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Charges of fake football player information

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Users User:Heritagesoccerpro and User:Zombie433. Uncle G (talk) 07:10, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

• where? Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest FLC} 13:47, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Indicating Club's League in Single Season Cup Competitions

I'm specifically looking at the Football League Cup, but I think the question would apply in any national cup competition that includes teams from multiple levels. I think it'd be appropriate to indicate the current league level (Premier versus Championship, Serie A vs Serie B, etc) for each of the participants. Upsets tend to be of significant interest in these competitions, and the easiest way to know (without prior knowledge) whether an upset has occured is to compare the two teams' league levels. Also, league seems as relevant as national origin in international competitions (Europa League, etc), which seems to be indicated by default. I've made an edit along those lines in the 2010-11 Football League Cup, which has been (reasonably) reverted, and I'm curious to see if there's some kind of consensus. Indicating the league textually does seem a bit cluttered, and I'm inclined to move to color-coding instead, although that might create its own rainbowism. And along those lines, it's probably worth creating a template for these (if one doesn't exist already) as all of the current single-year articles seem to handroll a wikitable. Simianvector (talk) 00:25, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

In a competition like the League Cup, whose entry is restricted to teams from a small set of clearly-defined levels, I don't see a problem with including an indicator of the level. The most straightforward method would be columns as your trial edit had, but containing the number of the level, i.e. 1 = Premier League/old First Division, 2 = Championship/ex Division One/old Second Division, etc. Clear to understand, no need for the reader to know what the abbreviations stand for or that Championship is above League Two.

Colour-coding wouldn't be acceptable on MoS (accessibility) grounds without an alternative means of expressing the information, such as symbols, which adds an additional level of complication. I'd suggest that the reader would grasp more easily that level 2 was above level 3, than that a blue team with a dagger was above a yellow team with a star.

However, if you tried to extend it to something like the FA Cup, teams enter from dozens (hundreds?) of leagues. Their names would be meaningless to most readers, and the concept of "levels" below the top very few is a relatively recent invention and a fluid one. It's not my area of expertise, but I'd be surprised if it was easy to reliably source the lower levels of the structure as recently as 10 years ago. Daresay similar problems would be found in other countries' competitions. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 10:54, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Would 2 or 3 character abbreviations be suitable: Premier League, PL; Championship, LC (League Championship); League 1, L1, etc...? Darigan (talk) 11:05, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Although it might get a bit odd by the time you get down to the Hellenic Football League Darigan (talk) 11:11, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

If there's a real determination to do this, we could go down as far as the Conference National, and label everything below that as a regional league. --WFC-- 15:22, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi WFCforlife, I'm not too bothered either way, and the Conference National sounds like a reasonable cutting off point for the English football league, but the issue then might be how the cutting-off point is found for leagues around the world. Could we tie it in to a rule whereby the lowest league to sustain professional teams (similar to footie's WP|Athlete standards) become the cutoff point... I'm not entirely sure if this is feasible, opinion? Cheers Darigan (talk) 15:34, 13 August 2010 (UTC) - edit - Juat re-read your post and looked at the breakdown of the English league - The break between National and Regional leagues is probably better than my follow-up Darigan (talk) 15:35, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest to take a look at a couple of other domestic cups within UEFA (I think the Romanians do it, but I'm not sure about that). In order to distinguish the different levels, every club NOT in the top league is being annotated with roman numerals, e.g.:

Team 1	Score	Team 2
Springfield Isotopes (II)	2–1	Capitol City FC

I don't know if this is desired or not, but it might be an alternative to think about. --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 17:00, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Just to aggregate together the ideas so far and respond in bulk, I see the accessibility issues of colo(u)r or the league's badge or icon (which would be the most obvious correlation with national flag in international competitions), and agree it should avoided on those grounds. An abbreviation avoids that problem but to Darigan's point would need a key. Numeric representations avoid that, but I think arabic numerals tend to be heavily used in football result tables and could be confusing. So Roman numerals are a good compromise, but would again likely need a key, or at least an explanation, and below a certain level it's not clear whether you're at IX or X. Though at least in the English game it seems pretty well defined. So at this point I'm leaning towards Roman numerals for National levels, with perhaps a default indicator for 'lower level' leagues which would include everything below the lowest National league. I'll give it some time for other ideas and otherwise try out a trial edit on the current League Cup and see what it looks like. Simianvector (talk) 18:15, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Attention User:Zombie433 the cheater

I'd like to point out that User:Zombie433 is putting false informations into the articles. At first I thought that he is a football manager, but now I see that he is a stupid, crazy man, pure cheater. He faked thousands of articles about african footballers. I don't have a point why he is doing it? The most generic falsifications he is doing are inserting fake youthyears, fake number of matches and goals in club career, fake years, matches and goals in youth national teams (U-17, U-20).

In this discussion I explained how he was faking Dominic Adiyiah article [1]. The worst thing is that users from other lannguage wikipedias are copying this statistics. Also websites like transfermart are instering faked stats from youth national teams by Zombie433 to players profiles.

I already removed false information from hundreds of articles faked by Zombie433. But there are thousands more biographies falsed by him. I need your help to completely remove Zombie's fake contribution from articles.

Also I think that we should convince wikipedia administrators to permanently ban this cheater. Since 2 years he made so much damege in footballers articles, but it's a time to finally stop it.--Wrwr1 (talk) 01:59, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad people are finally noticing how detrimental Zombie433 was to the project. I said as much on several occasions, but he always seemed to get away with it, what with other people assuming good faith and all that. I agree that all his contributions need to checked (some of his additions were OK, so they don't need removing). BigDom 10:25, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

• • I have wasted enough of my time on this Zombiecase. I think the main question should be :How could this have happened? After 2 years you can find traces of his contributions all over the web. Cattivi (talk) 11:13, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Chris Morgan (footballer)

Hi there seem to have been a series of disruptive edits at Chris Morgan (footballer), with one user reverting some but not all of them, and then me reverting a new disruptive edit without reverting back further (sorry). Could someone take a look at it please. Cheers Darigan (talk) 13:21, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I've undone one more, think it's OK now. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:45, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

National youth squad navboxes

This navbox has just survived a TfD discussion due to a lack of consensus. Since I am certain that a consensus has been established by this WikiProject regarding national youth squad navboxes, this result should never have happened. Perhaps we should take this opportunity to establish the desirability of these navboxes, so that we have a definite record of whatever consensus we achieve. – PeeJay 00:46, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

RfC closure?

I think it's fair to say that the recent flag-based RfC over the football squad template ended in little consensus. However, I think that there are some (non-flag) things that can be taken from it, and that there are things that most editors can agree on that should at least ensure that any future disputes over that template do not cause disruption or take people by surprise. I have attempted to summarise these things here, and would be grateful for input from as many people as possible, to ascertain whether I have truly reflected the RfC and the current situation. Regards, --WFC-- 01:03, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Ossett Albion

The club is called Ossett Albion A.F.C., with Ossett Albion F.C. as a redirect. However, for some reason, two player categories exist - Category:Ossett Albion A.F.C. players and Category:Ossett Albion F.C. players. I'm literally about to leave the house for the weekend, so can someone please have a look and try and rectify? Thanks, GiantSnowman 10:13, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I've emptied the Category:Ossett Albion F.C. players but I've no idea how it should be deleted. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 15:30, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Empty categories can be speedy deleted under criteria C1. Bettia (talk) 15:42, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - speedy applied for. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 16:11, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Cheers guys! GiantSnowman 10:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

2010–11 Bristol City F.C. season TOTAL ATTENDANCE

Hey. Can I ask a quick question?? On my Bristol City season page. On the Season Stats (6 SEASON STATS) where its says total attendence, is that Home + Away Attendence or just home + home + home etc. Or home + home fans away from home attendence? Thanks tom Tomparfitt17 (talk) 13:06, 15 August 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomparfitt17 (talk • contribs)

Um, didn't you add that section yourself? If you don't know then hell if I know. Total home attendance seems a less pointless statistic than how many people turned up to watch home and away so I changed it to reflect 'Total home attendance'.--EchetusXe 15:32, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Category:Lists of association football players by national team

There are three examples at the above category page (namely England, Scotland, Wales) where a full list of all internationals to have played for that country exists as an article (with players listed in alphabetical order) but the article name is given an '(alphabetical)' suffix, whereas there is also an alternative page that only lists players who have reached a set threshold of caps, but this latter page is not given any suffix. As an example see List of England international footballers (alphabetical) and List of England international footballers, the latter only listing players with 30 caps or more. I would like to either make the 'complete' listings the master article (with no suffix), and a suffix be added to the qualified list, or for a suffix to be added to both lists, as this would be a more accurate descriptor of what the pages are.

Additionally I would like to ask an admin to move the page history of List of Wales international footballers to List of Wales international footballers (alphabetical) following recent changes, although hopefully this would only need to be done as a short term measure, depending on people's views on the above.

Please note I am the original creator of the Wales page (the one now called 'alphabetical'). Eldumpo (talk) 19:40, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

The talk page for List of Wales international footballers will also need moving to List of Wales international footballers (alphabetical). Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 19:47, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Why on earth do we need two lists? The 25+ caps one is totally redundant, given that the big one is sortable. I say AfD the smaller one, and move List of England international footballers (alphabetical) → List of England international footballers. --WFC-- 21:07, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

If you look at the selective lists of Germany players or Scotland players, they add a lot more useful information than just the number of caps and goals scored. If those lists were expanded to include every player capped for those countries, their length would become a serious issue (both lists are around 70,000 bytes in size at present, and will for obvious reasons only get bigger, unless the selection criteria is tightened). I think it is comparable to the situation with club lists of players, where the main article is generally a selective list that provides comprehensive information about all the important players in a club's history, with daughter articles providing comprehensive lists of all players with a lower number of appearances. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 10:22, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I understand your concern about page size, but does that argue for one list or two? It seems like one list is the most reader-friendly approach, but might lead to a need for different inclusion criteria for each national team's list. Jogurney (talk) 22:58, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I have re-posted the above thread which had just moved into Footy archive in order to try and gain wider views, and hopefully move towards a consensus/agreed actions for some of the points. I would welcome any comments/observations you have. Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 07:18, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Flags in national team infoboxs

Would someone please give me a hand in removing the flags from the title bars of all of the national team infoboxes? According to WP:MOSFLAG, we're not supposed to use flagicons for decoration, so using the {{fb}} template at the top of the infobox is inappropriate. – PeeJay 11:42, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll give you a hand, I've done a few already... :) JMHamo (talk) 13:03, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Duplicate stadium?

