would make CSD G4 no longer apply. Thanks Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:57, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

The last AfD was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philipp Beigl (2nd nomination), less than a year ago. Beigl had already made one appearance at the time, but the article was deleted anyway. He's made one more appearance since then, but fundamentally nothing has really changed. Sir Sputnik (talk) 23:13, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I only saw the first AFD. Thanks for the information, Sir Sputnik. Well, I won't untag the page. CSD G4s tend to not get deleted very quickly so there may be time to add some new sources. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:54, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I think this needs to go back to AFD. GiantSnowman 09:40, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I found a few sources, but haven't had the time to look at them. I'll try to see tomorrow if there's enough there to make an article RedPatch (talk) 02:31, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I updated the article. Found a few good German sources. RedPatch (talk) 22:16, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Two of the references were the same article, one was just an updated version of the other. I've consolidated them into one named reference. BigDom (talk) 06:09, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Generic goal

When's a goal scored not notable enough to be included in the prose of a footballer's article? Dr Salvus 14:38, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

When it is routine match reporting. I'd go the other way completely: justify why a particular goal is notable enough to include.Spike 'em (talk) 14:52, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Most goals are not individually notable. Winning goals in major matches (eg cup finals or games which clinched the league title) are probably notable. Almost all other goals are not -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 15:09, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Could a goal scored in a special way (bicycle kick or free kick for example) be notable. For example, today Matías Soulé has scored his first goal from a free kick in his career. Is this notable? Dr Salvus 15:27, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

No, because it isn't uncommon. As Chris said above, a winning goal in a major final might be noteworthy but that's about it. Goals are routine and I see them as, in effect, statistics. You shouldn't exclude a goal from the narrative if doing so will somehow lose context but that comes back to Spike's point about the goal being notable enough for inclusion. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 16:03, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

No, unless for some reason the specific fact that he scored a free kick attracted a lot of publicity (as in, far more than any other goal would get). Otherwise that 100% isn't notable -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:05, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Poland national football team

The honours section disappeared! Couldn't figure out who did it or why. I am off to work now! :/ Govvy (talk) 07:14, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not sure why that was removed with the edit summary saying that was vandalism i.e. this edit but I'm glad that has been restored by someone else, hopefully. The person who removed that honors section has been blocked as well as multiple accounts belonging to the same individual. Thanks, Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 20:18, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

The article gets surprisingly heavy editing traffic! A good chunk of the editing history don't seem that helpful, don't know if it would have to semi the article or not. Govvy (talk) 05:25, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I would do if the problems increase. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 16:06, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Updater template

Hi, I've found a thread Module talk:Sports table/Archive 1#Standings Updater Excel Template, but the link to the excel template is dead. What are you guys currently using to assist Module:Sports table updates? Will appreciate pointers to the right places to read up.Wolfmartyn (talk) 16:46, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm using what the source says. Gricehead (talk) 21:43, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Federico Gatti

I have some questions about him:

• He spent two seasons on loan at Pavarolo in a row, but no source says whether he was sent twice on an annual loan or he was sent on a biennal loan. What do I write in his infobox and in the prose?
• Gatti was on loan during the 2014-15 season when he played both for first team and for the youth team. What do I write in his infobox?
• Should there be "according to" in the "style of play" to make this more neutral? Somebody has suggested me to do this but I do not agree as no GA/FA uses this, and I do not believe the article was not neutral when it was GA reviewed. Dr Salvus 12:17, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

I think the first two are fine as they currently are. If it's a loan that was simply extended (ie. he never returned to the parent club), then its one stint, similar to a player extending his contract with a club. Youth years are fine as is, others may disagree. No opinion on third as I never really write style of play sections, as I feel they can be a bit subjective. RedPatch (talk) 12:44, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

MOS:DATETOPRES

Recently noted an editor adding -pres. in player's infobox (Jordyn Huitema and Lucas Cavallini for example) citing MOS:DATETOPRES.

I am not really updated. So is this the new way we are going to follow or are we gonna have some articles with MOS:DATETOPRES and the rest without it? Kokoeist (talk) 12:48, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

@Kokoeist it's often been discussed but no concenus yet. Revert the edits Dr Salvus 12:50, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

MOS:DATETOPRES is non-compulsory and it is well-established that it is not used for football articles. The editor in question knows that but chooses to ignore. Revert. See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#MOS:DATETOPRES in infoboxes. GiantSnowman 13:44, 18 April 2022 (UTC)