Are Estadio La Libertad and Estadio de Bata the same stadium? The Estadio de Bata lists a reference which says the Women's African Championship was held at Estadio La Libertad and the photograph on WorldStadiums also says it is Estadio La Libertad but Tadpolefarmer has changed coordinates of the stadia. TheBigJagielka (talk) 14:57, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Leslie Walter Minter, Chelsea and Napoli player, around 1920

do you have news about him? Rsssf writes he was born in 1890, he played at Chelsea FC London around 1910 and maybe was one of the first Società Sportiva Calcio Napoli players.. 93.33.2.171 (talk) 19:10, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

He's not listed on the Chelsea player database [2]. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 19:25, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

is it possible London had 2 different Chelsea clubs, 100 years ago? If you're english, is possible for foreigners asking (in UK) UK dead people personal data? I'd love to find more news about italian football's english fathers.. 93.33.2.171 (talk) 20:41, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Nobody with that exact name has ever been born in England or Wales (since 1837 at least). The first Leslie Minter was a Leslie F. Minter born near Blythburgh, Suffolk in 1895, and none of the later ones seem to match up either. BigDom 20:53, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

thank you very much for your very important help! So last hope is he was born outside England or Wales, something like Ireland or USA.. because the pioneers in italian wikipedia we found an american, Howard Passadoro, so Minter can be the second american.. between the pioneers.. 93.33.2.171 (talk) 21:08, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation question

What is the best way to distinguish a football player (this fella) from a football referee (article yet to be created in en, this fella in de) with the same name? Note: The disambiguation page is already in place as there is also a luger with this name. --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 19:59, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Why not Markus Schmidt (footballer) and Markus Schmidt (referee)? Or if you were really dabbing, Markus Schmidt (football referee)? The Rambling Man (talk) 20:07, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

These are exactly the two variants between which I couldn't decide myself, so I will wait for more comments on the matter. xD --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 20:45, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd think Markus Schmidt (referee) would be fine until such time as there are two articles for referees named Markus Schmidt (say one in football and one in basketball). Simianvector (talk) 20:56, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

problem.

The Croatian Prva HNL which was formed in 1991 has had some problematic things on its page. Some users have added results from world war two, when nazi croatia had its own league. I have removed some information that does not belong on the page. However, that is not enough, as there is still plenty there. I seek help. Please, could people go there to help improve the page? (LAz17 (talk) 04:45, 17 August 2010 (UTC)).

Neil Ruddock and Andrew Cole

Can someone take a look at the additions made by an IP to these two articles, regarding Ruddock allegedly deliberately breaking both of Cole's legs. Is the video used as a citation an acceptable reference - can this be backed up from another reliable source? Thanks. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 06:45, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

The quote is probably enough to keep us free from legal action, but the tone seems to be of image building via the media rather than honest admission. He was talking to tablod radio, not to his psychologist/solicitor/confessor. Probably fairer to say something like "an injury that Ruddock later described as deliberately inflicted" and then link to the interview. (But that is more verifiable than the claim on the Cole article that his recovery was miraculous, or the hyperbole on Ruddock's article about events apparently equivalent to those of the 1790s; I'm glad my watchlist features lower profile players with more sensible articles) Kevin McE (talk) 09:38, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I changed Coles article already removing the hyperbole and changing the Ruddick quote to claimed.--ClubOranje^T 11:14, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

In the actual interview he states "I didn't actually mean to break his legs...just one of them" and is clearly joking. He clearly intended to take him out, but claiming he did it intentionally without the context (even using the word "claimed") doesn't make it particularly clear.Koncorde (talk) 21:51, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing

Hi all I have a question regarding sourcing I'd like your input on. In completing my topic on Barcelona I've come across great difficulties regarding managers, see List of FC Barcelona managers. Until recently I had sources on all of the liga stats, but then historico.sportec.es went down 10 days ago. That was bad. However, there do exist good sources on the entry/exit dates of managers on the es.wiki list.

My question is, would it be defensible to link to http://www.lfp.es/?tabid=113&Controltype=cale&idDivision=1&idTemporada=28 (other seasons available through the search button) as a general ref of how many games the manager managed, given the dates are correct as sourced to elmundodeportivo? Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest FAC} 15:38, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Football qualifying tables

Here is the final table of the Group 4 from UEFA's 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification.

{{2010 FIFA World Cup qualification – UEFA Group 4 | expanded = yes | fixtures = yes }}

Since Wikipedia has adopted the Vector skin as the default skin, I think it is the time to try to modify this template. I am talking in regards the fixtures table (on the right hand side) which is taking a slighter more space. If we can alter the size of the first column (showing the countries' names), we can reduce its size (from 165 to 145).

The "problem" is on names which are a bit long like "Bosnia and Herzegovina", which can be solved by writing "Bosnia & Herzegovina" or simply "Bosnia & Herz.". Let me know your opinions. —Chrisportelli (talk) 20:26, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

According to WP:MOSDASH, unspaced en dashes should be used for the score table, which would improve aesthetics in that section. I'd also use an em dash instead of an en dash for the "Wales v Wales" etc. table cells. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:46, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I guess the above can be incorporated into the redesign. As for the main question, if the concern is length, and the table on the left continues to have the full country name, I guess the table on the right could just use flags? --WFC-- 00:19, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Bearing in mind the above comments, and the fact that access guidelines suggest that where practicable we should accomodate for 800x600, how about the example below? --WFC-- 00:50, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts Germany 10 8 2 0 26 5 +21 26 Russia 10 7 1 2 19 6 +13 22 Finland 10 5 3 2 14 14 0 18 Wales 10 4 0 6 9 12 −3 12 Azerbaijan 10 1 2 7 4 14 −10 5 Liechtenstein 10 0 2 8 2 23 −21 2

— 1–2 0–2 0–0 1–1 0–1 1–0 — 3–3 2–1 0–3 2–1 4–0 1–1 — 4–0 2–1 1–0 0–2 1–1 0–6 — 0–1 0–2 2–0 3–0 0–1 3–0 — 2–1 1–0 0–2 0–2 2–0 1–3 —

It would make a little more sense if the rows in the right table aligned with the rows in the left table. That is, vertically the teams would be ordered by point totals instead of alphabetically. Actually, there isn't much need to have two tables at all—take a look at the table I created at 1974 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships a couple of years ago. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 01:18, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the suggestion that Germany should be the first country in the table on the right, Liechtenstein the last (I won't change the example- I'm sure people get the idea). Not sure about a single table though. Firstly because rowspan may (or may not, investigation is underway) cause issues with screen readers. Secondly because having two tables would make articles render quite nicely at even lower resolutions. That's a big plus for readers using handheld devices. --WFC-- 01:36, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah yes, handhelds, good reason for two tables. My only remaining comment then is something I should have noticed before, and this has always been a pet peeve of mine. Text table columns should always be expressed in em-spacing units, not in pixels. They should scale with the user's preference for font size. So replace all the width=25 with style="width:2.2em" to have uniform width columns at every font size. (I actually see a 1 or 2 pixel difference between the GD and other columns in the current version.) As for the first column I think 14em looks about right. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 02:04, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense. I'm still getting used to coding in em, it's like converting from imperial to metric. I'll continue to persevere, because it's clearly a better way of doing things. --WFC-- 03:13, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I think we could make it easier for people with poor eyesight who now have to squint to work out which flag is which in the right hand table, or use the wikilinks. Why not keep the right hand table's column of flags in the same order as the left hand table? Then it's easy. --Dweller (talk) 08:02, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

But then we would have to change the order of the results table every time the points table changes order. In my opinion, we should keep the results table sorted either alphabetically or by the pot each team was drawn from when the group draw was made; alphabetical order is certainly easier. – PeeJay 12:35, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Then I don't think you should discard the team names for the sake of a bit of width. --Dweller (talk) 12:37, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

People with poor eye-sight have the opportunity to increase the size of the display. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 13:52, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Flags should not serve as a short-hand for names of countries. God forbid Russia, Netherlands, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Luxembourg get drawn in a group together, or that we cover a West African tournament involving Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Benin. Kevin McE (talk) 15:11, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I think once a tournament is resolved then there should be no obstruction to removing some of the extraneous naming if the results are tallied up in the same row as the appropriate country. If we're going to start pulling the "flags aren't clear" business then how do we explain the lack of names across the top of each box too? At some point we have to consider our readers are not stupid. So long as the table is clear, and the flag is previously connected to the name, then we shouldn't have to keep bringing up the country name again and again and again. If we're going to start working on the basis that people are ignorant of their world flags, so we need to spell it out for them then simply hovering over the countries flag should bring up the name of the country.

How many encyclopedias list the same team, and flag repeatedly just because people might be a bit thick?Koncorde (talk) 15:21, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Precisely because people aren't "thick" we don't need to repeat the flag names across the top, because they appear in the same order. We should and do consider our partially-sighted readers in our quality work on this encyclopedia, so it should be ingrained in standardised templates. --Dweller (talk) 16:21, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Just to reiterate, this is not a question of people "being thick" - they might not be seeing the flags at all, take a look at WP:COLOR and WP:MOSICON. Mouse-over isn't always an option either, and I've seen numerous problems with the rendering of templates and alt-text in certain tables (rendering is normally fine in the body-text, but icon use is less useful there). It's not that the flags shouldn't be used, it's just that if it's reasonably convenient to make the information more widely accessible, then we should. I would say adding the name on the row label is reasonably convenient. Using the trigramme for the column label instead of the flag may be fairly innocuous too, so I've proposed it below. Knepflerle (talk) 13:19, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

There is more chance of me unilaterally achieving world peace by midnight than there is of this (adjective) opinion-driven flag "conversation" being in any way productive. My proposal may need to be scrapped for other reasons, but it meets the established guidelines on flags. If you disagree with those, do something about it. --WFC-- 17:00, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

What about using the three-letter country codes in the results table as a compromise? Invisibletr (talk) 17:17, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

WFCforLife, as well as calming down, you need to scroll down a bit on the MOS page. You'll find the relevant section at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(icons)#Accompany_flags_with_country_names. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but saving a few cm of width shouldn't be achieved at the expense of making the encyclopedia less accessible. --Dweller (talk) 17:21, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I have remained civil and rational. I won't hold my breath, but would be grateful if you recognised that, refrained from trying to discredit me, and stuck to the matter at hand. Moving on, the very section you have quoted begins: The name of a flag's country (or province, etc.) should appear adjacent to the first use of the flag icon, as not all readers are familiar with all flags. Nearby uses of the flag need not repeat the name. It goes on to say that if the flags are repeated far away, the country name should probably be repeated. The wording is about as unambiguous as my previous edit or edit summary, which is a rare thing indeed in the Manual of Style. --WFC-- 18:36, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

And surprisingly agrees with my opinion too. Do we actually have any suggestion that the tables are somehow less clear if we remove the text, but align them with the teams final standings as Andrwsc suggested?Koncorde (talk) 19:39, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Update: I failed to achieve world peace. --WFC-- 13:42, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

As usual, I'd prefer the name to be used because in some instances the flagicon may not render or appear at all - then you're left with a table with no row/column markings that isn't any use at all. As long as the tables are separate so that they can be put on separate lines on a narrow display, we really aren't losing anything by including the country name. I'm not claiming in this case that the name is mandated by policy (as it is for the separate squad tables issue, as the flags have usually not been introduces anywhere prevously), but I do think it's a very sensible idea. Knepflerle (talk) 13:06, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Could the column label flag be replaced with the trigramme? Knepflerle (talk) 13:19, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

For example:

Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts Germany 10 8 2 0 26 5 +21 26 Russia 10 7 1 2 19 6 +13 22 Finland 10 5 3 2 14 14 0 18 Wales 10 4 0 6 9 12 −3 12 Azerbaijan 10 1 2 7 4 14 −10 5 Liechtenstein 10 0 2 8 2 23 −21 2

AZE FIN GER LIE RUS WAL Azerbaijan – 1 – 2 0 – 2 0 – 0 1 – 1 0 – 1 Finland 1 – 0 – 3 – 3 2 – 1 0 – 3 2 – 1 Germany 4 – 0 1 – 1 – 4 – 0 2 – 1 1 – 0 Liechtenstein 0 – 2 1 – 1 0 – 6 – 0 – 1 0 – 2 Russia 2 – 0 3 – 0 0 – 1 3 – 0 – 2 – 1 Wales 1 – 0 0 – 2 0 – 2 2 – 0 1 – 3 –

or narrower still, for to help with width conerns:

Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts Germany 10 8 2 0 26 5 +21 26 Russia 10 7 1 2 19 6 +13 22 Finland 10 5 3 2 14 14 0 18 Wales 10 4 0 6 9 12 −3 12 Azerbaijan 10 1 2 7 4 14 −10 5 Liechtenstein 10 0 2 8 2 23 −21 2

AZE FIN GER LIE RUS WAL AZE – 1 – 2 0 – 2 0 – 0 1 – 1 0 – 1 FIN 1 – 0 – 3 – 3 2 – 1 0 – 3 2 – 1 GER 4 – 0 1 – 1 – 4 – 0 2 – 1 1 – 0 LIE 0 – 2 1 – 1 0 – 6 – 0 – 1 0 – 2 RUS 2 – 0 3 – 0 0 – 1 3 – 0 – 2 – 1 WAL 1 – 0 0 – 2 0 – 2 2 – 0 1 – 3 –

How are those? Either has more universally accessible information than what we're currently using. Knepflerle (talk) 13:32, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

That seems to work pretty well. --Dweller (talk) 23:16, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Mikel Arteta eligibility for England

Is he eligible for England or not?

For some reason I'm under the impression that as he was a Spanish u21 international and did not have British(England) eligibility at that time then he can not change allegiance. Am I correct? TheBigJagielka (talk) 02:59, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

That was true up until last year when FIFA lifted the age limit. See here under "Change of association (art. 18 of the Regulations Governing the Application of the FIFA Statutes)". So, if Arteta gets a British passport and doesn't play for Spain any time soon then he can be called-up. I wouldn't mind either, other countries do it (Amauri with Italy the most recent), and Arteta is a class act. The rule change allowed one of our players to play for his country of birth at the World Cup, having represented England at youth level. Argyle 4 Life^talk 04:33, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the Home Nations have a "gentleman's agreement" that says that they will only pick players based on their bloodline. So although Arteta would be eligible to play for any of the Home Nations if he got a British passport, none of them would pick him because he is not British by birth. – PeeJay 08:59, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I always thought that meant they wouldn't pick British-born players with no bloodline connection to their country, e.g. that Scotland wouldn't pick an Englishman with no Scottish blood? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:06, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

By extension, wouldn't that mean they wouldn't pick any player who has no bloodline connection to their country? – PeeJay 09:26, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't have thought so. As I understand it, the gentlemen's agreement was just to prevent poaching among the Home Nations and doesn't extend outside that. Northern Ireland pick Maik Taylor (English on his father's side, German on his mother's, German-born). cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:42, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Struway - no, that's not the way the agreement works. I mean, Freddy Eastwood plays for Wakes even though he is only eligible because his grandfather, who was from a travelling family, was born there! It just means that foreign players who moved over here in their 20s who gain British citizenship won't be called up - which is why Capello hasn't picked Cudicini/Almunia to sort out England's goalkeeping crisis! And why Nacho Novo isn't banging goals in for Scotland...GiantSnowman 10:22, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I appear to be talking at cross-purposes with both you and PeeJay, sorry. The agreement you're on about, and would indeed be relevant to Arteta, dates from 1993 re-stated 2004,it says here. Apologies for talking before making sure I'm talking about the same thing as everybody else :-( cheers, Struway2 (talk) 12:52, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

It was changed last year to allow players who have attended school for five years in a country to be selected (see Andrew Driver). Jmorrison230582 (talk) 17:59, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. Arteta is eligible for England under the current ruling, and the only thing preventing that is the nativist tabloids the fine tradition of respecting national guidelines that England ignored when poaching Owen Hargreaves England have been at pains to respect. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 20:24, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Al-Ahly

An editor has moved Al-Ahly to Al-Ahly Cairo for some reason, with no discussion. The club's name isn't even Al-Ahly Cairo anyway. Could an admin move it back, please? Ta. Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 09:42, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I moved it back. oh dear... I'm guessing all those should be reversed as well?--EchetusXe 10:02, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Has a smiliarly worrying contrib history on French Wikipedia as well. BigDom 10:06, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

As there are several clubs known as Al-Ahly or Al-Ahli (see Al-Ahly (disambiguation), why is the Cairo club not at Al-Ahly (Cairo)? Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 10:48, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that the Egyptian club is easily the most well-known of these clubs, which is why its been at Al-Ahly for a fair while. Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 10:55, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, if the Egyptians were polytheistic today then I'm pretty sure that Al-Ahly would be the god of football.--EchetusXe 20:34, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

The same user made several other moves which induce head-scratching (like moving Al-Qadisiya Al-Ordon to Jordan Youth Club - should we move Eintracht Frankfurt to "Unity Frankfurt"?) without any discussion. How do we deal with all of these moves? Jogurney (talk) 22:50, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll reverse those that seem to make no sense and on his talk page I invited him to come and discuss the moves with us here.--EchetusXe 00:21, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi to all, I saw some problemes to name some arab football clubs, I agree (Daemonic Kangaroo) and I think there are several clubs known as Al-Ahly or Al-Ahli, and some are famouse like Al-Ahli (Jeddah), (Dubai) or (Tripoli), and to differe between them, it's a good idea to put "Al-Ahly Club (Cairo)" , i add "Club" because it's the complete nomination of the team.
For the club (Jordan Youth Club), if you want to put the arab name, the true name is "Nadi Shabab Al-Ordon" not "Shabab Al-Ordon Al-Qadisiya".
--Faycal.09 (talk) 16:56, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

You think it's such a good idea that you have now moved the article to Al-Ahly Club (Cairo), without discussion. I note the on the club's badge it just says "Al-Ahly", rather than "Al-Ahly Club". Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 15:13, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

You've moved the article of a major African club twice in two days without discussion? *sigh* Argyle 4 Life^talk 15:30, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Moved back. Faycal.09, please don't move this page again without a clear consensus that it's the right thing to do. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 19:46, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if I offense you, Al Ahly is a great team of caurse, however there are many teams in the arab world which caled same, we must differe between them. 2nd, in arabic language, the team is caled (Nadi Al-Ahly - نادي الأهلي) wich mean Al-Ahly Club and it's the real and complete name of the team. Hope you understand that and sorry for moving the article. --Faycal.09 (talk) 00:10, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

This is the English-language Wikipedia, so we generally title articles using the common names in English. The Egyptian football club is almost always referred to as "Al-Ahly" in English sources, and I can't say I've ever seen "Nadi Al-Ahly" used by an English news or other source. Jogurney (talk) 22:59, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Dozens of similar examples

As alluded to above, the vast majority of Faycal.09's edits on en-WP since his registration a month ago have been page moves, many of which have been questionable (such as moving clubs to English transliterated titles not in common English use, or moving common names to disambiguated titles). Anyone with a better knowledge of the local subject matter want to have a look at this log and provide suggestions? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 19:54, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

LFC Peer Review

Hey there guys, is there any chance a few of you could post a few comments on the Liverpool F.C. peer review, I'm gonna try and get it to FA, this is going to take a lot of effort and hard work, as it is not near the standard yet. I've only had one review and it was not particularly helpful, so it would be very much appreciated if a few of you could take some time comment. The peer review can be found here. Cheers NapHit (talk) 19:18, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll do yours if you do mine Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 19:37, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Squad templates - when is enough enough?

I just cleaned up Template:Nantwich Town F.C. squad for the squad members of Nantwich Town of the Northern Premier League after it had looked like this since December of last year. Frankly I can't be bothered to add the current squad as I don't see the point in a template that will always be out of date and only added to a couple of players articles. Here is one at the same level with a completely alien layout. Here is one without any articles to go on. Here is a sensible non-league template.

I would say we need a sort out. I would suggest that if the level the club competes at doesn't issue player numbers then a squad template is a waste of time. Any thoughts?--EchetusXe 18:44, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Totally agree. Not surprising that the Goldsworth Park Rangers template doesn't have any player articles to go on; even the team isn't notable! Teams in Level 7 of the English league system (NPL, Isthmian, Southern League) and maybe even Level 6 (Conference North/South) change their personnel so regularly that it is almost impossible to keep the templates updated. Add this to the fact that 99% of the players in those divisions have never played professionally and so fail the notability guideline shows clearly that these templates are serving no useful purpose. That Northwich one is especially horrible, although it isn't the first I've seen to have that layout. Not sure whether I agree that clubs without squad numbers should be denied a template because of my own experiences with Chamois Niortais - last season they didn't have squad numbers but the template was still used on about 15 articles and it would be similar with other French CFA teams if anyone had created the templates, as about 30-40% of the players have played professionally. That said, the no squad numbers rule may be a good yardstick for English clubs even if it doesn't apply to other countries. Definitely agree that there should be some sort of minimum criteria though. BigDom 19:26, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

P.S. have nominated the Goldsworth Park Rangers template for deletion here. Also have a problem with templates like this, which unnecessarily encourage people to write about non-notable semi-professional players. BigDom 19:32, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

What is the purpose of squad templates? Really it is to link notable players. Therefore I feel we should keep club squad templates to fully-professional leagues, just as we keep international squad templates to top-level senior competitions! GiantSnowman 20:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh and no-squad-number templates are fine - the Dutch 2nd division doesn't have squad numbers but is a fully-pro league with many notable players linked! GiantSnowman 20:03, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I feel the Conference would be fine with having squad templates, but below that players are not numbered, that is why I feel numbers are a good basis for deciding notability. But I do feel that we should decide a cut-off point in English football at least, I would say below national level then no templates allowed. Which I believe is what happened with club seasons, which in the past were also getting out of hand.--EchetusXe 20:42, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Echetus as far as England goes. Generally I go with the thinking that a template needs five or six distinct bluelinks. Obviously a TfD the moment a team goes to four players might sometimes be unhelpful, but as a rule of thumb I think it's a good starting point. --WFC-- 20:49, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

NB there aren't squad numbers in the Scottish Football League First Division, which is mostly professional (8/10 teams this year). Jmorrison230582 (talk) 21:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

So, the national leagues as a rule of thumb with other clubs being allowed on the basis that they have sufficient notable players? Sounds OK to me. BigDom 21:04, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe restricting it to professional national leagues would be a better idea. After all, we shouldn't start creating squad navboxes for the Sammarinese national league. – PeeJay 23:04, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree with what Dom said, plus the word professional to prevent the sorts of cases PeeJay mentions. In practise, most or all Conference templates would end up staying on the grounds of sufficient bluelinks. If any didn't, they weren't that useful anyway. --WFC-- 23:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly what the cut-off point should be - usefulness. GiantSnowman 06:04, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

There are no twenty squad templates up for deletion here, would appreciate some input there. The following 10 Conference North/South templates are NOT up for deletion as of yet: Template:A.F.C. Telford United squad, Template:Boston United F.C. squad, Template:Droylsden F.C. squad, Template:Ebbsfleet United F.C. squad, Template:Gainsborough Trinity F.C. squad, Template:Harrogate Town F.C. squad, Template:Hyde United F.C. squad, Template:Stalybridge Celtic F.C. squad, Template:Welling United F.C. squad, and Template:Woking F.C. squad.--EchetusXe 14:50, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

List of footballers in England and Scotland by number of league goals

I just added a few dozen to this list, and I am sure there are numerous more players who should be on the list but aren't. It is a ten month old article and yet just today I added names such as Arthur Rowley, Dixie Dean and Brian Clough. Even if you just go on to add players who played for your particular club to the list then that would be helpful. See also List of footballers in England and Scotland by number of league appearances.

Also a gentle reminder that the squad templates nominated for deletion could use a few more of you guys to put in your two cents - here. A few have no 'delete' or 'keep' votes yet.--EchetusXe 13:45, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Why England and Scotland? These are two completely separate league systems. Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 14:15, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

It seems odd to me as well that two different countries are grouped together. BigDom 08:36, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Because the sources used on the articles list both English and Scottish leagues, such as the Post War English & Scottish Football League A - Z Player's Database, and because many players spent their careers in both countries. GiantSnowman 18:48, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

But you are mixing the stats of two completely separate league systems. Should the League of Wales be included too? Why should Jimmmy Greaves and Ian Rush's goals in Italy not count when Tony Hateley's in Scotland do? Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 21:03, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

If you have a reliable source for LoW or LoI stats, then we can extend it to the whole of Britain...GiantSnowman 21:13, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

That sounds even dafter. Mixing stats from different league systems just doesn't make sense. Plenty of players have been at both Spanish and Portuguese clubs, but I'm sure you must see that there would be no merit in List of footballers in Spain and Portugal by number of league appearances, and the same for Germany and the Netherlands, for instance. Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 08:23, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I know, I was just being an arse ;) - but to reiterate, the reason we agreed on England and Scotland (the discussion is buried in the archives somewhere) was because the sources used for League stats often document English and Scottish together. GiantSnowman 18:34, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Formatting question - does anyone know how to add a number column to these tables which automatically adjusts when new entries are added? I'm thinking we could maybe rank the players, so that their articles can add something like "Johnny Jones is currently 4th in number of League appearances and 8th in number of League goals in England and Scotland"...? GiantSnowman 20:20, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

You can't, at least not with regular wikitable syntax. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 23:11, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Any admins about please

could you have a look at this AfD. The articles listed are all created by a user who appears to be the latest of many incarnations of this blocked user, whose disruption involves the serial creation of articles about non-notable reserve-team players generally madeup of copyvio of their club profiles, invention of "facts" to make them look notable, and insertion of said "facts" in other articles as backup. If the articles listed at AfD are indeed by a blocked user evading their block, do they still have to go through the AfD procedure, or could they be summarily deleted? Also, I don't know how these things work, but is there nothing can be done to actually stop him keep registering new accounts? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 10:40, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Looking into it. Blocked the new account as a sock. Woody (talk) 10:48, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Struway2 (talk) 11:06, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Not the brightest when it comes to inventing clandestine usernames, is he? Kevin McE (talk) 14:21, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks like he's forgotten that this account hasn't been blocked yet. Alzarian16 (talk) 14:24, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Speaking about AfDs; I'm sorry but I have no idea how to start one. I've found two players that fail WP:ATHLETE during the last days: Damián Martínez (Argentina U-17 goalkeeper, only youth division games) and Branko de Tellería (fourth goalkeeper of an Argentine team, no professional games). If anyone can help I'd be grateful. Regards. Fache (talk) 15:24, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Enable WP:TWINKLE, creates AfDs with the click of a button. Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 15:58, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll check it out. Fache (talk) 23:44, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

So, all socks blocked and tagged, there is now a sockpuppet category to trace him. I closed the AFD as a SNOW delete given the user's history. I also prodded another article and someone might want to have a look at Christopher Buchtmann and see whether it should be AfD'd.

In answer to your question, even if it is a blocked user evading their block, there still needs to be an AFD. If he was eventually banned then all edits can be reverted on sight. In terms of stopping him creating accounts, not much can be done whilst the socks are still pretty obvious. Just report him to AIV or leave a note on my talkpage. If he persists we could ask for a checkuser to find the underlying IP or we could create an editfilter. Regards. Woody (talk) 09:04, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Any merit in retaining this one?

List of Muslim footballers: Very few are sourced, no apparent evidence of importance of faith as an issue in life of those listed, no apparent ordering of theose included, very recentist, no qualification as to "notable", so presumably anyone who meets WP:ATH could be on it. We have aleady rejected the idea of categories based on religion, and denounced BLP assumpions that seem based on name and ethnicity. I would suggest that this article will always be chronically incomplete, that most of those added to it will be unsourced, that we will never know with confidence whether those listed are considered Muslim by religious conviction or cultural accident of family. Its equivalent articles (list of Christian footballers, list of Buddhist footballers, list of atheist footballers etc) will presumably never be written: this is in danger of becoming a pride list. So my inclination would be to AfD it: any thoughts? Kevin McE (talk) 22:43, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

We've had a discussion about this sort of thing before; we could really do with an article on football in British Asian culture or the like because it's an identifiable subject which has had a fair amount written about it now. However, an open list of all Muslim footballers (not just Brits, all: which would likely include almost all footballers in a great many large countries) is utterly unworkable as a list, and as before almost certainly not workable as a category either. I would say that it's destined for an AfD; even if a more appropriate subject article were written, it's not as if four tabloid references would form its basis. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 22:53, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

No. Besides van Persie isn't a Muslim and Anelka is on there twice. However just as we have an article on Homosexuality in English football, we should have an article on Muslims in British football, or British Asian culture and football, or British Asians and sport, or British Asian sporting culture or whatever.--EchetusXe 23:47, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

AfD listed Kevin McE (talk) 01:56, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

EchetusXe - I love your attempt to find the name for a British Asian football article - you were so close! You'll find one in existence at British Asians in association football. GiantSnowman 18:36, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, very good!--EchetusXe 00:56, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Daniel Ciofani & Parma

It is a tricky case. Daniel Ciofani and Alessandro Marotta, players from lower division, were signed by Serie A clubs for team investment (or money investment), both players were rarely appeared / never appeared in official web and not trained with team (according to official web source), the latter (Marotta) already left on loan to other club.

Here is the question:

• 1. Should they listed in the current squad (signed by seems never became a member of first team)
  • 2. If yes, How to list them?

Just like Inter Milan, there is about 10 professional players pending on loan to other club, and the name current hided by using <!--, should we use Juventus F.C. as example?

Same case, article SSC Napoli listed them in current squad without number. But seems Cristian Bucchi and Marcelo Zalayeta were excluded from the first team squad in 2007 and 2009 and Napoli did not intended to re-include them, how should we treat them? Matthew_hk tc 17:13, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

The section likes Juve may only for the transfer window. But in Italy it did happened that a player without a squad number for the first 6 months as he failed to loan out and he is not a youth player (may be 24, 28). Matthew_hk tc 17:22, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

SuperSonicx1986 socking?

Can someone take a look here? It could be a WP:DUCK case, but I haven't edited in the subject area, and am not completely familiar with the editor's patterns. Dabomb87 (talk) 18:55, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

If blocks are necessary, please take a look at 68.218.61.233 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) as well. Dabomb87 (talk) 18:58, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Both blocked. Thank you. Rettetast (talk) 19:28, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

68.217.79.77 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) too, thanks. Dabomb87Public (talk) 17:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

He is socking, and socking big time. SuperSonix1986, better known to most people here as User:Jamen Somasu, is creating new IP addresses almost on a daily basis and uses those IP addresses to evade his block. For anyone here primarily editing South American football article, keep a keen eye out for his block evasion. Digirami (talk) 19:22, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

And I had seriously thought Jamen had learned his lesson when I saw his ban lifted a while ago. And now I come back to Wikipedia to find out he is still at his old game. A shame really. He did a lot for the South American scene but he is too hot-headed. --MicroX (talk) 03:13, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Scott Sutter

Boyhood Spurs fan Scott Sutter plays for BSC Young Boys in Switzerland. Young Boys are due to play Tottenham in the Champions League. I am in dispute with an IP editor as to whether a player facing a club he used to support is worthy of inclusion in an article. I believe that it's somewhat crufty. Any input into the discussion here would be greatly appreciated. Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 22:04, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

It's likely notable, if it's mentioned or focused upon in the media. I've read a few articles about him since the matches were announced and they revolved around the fact that he was an unknown Englishman and a Spurs supporter. It certainly isn't detrimental to mention it in passing, particularly if he has a quote to go with it i.e. "a dream come true" or whatever. Koncorde (talk) 10:23, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Every time a lower league team faces one of the best supported clubs in the FA Cup there's always a couple of players who are excited about playing against the team they used to supported as a boy, but that doesn't make it a noteworthy occurrence.Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 12:41, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Nationality

I notice that Scott Sutter is listed with an English flag at BSC Young Boys#Current squad, despite his last national team representation being for Switzerland. At what point are we going to formulate a set of rules for assigning one nation to each player, apply it consistently, and link to it so that the reader of our articles know why we've picked the nation we have picked?

I propose this selection method: 1) Use the nation of most recent national team representation. 2) If no national team represented, use the nation of the place of birth.

Simple and easily sourceable. We might consider having exceptional cases where we use a different rule, but these should be explicitly indicated with a footnote in the squad table so that the reader can easily find out why we have changed from the default. Knepflerle (talk) 11:51, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

There is already an official guideline. Use of flags for sportspeople. Changes to these rules would have to be proposed on the talk page there. Using birthplace is unlikely to be considered an acceptable change though. Camw (talk) 11:56, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Errm... that guideline may exist, but does not in any way reflect practice on this project's articles. That guideline says flags should reflect a player's "representative nationality", but this is only clear for players who have played for a national team - most players have not. Policy should reflect practice, which in this case is that place of birth is used for players without a national cap. If you want to rephrase the question in terms of the guideline at MOS:FLAG, how are we going to determine the players' "representative nationality" when they've never played for a national team? Knepflerle (talk) 12:59, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

They actually say "If a sportsperson has not competed at the international level, then the eligibility rules of the international sport governing body (such as IRB, FIFA, IAAF, etc.) should be used. If these rules allow a player to represent two or more nations, then a reliable source should be used to show who the sportsperson has chosen to represent." If the rule doesn't reflect usage, then either the guideline or the usage needs to change, but guideline change will have to be agreed by more than this subset of the community. Camw (talk) 23:46, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

The answer to the original question is "not any time soon". As for which flag to use, ideally we'd use none, but until such point as the world runs out of nationalists (or Sutter gets an England call-up) it'll have to be Switzerland. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 19:41, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

How about this line from his own page though? "It hit me when I was in a bar supporting England with all my mates, wearing my England shirt and I knew that the next week I was going to be playing for Switzerland. It just didn't feel right. I was English" 91.106.114.115 (talk) 17:01, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Kypello Ellados OPAP 2010–11 --> 2010–11 Greek Cup

Could some kind admin please move Kypello Ellados OPAP 2010–11 to 2010–11 Greek Cup? I would do it myself, but I get a "move not possible" notice. Thanks in advance, Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 14:03, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Help, anyone? As an additional incentive, the move has been made against consensus and violates WP:ENGLISH and WP:COMMONNAME... --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 20:04, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

C&P. No history to speak of. Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 21:21, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

First of all, sorry for the late response, I had to deal with real-life work. No, I will not do a c+p move, since 2010–11 Greek Cup is not a stub with little or no content, and also would violate WP:MOVE, section 4.

By the way, Gx25 (talk · contribs) has also moved the main article from Greek Cup to Kypello Ellados, and again, something is blocking the reversion of the move. If it helps, The big G also says that it rather knows Greek Cup (~6,000,000 results) than Kypello Elladas (~550,000 results) or even Kypello Ellados (~35,000 results). So, politely asked once more, would some admin please move the articles in question back to their English names? --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 08:47, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Anyone help with tackling an unsourced BLP?

Hey folks,

I started Malcolm Kpedekpo over a year ago based on the only (reasonably) reliable source I could find (soccerbase), but it really needs more than that to qualify for being a sourced BLP these days. Anyone familiar with Aberdeen (or with better sources for bit-part players in Scotland in the nineties) able to help out? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 09:09, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Little mini-bio here might be helpful. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:23, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Ahhh, excellent! I knew he was a banker now, but not how successful he was. I'll try to get on this later. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 11:26, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Also some stuff here if this helps. Alzarian16 (talk) 17:27, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Superb. I've expanded the article with details on what he's doing now (i.e. making vastly more money than me). Thanks, folks. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 09:43, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Individual countries at the FIFA World Cup

I recently saw this discussion. I then checked out the deleted articles at Deletionpedia (Bulgaria, Greece, England, France), and I agree they had been needless for the encyclopedia. But that made me think if there was any use of any of the articles in the Countries at the FIFA World Cup category. They all include some general information about the World Cup, and little or no data about each individual team's participation therein, safe for those tables that can also be found at the articles of every team. I didn't dare nominate those pages for deletion at once without first raising a discussion here. --Theurgist (talk) 00:52, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

We had this conversation a couple of months ago. Kevin McE (talk) 09:39, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I see the Trinidad and Tobago at the 2006 FIFA World Cup page still exists. 91.106.126.13 (talk) 10:50, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

As do the other articles that were part of the same unsuccessful AfD in June 2006: I'm not sure what your point is here. In the case of T&T, the fact that they have only reached the finals once means that the article specific to 2006 is equivalent to Trinidad and Tobago at the FIFA World Cup, which the above referenced discussion would retain. Kevin McE (talk) 11:16, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

List of 'club' internationals - delete?

After seeing List of Burnley F.C. internationals, I thought it was a odd project to list all the players who have played for a club while also at some point in the (later/earlier) career have played for their country. Not to mention the many errors in the article, see John Angus, but Hugh Flack has 1 full cap and 1 appearances for Burnley. Why such an entry should be informative for anyone is a mystery to me.

It's a list of players capped while with Burnley, not international players who happen at some point to have played for Burnley. And I'm afraid I don't see any errors with Angus or Flack, perhaps you could clarify. yes, I do, sorry, I'll fix them now. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 12:20, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm an idiot :-) I've just self-reverted, and added a clarification at the top of the table as to what's in the columns, for the benefit of those as stupid as me, if there are any... cheers, Struway2 (talk) 12:50, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Couldn't this information be expressed in List of Burnley F.C. players as it is in List of Port Vale F.C. players?--EchetusXe 17:01, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with EchetusXe, no need for a seperate article. GiantSnowman 19:36, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Season lists

Although List of Watford F.C. seasons is now a featured list, there were some outstanding concerns raised in its FLC. To that end, I've started a discussion here on how to improve the visual appeal of the list, and simplify the article formatting. Thoughts welcome. Regards, --WFC-- 19:43, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

French Guiana flags

Hi there. With the recent change in the flag of French Guiana all articles regarding its football clubs had been automatically changed to the actual flag, causing serious anachronisms in competitions before 2010 (see for instance here). I don't know how to fix this, other than just editing the flag of France. What should be done here? Ipsumesse (talk) 12:42, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Not really a football issue, but it seems to have been changed with no discussion from the relevant national level flag, to a regional one. The flag was approved by the lower of the two levels of government in the region: this new flag is the flag of the Department, but not of the region (although the two cover the same territory): French Guinea is primarily a region, albeit a region that has only one department. Given that the regional council has a right-wing majority, they are unlikely to pass the flag that features a red star. So I do not believe the flag change should have been made at all, and will raise the matter at Template talk:Country data French Guiana and with the admin who changed it. Kevin McE (talk) 16:42, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Much the same has happened with New Caledonia too. Knepflerle (talk) 17:23, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Rather different situation: France/French Guiana/New Caledonia is like UK/Isle of Wight/Falklands, or USA/Alaska/Guam. The new flag seems to have equivalent status to the tricolour, and probably is useful to identify more specifically. As to the chronology issue, we had something similar recently in regard to Malawi: Theurgist seems to have been the coding mastermind in that instance. Kevin McE (talk) 18:04, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

You're missing the wood for the trees, Kevin - the matter of importance is that the new flag for New Caledonia has been substituted universally, but is an anachronism in any reference before 2010. The anachronism is independent of constitutional status. Knepflerle (talk) 18:31, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be missing my last sentence (don't know if trees are to blame): difference in situations proven in that the country data change for French Guiana has now been reversed, so New Caledonia's football flag generating templates all need |1853 to be added. I've done many manually, anyone good at AWB able to continue? Kevin McE (talk) 19:59, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Might be worth contacting the admin so that he can create the historical parameter we normally add when a country changes flag. The easiest way to fix this would be to do a bot run changing the likes of {{flag|New Caledonia}} to {{flag|New Caledonia|year french flag was first used}} The sooner it happens, the fewer false positives humans will have to go back and revert afterwards. Sure, it will cause problems for this project, where flags are used for current athletes, but we're in the minority, and that could be rectified with an AWB run on football clubs that use {{Country data New Caledonia}}. --WFC-- 18:51, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I've checked the Malawi issue and left a note in Theurgist's talk page so he can check this out. I can see from your comments that the creation of a new flagicon is not an easy task, right? I ask so I can learn what to do next time, because if I knew how, maybe I'd like to fix it myself. At any case, countries shouldn't change their flags... Ipsumesse (talk) 16:46, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Theurgist here. If I understand properly, the aim is to change all French Guiana flags in articles reporting the team's results since 29 January 2010 from to , right? That can easily be done, because {{country data French Guiana}}, and hence {{fb}}, has already been made capable of showing the local flag as well. This is achieved by inserting as wikicode {{fb|French Guiana|local}}, which produces French Guiana, as opposed to a mere {{fb|French Guiana}}, which results in French Guiana. But we must carefully consider whether this really needs to be done, because the "football" flag of a team may sometimes not correspond to the official flag of the political entry. For instance, the Republic of China (Taiwan)'s flag is this: , whereas the Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) national football team uses this flag: . The official website of the Caribbean Football Union has France's tricolour in front of French Guiana in the list of member associations, but I could doubt if that is being updated extremely often. I wasn't able to find any flags for French Guiana at the CONCACAF website (strangely). And, for future information, requesting a change of a page that you don't have the power to edit because it's protected happens by placing {{editprotected}} on the talk page and clearly explaining what change you are requesting, just like what I did for Template:Country data Malawi. --Theurgist (talk) 21:32, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

As discussed above, French Guiana as a region did not change its flag anyway, and the country data has been reverted to the French flag. But New Caledonia's country data template has, probably correctly, been changed to a flag that had no official status before last month, and has still not been adopted by FIFA. Kevin McE (talk) 23:25, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

From Flag of New Caledonia: "with the official adoption of the Kanak flag alongside the French tricolor in July 2010, New Caledonia has become on of the few countries or territories in world with two official national flags". So how do we know we must prefer the newly-officialised flag to the French tricolour? FIFA.com is still showing the traditional French national flag, but you can see they haven't yet updated their Malawi profile either. --Theurgist (talk) 04:59, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

shooting (association football)

please help me on this article shooting (association football), thank you. A10 (talk) 21:18, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Ola Toivonen

Might be worth keeping an eye on Ola Toivonen. It got a mention at WP:ANI. Cheers. 86.150.112.150 (talk) 21:30, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Links to nonexistent articles about referees

The documentation of {{footballbox collapsible}} demands the name of the referees be "wikilinked only if there is a page for the referee". Does this apply for {{football box}} too, and if it does, why are all names of referees linked routinely, regardless of whether or not an article has been written about them? See 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification – AFC First Round, UEFA Euro 2012 qualifying Group C or 2010–11 UEFA Champions League qualifying phase and play-off round for some examples. --Theurgist (talk) 03:21, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the documentation is wrong. The referee should be linked if he is notable, regardless of whether the article exists yet or not. – PeeJay 05:46, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. The collapsible box shouldn't be making up its own guidelines like that, really; I'll try to sort that out when I (eventually) get round to merging the two football boxes back together. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 08:21, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I removed that statement as it goes against WP:REDLINK. Woody (talk) 08:48, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

There is a presumption that most referees are not notable, unless they go out of their way to prove that they pass the GNG, which is exactly the same as players without articles in Conference clubs' squad lists. I therefore think removing that statement was the wrong thing to do. --WFC-- 07:17, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

There's no need for an admonition to that effect on random template doc pages, though; especially when said comment appears on the collapsible version of the template but not the one it was forked from. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 09:45, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I would note that in both templates, referees are frequently redlinked when in all probability they are not notable. These templates are used by a higher than normal proportion of users that are not well-versed in the likes of WP:REDLINK, and it is therefore worth pointing out a policy that they are less likely to have stumbled across. The original wording was wrong, but should not have been removed entirely, and indeed the suggestion that it must abide by the example set by its inferior parent is highly questionable. Finally, I'm sure I don't need to say this (both because you know policy and are unlikely to make any mistakes), but please note that any merge should not be performed until it has undergone scrutiny at Template talk:Footballbox collapsible to ensure compatability. I say that purely because of the way this conversation panned out. --WFC-- 19:19, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

If the original doc needs improved, then go right ahead and do it. As for the merge, don't worry; I'll ensure that all the relevant parties are contacted and a plan drawn up before doing anything rash. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 09:43, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Too much kit detail?

I almost don't want to bring this up, because he's obviously worked VERY hard on these, but are this guy's kits too detailed? There are no sponsors or decals or anything, but every tiny dot and line has been added to the MLS kits. Thoughts? --JonBroxton (talk) 16:05, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the issue lies in that the squiggly designs tend to be copyright but my understanding of the ins and outs of kits might be wonky, so I'd like to see some clarification too. Koncorde (talk) 07:42, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I did some work this weekend in response to this guy's kits (see: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Football#Edits_to_Football_Kit_Templates). I think with higher level clubs, the more detail the better. The kit templates are being used on the season pages for clubs and are being used to show differences from season to season. Not sure of the legality of creating a representation of the shirts, but it seems that "don't add too much detail" is asking for trouble. And on that point, if details can't be added, then why have the representation of the kits there in the first place? Is there a trademark lawyer around here? Udeezy (talk) 20:27, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Eyes required

here, here, and anywhere else that might be considered racist to South America. --WFC-- 05:34, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear... – PeeJay 05:46, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there anyway to revert the mess? As in remove the edit wars from the history page? --MicroX (talk) 05:50, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Don't think so. There just has to be an extra effort to keep an eye out for suspicious edits by IP address and what not in South American football related articles. It's unfortunate that it has to come to that. Digirami (talk) 08:10, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Free adminship for all footy regulars! Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 17:28, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I wonder who that IP could be... Argyle 4 Life^talk 19:06, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks like he stopped... for now. --MicroX (talk) 20:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

That's because he's back to fucking about with the 1968 Intercontinental Cup article. What a wanker. – PeeJay 20:34, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Add pending changes to all CONMENBOL articles. (Barca > Real btw.). Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 20:41, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I have a cat. I used to tempt him out of the house by taking a second food bowl outside, dropping a small scoop of food in it, and shutting the door. After about 10 times he cottoned on. This guy hasn't... draw your own conclusions. --WFC-- 21:05, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks like I'm going to have to add all the Intercontinental and CWC editions to my watchlist. Maybe even anything that involves South American football. --MicroX (talk) 21:10, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to draw attention to the very concisely named Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Persistent proposals#"Categorised (user defined)" or "split (user defined)" watchlists; an idea previously proposed as "multiple watchlists". --WFC-- 22:44, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks like he finally quit. --MicroX (talk) 22:34, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Or not :( WFC, is the multiple watchlists idea going to be implemented or is it simply just talk. --MicroX (talk) 03:27, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

For the time being, it helps to semi-protect some article (which has been done). Digirami (talk) 07:23, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

It has, annoyingly, been full-protected. Perhaps an error in the filing or by the admin? I have requested semi-protection at Gedi. On another note, Jamen has taken to my talkpage. I hope you can understand the merit in the advice I gave him. This should somewhat alleviate # of edits to mainspace. Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 08:22, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

The full protection was intentional, rationale on my talkpage. I don't have time to review all of this now, but will this evening. Thank you for your patience. GedUK  11:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I've changed it to a semi. Regards, GedUK  20:11, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Everton FC FAR

I have nominated Everton F. C. for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 00:42, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Yugoslav players who served in the army

While I was editing articles on Srečko Katanec and Darko Pančev I noticed they were examples of a number of ex-Yugoslav players whose careers were interrupted by the compulsory JNA service (for example, Katanec didn't really play anywhere in the 1984-85 season, and Pančev skipped the 1988-89 season for the same reason). I was wondering whether we should put "JNA" in such players' infoboxes to indicate this (as, for example, is already the case with Pančev's entry at Reprezentacija.rs, Serbian national team website). Although players such as these effectively stopped playing league football for a season, most of them were still somewhat active as army garrisons were allowed to field teams which entered preliminary rounds of the Yugoslav Cup every year between the 1940s and early 1990s. Timbouctou 05:32, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

That opens a can of worms. We haven't historically included periods of national service in infoboxes, nor indeed have we indicated any other occupations that a player might have had in between club contracts. The infobox club list is just that, a list of clubs. It's not an employment record. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 09:35, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Chris. However, adding these informations in the prose definitely adds value to articles.--Latouffedisco (talk) 18:48, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I thought it might be useful in case anyone wondered why so many Yugoslav players have a season mysteriously missing from their career stats, but I suppose Chris is right. Thanks for the feedback though. Timbouctou 19:53, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

RfC - notability of lists

This might affect all of the footy lists, have a look at the RfC  · Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 15:18, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Edits to Football Kit Templates

Hi All, I didn't realize this talk page was here, so I just went ahead and made the changes without consulting first. Sorry if that causes any trouble. Thanks to Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) for pointing it out to me!

I worked over the weekend to update the documentation for the Template:Football_kit page. This was done in response to several MLS kits being overwritten with non-transparent, improperly named, club-specific patterns, I decided to take a stab at rewriting this page. See the talk page there for more comments on the edits I made.

The other thing I started working on was the list of patterns in use connected to the kit templates. After reworking the Template:Football_kit/pattern_list, I realized that the best place to see all of the templates is in the corresponding Commons category (commons:Category:Football_kit_templates).

I nominated a handful of commons gallery pages for deletion as well as the pattern list. In my eyes, the remaining task is to re-categorize the templates on Commons so that they are easier to find (there are some 6000+ PNG that are currently categorized in the parent category). The previous method relied on every user to upload their images and then also edit several gallery pages to correspond with their new images. By using the correct categories, this will be done automatically and the images can be browsed using the commons category.

In general, I think this is a much better system than how things were being done. I think the implementation will be easier, especially once the categories are better organized. I've been playing with the Commons Commander tool to do some reorganizing, but it doesn't seem to work so well. Are there some better tools that I could use?

Let me know what you think of things. I hope this has been a helpful change... Udeezy (talk) 20:00, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

"Club in Europe" (again)

I'm asking this because I have FC Barcelona in Europe, it has just gone through 2nd PR, and it's a-okay. Last time I asked the consensus was, unsurprisingly, non-existent. Wizardman and Peejay were in favour, while WFC was against. I personally don't care but merging it with List of records would make it very long, and rather unwieldy on mobiles. So if anyone has any good ideas or input, let's hear it. Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 20:47, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

What I will say is that I still think it's irrelevant detail, and that if it was covered in the sort of way that this is then it wouldn't overly distort the records and statistics. That said, I will recuse from any future FLC if at least half of the participants in this thread hold a different view. --WFC-- 21:10, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

The lists should be kept seperate. One list is for Records and Statistics; the other is for the team's campaigns in European tournaments (why include de final of the IC/CWC if they are not Euro tourneys?).

And, in my opinion, the "in Europe" list is far from being FL candidate material. When I have some time later today, I will upgrade it.

P.S. WFC, you can't compare the track record of a team like Seattle Sounders (who?) to Barcelona. The latter has competed in many different competitions, thus, it rates to have distint articles like the above-mentioned. Seattle has been around for, what, 10, 15 years at the most? Obviously, there won't be as much to put on an article as Barcelona. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.215.156.143 (talk) 23:10, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

MoS for supporters

I've added a, excuse me, a fabulous DYK. To the question tho: on writing the article I thought we should have a MoS for supporters clubs. I'm not really sure what should be there and so fourth, so a general outline would be helpful. Also all of the current articles I browsed through are in terrible shape. Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 20:58, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

That is indeed a very good DYK (Nigel Gibbs' run in the latest DYKs had to come to an end sometime). Something along the lines of "Articles that are crap, uninformative, unmaintained and unreferenced will probably be deleted, regardless of how awesome your club's fans are" would do me. --WFC-- 21:06, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking more along the line of content.

Perhaps:

History

Impact

Relationship

I don't really know what it should contain. Ideas? Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 21:16, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe their relationship with the club they support ?--Latouffedisco (talk) 18:51, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Ahh, good idea. Have you had a glance at the Boixos Nois? I created it recently, would like your feedback :) Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 18:54, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

A very interesting article, well referenced. Good work.--Latouffedisco (talk) 17:58, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Tight-man marking

Regarding this previous forum discussion (please see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Football/Archive_45#User:Zombie433), User:Zombie433 has returned from his one-month block. First thing he did upon his "arrival"? Remove - as always! - all messages sent to him be it of a friendly or warning nature, without one single reply.

Now, it seems some people have been on his case for adding spam links to articles. I will definitely watch out for him, just notifying the project that he has returned, seemingly not to change his ways! Attentively - --Vasco Amaral (talk) 14:00, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

He archived it.--EchetusXe 20:12, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

• It seems so, my apologies for that. However, he continues as isolated as always, and did not respond to the several queries that were to him "proposed" in his absence. Why, when he has a "level 4" of English? :) Cheers - --Vasco Amaral (talk) 23:00, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

What seems to be the problem? --MicroX (talk) 01:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

• Please see the discussion i pasted above Micro. If you have already, then the problem is quite evident, methinks (has no English skills but continues to edit here, does not respond to messages and now has been accused of adding spam links to pages - do you think he responded to the person who made the accusation? No, he did not, he just removed/archived it). --Vasco Amaral (talk) 14:58, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Arteta II

Remember this? [3]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/sep/01/mikel-arteta-england-hopes-dashed

Seems like he wasn't eligible or have the FA got it wrong? TheBigJagielka (talk) 04:21, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Appearance stats in season articles

To help resolve a difference of opinion, input is requested at Talk:2010–11_Manchester_City_F.C._season#Appearance_stats. Oldelpaso (talk) 09:08, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

One Les Parry or two?

Current manager; former centre back? One person or two? The places of birth and ages suggest that unity of persons is possible, as did one piece in the Guardian, and Neil Brown's database says that the player became a coach at Tranmere, but anonymous editors have been disassociating the two. Can anyone refer us to anything that will determine the matter? Kevin McE (talk) 09:11, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

A Liverpool Echo piece from 2004 says he joined the club "14 years ago" i.e. 1990, and previously ran a sports and recreation training company, but mentions no previous playing career. Oldelpaso (talk) 09:19, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

This BBC article also mentions no playing career, although it says he was Tranmere's physio from 1993 onwards. Indeed, the offical Tranmere Rovers website says the same thing. BigDom 09:25, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

If nobody else does so first, I'll check my books tonight for the place and date of birth of Les Parry (football player) who, for the record, really should be located at Les Parry (footballer)........ -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:36, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The piece from The S*n ref#8 in Les Parry physio/manager quotes Parry as saying "People have said what qualifications do I have to be a manager. But I have listened to 890 team talks. I have seen 890 preparations for games and I've been on the bench for 890 matches." If he'd played 250 games for the club, nobody would be questioning his qualifications. And the difficulty of finding any mention of a playing career points to there not being one to find. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 12:29, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe someone should just contact the club to check? Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:20, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

As mentioned above, I'll look up the DOB for Parry the player tonight. If it doesn't match the one which the LMA list for Parry the manager then we know they aren't the same guy, without having to resort to phoning the club (which would be OR anyway......) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 13:42, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Notice that, although the Guardian article claims they are the same guy, one of the commenters at the bottom, presumably a Tranmere fan, states "Les Parry the physio is not the Les Parry who played in the Rovers defence in the early 1980s. But he is highly regarded as a physio and motivator". Obviously this is not a reliable source, but it lends weight to the supposition that they are not the same guy -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 13:46, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks probable that they are two, just a shame that none of the reports of his appointment ever state "who shares a name with a former Tranny defender" or "who should not be confused with the team's centre back of the 70s": would have saved the Guardian a bit of egg on their face too. Kevin McE (talk) 13:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The Les Parry who played for Tranmere was born in 1953, so they are definitely not the same man -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 17:48, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

K-League

Korean user Fetx2002 had changed the title K-League to K·League on his own. K-League is official title(According to Korean Professional Football Association). So I ask English users to prevent him. He may try to edit it. (I'm sorry but I can't speak English well)--Cjpark94 (talk) 12:09, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

That dot is a character we don't use in English, so we wouldn't use it in a page name. I've moved the dotted versions back to K-League, 2010 K-League and 2010 K-League Cup, and left a note on that user's talk page. I hope they understand it... Thank you for raising the matter. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 14:31, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The similar cause happened about a week ago in Yokohama F. Marinos article – reverted that as well. —WiJG? 15:56, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Intercontinental cup = FIFA Club World Cup?

Hiya. During the FLC of List of FC Barcelona records and statistics the question is brought whether the Intercontinental Cup is considered the predecessor to the FIFA CWC. I cannot find many sources saying one or the other so I'll put the question to this forum. Perhaps it will surprise me. Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest FAC} 15:06, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Pretty sure this has been discussed here before in the last year or so. RSSSF say "Although FIFA organised their own world club championship in 2000, featuring teams from all confederations, the Toyota Cup continued until the final edition in 2004, with FIFA taking over in 2005 for the second edition of their own tournament (originally scheduled for 2001)." which implies it is not a direct descendant. our own FIFA Club World Cup article states "It was intended by FIFA to be a replacement for the Intercontinental Cup" but that is not cited. Have a read of that article and it's sources, which say an agreement was reached between to two factions--ClubOranje^T 09:31, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I would say they aren't. Keep them separate. --MicroX (talk) 03:07, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Technically speaking, would you say one is the predecessor of the other? FIFA never states that clearly on any of their IC articles, and the competition itself has had several flaws to say no. For example, the champions of the other continents, regardless of their perceived level of talent, were never invited for the tournament so it obviously wasn't a world championship; it was a competition between South America and Europe. Second, the IC was apparently never between the best team of the Copa Libertadores and the best of the European Cup/UEFA Champions League; many European champions declined to participate (I won't count 1993 since it was a special circumstance). But the most glaring example of it was in 2001; in the 2001 Copa Libertadores, Mexican side Cruz Azul made it to the final. As a result, it was decided before hand that should Cruz Azul win the finals then Boca Juniors will still participate in the IC (Boca would win but that is besides the point).

In other words, the IC wasn't even between the best team of the Copa Liberatores and the best of the UEFA Champions League; it was simply a match between a South American team and a European one, regardless of whether they were the champions of their continents or not. It was a gloried-but-official friendly....more along the lines of the Copa Suruga Bank; CONMEBOL and JFA endorse the competition and it is official; it is still a friendly.

With that said, would we still mention the IC as a worldwide tournament or just another friendly? 68.215.155.80 (talk) 15:04, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

To be fair, if C.D. Guadalajara had won this year's Copa Liberatores (which they lost in the final), Internacional would have qualified for the 2010 FIFA Club World Cup regardless as the top finishers from CONMEBOL, so that hasn't changed. The refusal of a number of Euro (particularly English) Champions to play in the IC does diminish its status but this is more of a reflection of clubs' attitudes to international football at the time than anything else. The IC was the closest we had to a worldwide club tournament prior to the FIFACWC; labelling it a friendly or not is really a subjective distinction. Certainly, for some clubs, it was not as important as other more regular competition, but it was still a trophy contested between a top European and top South American side, endorsed by UEFA and CONMEBOL. That's as close as we're going to get to a worldwide tournament in that era.

As for the relationship between the two competitions - they are different, but equivalent. It is the predecessor in the sense that it was the biggest pre-FIFACWC inter-continental club tournament. But the FIFACWC should be regarded as a new competition in its own right, with more attempt at becoming a formal part of the football calender. Pretty Green (talk) 08:57, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, you got half of my point. Still, could we get away from calling the CWC and the IC "World Championships, tournaments, etc"? Because both competitions are FAR from being so (and I just showed you some big fundamental flaws as to why). A world championship is supposed to be a competition to decide a world champion; there is no "close enough", "good enough", whatever. It either does decide a world champ or not. Neither the CWC or IC does that (literally). This is the equivalent of the US calling their baseball World Series "world championships": they have the name slap on it (which the IC didn't even have), but they do not decide a world champion.

BTW, you would find many South American sides tell you that the Copa Libertadores is much bigger; the match in Japan is simply a juicy bonus. I am sure the European sentiment is more or less the same. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.249.142 (talk) 15:01, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

You're still being subjective. If FIFA, CONMEBOL, or UEFA call the winner of the Intercontinental Cup a "world champion" then that is that. They are world champions; no questions asked. Information has to be verified. No one cares who you think should or should not be the world champion or whether they deserved to play the IC or CWC. I said before that they are different and that they are separate tournaments, however I would say yes, the IC is a predecessor to the CWC because the IC spawned the concept for a tournament between the top teams of each confederation at the end of the year. --MicroX (talk) 03:24, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

The result of the squad template deletion discussion

Following the earlier discussion here, I put the 24 Conference clubs into their own category. So when updating player articles as they move between clubs remember that if they are moving to/from a club in the top five tiers then please update the squad template/s to reflect this change.

There still remain 18 templates for clubs below this level though. 4 of these will be deleted, Welling United and Redditch United need more input into their deletion discussions. Please help to keep the remaining 12 templates up to date:

Conference North (8): Template:A.F.C. Telford United squad, Template:Blyth Spartans A.F.C. squad (N), Template:Boston United F.C. squad, Template:Droylsden F.C. squad, Template:Gainsborough Trinity F.C. squad, Template:Harrogate Town F.C. squad, Template:Hyde F.C. squad, Template:Stalybridge Celtic F.C. squad

Conference South (3): Template:Dover Athletic F.C. squad (N), Template:Ebbsfleet United F.C. squad, Template:Woking F.C. squad

Northern Premier League (1): Template:Northwich Victoria F.C. squad (N)

(N) = Was nominated by me but was voted to be kept.

As you can see, we appear to be heavily biased towards the North lol.--EchetusXe 11:58, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Once upon a time northern England introduced the link between football and money, and that head start has never been fully caught up by southern clubs that generally turned professional later on. I'm not complaining, imagine where Watford would be if the likes of Hemel Hempstead Town and St Albans City had football league fanbases. Seriously though, I think it might be worth us now creating a rough rule of thumb that squad navboxes should not be created unless there are 6-7 current bluelinks, and should be deleted if this drops to 3-4 current bluelinks. There needs to be a little wiggleroom to ensure that we're not mass-creating/deleting borderline cases every time a notable person joins or leaves. --WFC-- 14:00, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Its good to see that we're making progress though. I've added my input to a few more deletion discussions. Argyle 4 Life^talk 14:34, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

The 3-4 links thing sounds like a good idea, but I think we need to clarify which level it applies from. Template:Histon F.C. squad has only four blue links including the manager, yet they're in the Conference, where every other club has more than 6 notable players. What should happen to it? Alzarian16 (talk) 15:47, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

A manager, two loan players and one permanent bluelinked player strikes me as not notable to justify a navbox. I'd be inclined to delete it. --WFC-- 17:46, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Concacaf Champions Cup

I've been doing some minor editing in various articles of this tournament, trying to fix red links, adding club's full names, etc. But the tournament itself was a mess, and so their articles can't be expected to be much less messy. At any case, I'd like to receive some help in the wikification of these entries. My only source is the RSSSF, since the Concacaf site is awfully poor on statistics and historical information. And even then, RSSSF does have many blank points on his articles. I ask for some help here not only because the task is enormous, but also because I'm not very familiar with many of the lower clubs, so I'd be much bold if I were to be accompanied on my edits. Any Caribbean or Central American fan here? Ipsumesse (talk) 06:36, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Categorizing footballers

Should Tony Chua be categorized as a footballer? He only played college football and therefore wouldn't be notable as a footballer. Also, there are no sources that states that he had any sort of senior career but the article creator is adamant that he should be categorized as such. Banana Fingers (talk) 09:42, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that he should not be categorized as a footballer. He was no more a footballer than Rod Stewart or Gordon Ramsay. .. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 12:49, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah finally, someone that agrees with me. lol. Anyway, for Rod Stewart, it says he trained with Brentford and there's a note on the page that says there is no record of him actually signing with Brentford yet he's categorized as a Brentford player? Which means he was a footballer. I just want to make sure so I can give the Tony Chua article creator similar cases and get it removed from from the category of Filipino footballers. Banana Fingers (talk) 13:56, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

It seems that he is now an International footballer and has been added to Category:Philippine international footballers with the edit summary "even better category. PFF said he played before. but they suck in record keeping. he was a forward." Hey ho!. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 20:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Meh! I'd still like to see a proper source and until then I believe that the article shouldn't be categorized as such. Banana Fingers (talk) 20:47, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Manchester United F.C. requested move

There is a move request over at Talk:Manchester United F.C.#Requested move that aims to rename the article as simply "Manchester United". This may end up setting a precedent throughout this project, so I suggest that as many members as possible comment on the discussion. – PeeJay 13:23, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Azeri First Division logo

Hi, anybody could help me to upload Azerbaijan First Division logo, which is just recently unveiled. Big thanks --NovaSkola (talk) 21:24, 27 August 2010 (UTC) here is link http://www.fanat.az/uploads/DIVIZIA1.jpg

Abdulai Bell-Baggie

1. Reliable IP changed Abdulai Bell-Baggie's countryofbirth from England to Sierra Leone. Now, the young player in question is a member of 'SIERRA LEONE PROUD SIERRA LEONEAN' on his Bebo; also I can't find his birth record here. I'm sure he one day might play for the Sierra Leone national team, but until then all reliable sources state him to be 'English', without giving a place of birth. Does anyone know of any way to find where exactly he was born? SOLVED after speaking with IP

If it is verifiable that he was born in Sierra Leone, and he hasn't played representative football for England, why is he described as an English footballer in the opening sentence? Is this just oversight, or were the family temporarily displaced at the time of birth. Kevin McE (talk) 13:50, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Just all the sources list him as English, grew up in England. It would be interesting to know how he also ended up with the double barrelled name of Bell-Baggie as well.--EchetusXe 22:22, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I've removed "English" from the lede. It's wholly unimportant, and obviously leads to arguments like this. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 10:02, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

He's played for England under-16s and under-17s, which makes his sporting nationality English unless explicitly changed, I'd have thought. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 10:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Good idea Thumper, I didn't consider that option, though he still would have had the English flag on club squad lists. Nice work Stru, now we have an answer!--EchetusXe 10:38, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Why did you simply reinstate the word "English" while omitting any actual mention of his call-ups from the lede? It's the callups that are important, not the adjective. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 11:58, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

If under-16 and under-17 call-ups are so important then why are they not enough to assert a player's notability?--EchetusXe 14:44, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Never mind. I've edited the lede in accordance. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 09:44, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok but it is spelt lead not lede.--EchetusXe 18:32, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

template:fb start and template:fb end

Just checking out if the agreement to make these templates obsolete was just for these specific templates or for the principle of the reduced width navigation templates in general. The reason is that a couple of new ones have sprung up that I stumbled across {{rc start}} & {{rc end}} that perform the same task. Keith D (talk) 10:34, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

From my understanding it was based on the principle of the things, I thought we were going for more standardisation. Woody (talk) 10:51, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. We spent the better part of two years getting rid of them on the footy project; this is not the time for it to go spreading to other domains. Raymond Cruise (talk · contribs) seems to have written it in response to this change a day before. I've pinged him regarding this thread. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 12:06, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

How about using a bot to remove any remaining instances of fb start/end? There are still 5,000 pages that use the combination, although every navbox has been converted to full width in the meantime. Given the speed of change on this site, it would take approximately until the end of the year until these have eventually vanished as well if all pages would be edited manually... --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 12:15, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Support the bot to remove all of the Fb start / end on articles tagged with {footy} Sandman888 (talk) 12:23, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Are you requesting that a bot remove both sets of templates the template:fb start and template:fb end ones and the new {{rc start}} and {{rc end}} or are you suggesting that the bot convert all template:fb start to {{rc start}}, etc.? --Walter Görlitz (talk) 12:28, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest getting rid of both completely. The navboxes can stand on their own now. Woody (talk) 13:02, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Not all templates have been converted there are still ones that I have come across, in the last week, that need changing before the templates can be removed. From memory I think the templates are being used on hockey and volleyball articles and these are the templates that need changing prior to removing the templates. Keith D (talk) 17:21, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

May be we should also be including {{bb start}} & {{bb end}} and removing these at the same time. Keith D (talk) 17:30, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

{{bb start}}/{{bb end}} and {{vb start}}/{{vb end}} are not in the jurisdiction of WP:FOOTY, are they? ;-) However, the respective projects should probably be informed that the original templates are now deprecated.

@Walter: My request was to get rid of any {{fb start}}/{{fb end}} that still appear in WP:FOOTY articles in a first step, before eventually getting rid of the templates themselves as well. --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 17:55, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Back to the original point: I've now redirected {{rc start}} & {{rc end}} to the respective fb templates, to ensure that they're not missed when all the cleanup is done. The creation and use of these templates is contrary to the consensus on removing them. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 09:48, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

It would be good to get rid of all of this type of template and to bring all articles into line visually as they look odd having differing width templates at the bottom. To do this fully we need to get the other projects that use this type of template on board. Keith D (talk) 10:25, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Lists of players by club

I wanted to get some consensus on the criteria for the lists of players for each club. At the moment, the majority of player lists entitled "List of .... players" features those who have made more than 100 appearances in all competitions. However there is variation for the players who have made less than 100 appearances. I have been working on List of Manchester United F.C. players (25-99 appearances) and List of Manchester United F.C. players (fewer than 25 appearances) whereas List of Burnley F.C. players (50–99 league appearances) is currently at FLC. The less than 25 apps article for Man Utd is long enough already, without having to add 25-49 players. 03md 22:26, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there needs to be a set number of appearances threshold for these list articles, as it will depend on the particular club and national league they play in. The only reason they are not all simply straight lists of all players to play for x club is due to the high file sizes that can often result. Eldumpo (talk) 23:01, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

We have two lists solely because one list would be too long, which is a questionable practise nowadays anyway given that there is no problem with List of Formula One drivers. Where the cutoff falls should depend on the breakdown of that individual club's appearances, but I don't see why any club needs three lists. --WFC-- 06:19, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about other clubs, but there have been about 900 players in Manchester United's history. To split these evenly across two articles would make two huge lists, but splitting into three lists makes the pages just about manageable for both editors and readers alike. – PeeJay 08:36, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

On the original question, as Eldumpo says it makes sense to split according to the data you've got: for Birmingham City, an even spread would be 75+, 10-75, <10, which would be silly, but 100+, 25-99, <25 would be reasonable. Currently there are more than 1000 players, split into two lists, 50+ players at 88kB and 0-49 players at 138kB. The larger one takes ages to load and is slow to edit, on what I believe to be a reasonably powerful machine. We're supposed to cater for users who don't necessarily have powerful machines. If splitting into three makes it manageable for readers and editors, then I don't see why we shouldn't do so. As to the need for splitting at all being questionable because there's "no problem with List of Formula One drivers", if I combined the BCFC players lists, the sortable table would be 200kb+, half as big again as the Formula One drivers table. How are people supposed to load, let alone edit, something that size? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:33, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

For Vale I made a list (56k) and a secondary list (105kb). The first list is for players with 50 or more Football League appearances, the secondary one is for players with 1-49 Football League appearances. My lists consist of basic information, and have general references rather than a reference for each player as all the data comes from either Soccerbase one book, or Neil Brown's site. It won't reach Featured Article status this way but it is manageable and reasonably sized. Obviously the one with fewer appearances grows quicker than the other one so perhaps I will one day have to consider lowering the threshold to 40 appearances or something. It can be done therefore to limit a full list to two articles, but if you want to win awards or expand beyond Football League players then you probably will have to make three lists or leave out those with fewer than 10 appearances or whatever.--EchetusXe 18:27, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

1956–57 European Cup

Anyone know why the First round, 2nd leg match between Grasshopper and Slovan was played in Munich? [4] [5] Eldumpo (talk) 09:28, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

According to the German Wikipedia this was for political reasons. de:Europapokal_der_Landesmeister_1956/57 says that after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Switzerland did not allow teams from the Eastern bloc to play in Switzerland. So the match was delayed for 4 weeks and then played on neutral territory in Munich. I know that this is not a valid source but it might point you in the right direction.--Jaellee (talk) 09:52, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I have added a note to the article, although it is not fully sourced, and I've also added a ref to the 1956 Games and Hungarian Revolution articles. Eldumpo (talk) 16:59, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Senijad Ibričić

The article is receiving a great deal of attention for the past two days from anonymous editors who insist that he signed for Galatasaray, although he in fact didn't as of 29 August. His club even issued a statement claiming that the initial offer was turned down. Would it be possible to semi-protct the article for at least a few days until the 31 August transfer deadline? Timbouctou 12:16, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Done. пﮟოьεԻ 57 17:08, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks 57! Timbouctou 18:04, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Game imagemap?

I added an imagemap to 2010 FIFA World Cup Final, specifically to the game diagram depicting the players, allowing linkage to their articles through the image. I've been asked to create a template to simplify this to several other pages, but I want to refer here first: are there no such templates for use? ResMar 20:11, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Nvm, apparently <imagemap> hates templementation parameters. ResMar 20:30, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Matt Striebel

Should Matt Striebel have a footy tag on its talk page?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 17:27, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure playing college-level football for a team who don't have an article warrants it. Does anyone here regularly edit articles on college-level footballers in the States? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 17:43, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Jon Broxton's your man. GiantSnowman 13:38, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

The most I think I might find would be a paragraph worth of stuff about his college career. The problem is that the Ivy League moved its servers last week and I can not find a lot of things I want to.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 21:37, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Should probably not have a footy tag. He would not be notable as a footballer. Sandman888 (talk) ^{Latest PR} 11:18, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Zombie433's edits

I see that Zombie433 (talk · contribs) has been discussed on this talk page in the past since his edits concern other editors. There is a WP:ANI discussion about the editor, and if you believe that his contributions are not verifiable or possibly false information, it would help to provide evidence of this at the discussion. The discussion can be seen here. Erik (talk | contribs) 20:37, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Zombie433 has been issued a final warning for his edits to footballers' articles due to BLP concerns. He has edited footballers' articles since then, and WP:FOOTBALL editors are needed to assess the appropriateness of Zombie433's ensuing edits. The WP:ANI discussion can be found here. Erik (talk | contribs) 20:52, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Zombie433 has been indefinitely blocked. Please watch football-related articles for any sockpuppets whose editing pattern matches Zombie433's. If you see any such pattern, please report it at WP:ANI and reference the previous discussion that was started on August 27, 2010. Thank you. Erik (talk | contribs) 02:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

George Richards (English footballer)

Does anyone know if the Richards who played for Derby and England is the same player who subsequently played for Bristol Rovers? Eldumpo (talk) 18:05, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I've checked in Bristol Rovers Football Club: The Definitive History and there's very little information in there about George Richards. All it says is that he joined in 1911 and left in 1913. He made his debut for Rovers on 21 October 1911, so if you have a date for his final appearance for Derby then that would help with making some sort of judgement as to whether it's the same person. The article as it stands describes him as a wing half, but looking at the Rovers line-ups for the two seasons he was with us, he only played at centre forward and inside left, he didn't play any games at half back at all. I don't know how married to their position players were in those days, and how plausible it is that he played in one position for one club and a different position for another. — Gasheadsteve ^{Talk to me} 18:57, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I have added to the article that he was also an inside left, as this is listed as his secondary position in Joyce. I don't have any more info about his last game for Derby, other than Joyce is indicating he was still with Derby in 1912/13 so maybe these are different players? Eldumpo (talk) 20:17, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

They can't be the same player, (unless you can play for 2 clubs on the same day) Last match for Derby 7-2-1914 Cattivi (talk) 00:19, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, have you got a source for that? Eldumpo (talk) 07:36, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Derby County A complete record 1884-1988 by Gerald Mortimer and the definitive history of Bristol Rovers. 19-4-1913 played for Derby and Bristol Rovers, also 28-10-1911 21-10-1911 etc. Who did add Bristol Rovers? It doesn't make any sense. Cattivi (talk) 10:18, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I have added the above refs to the article, and included a note confirming he is a different person to the Rovers player. If the Rovers player article is ever created (not sure if it would be deemed notable as he did not play Football League) this could be replaced by a hatnote. At present the Rovers player has a couple of redlinks at George Richards (footballer), and it was because of this I originally included some Rovers references to the article, as the time periods were close. I'll move this thread to the articles talk page. Thanks again. Eldumpo (talk) 10:52, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Three letter club codes

Hello, I noticed that on the tables 2010–11 UEFA Champions League, Bayern Munich was abbreviated BMU. I changed it to FCB, as it is their typical code. Upon checking it again, it was changed to BAY. I have certainly seen other cases, but this one stands out because it was today :) At any rate, is there a list of standard codes used on wikipedia? That would greatly help the editing and counter-editing, as I certainly don't know if there is precedent for one code or another. Cheers! Captain Courageous (talk) 06:32, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

We tend to use the abbreviations given on UEFA.com's "Match Centre". Last year, Bayern's abbreviation was "BAY"; since we have no reason to assume they will change it this season, we should stick with that for the time being. If it does end up being changed, then of course we will change it too. – PeeJay 08:43, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

FCB is FC Basel, it is FC Barcelona. Especially with Bayern and Basel in the same group, it can't be used for either and UEFA don't use it for either chandler 09:04, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I doubt that there's an official list, unlike country codes. We should avoid using invented TLAs if possible. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk

Like I said, they're not invented; they're the ones that UEFA use in their "Match Centre". – PeeJay 10:01, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I should have made clear that "invented" applies just as much to a UEFA website as it does here. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 12:01, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

It is true that those TLAs are offically used by UEFA match centre and are subject to change clubs with similar TLA are in the same group or are playing each otherSupergunner08 (talk) 13:01, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

2010–11 La Liga

In the first round of this season there are teams which could deserve the same position, however, the government body of La Liga, RFEF, says in his Reglamento, in the article 201 the tie-break in this case are the Fair-play scales. I applied this criteria but user User:Qampunen are revoking repeatedly beacuse he considers that in the Wikipedia, experienced users apply the rules for classification: 1st points, then head-to-head, then difference goals, and then goals scored and in last case alphabetically. According to him, the fair-play scales to determinate tie-break when all previous rules is not enough to determinate tie-break, he thinks that is not valid. Please, we must make some statement to the determinate who user has the reason to determinate the tie-break in this case, and please we must warn Qampunen to accept valid arguments, beacuse he is always revoking changes which he's not agree and some users are interested in collaborate in Wikipedia.--Raul-Reus (talk) 18:57, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

If there are official tie-breaking criteria from the organizing body of the competition (I do not know at the moment if it is the RFEF or the LFP), these should be used in the table footer, along with a citation of their source. Try applying the "rofc" parameter to the footer of the table in this case. BUT... is it really necessary to edit war over a small facet which will last for two weeks only??? --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 19:08, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, I don't like war edits, and this is the reason that I make this request, beacuse I'm very angry about the beahavior of Qampunen to accept valid arguments, always revoking changes which he isn't agree, and it's also an important request beacuse Leagues classifications can be sorted according to the organizing bodies not from intern rules of Wikipedian users. So, it may have more discussions in other rounds when all previous tie-beaks not decide a position, not just specifically for these two weeks. --Raul-Reus talk 19:17, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not that bad :) I think the solution to this problem is that any teams which are tied must be in alphabetical order but they must share the position, otherwise it is too confusing for any person viewing the article. I know this has been done in the premier league, for example. If anyone knows how to make teams share positions please do so. Qampunen (talk) 19:28, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

But if the tie-breaking criteria include the teams' fair play records, then surely we must include that too. Unless the fair play records are also equal, that is. – PeeJay 19:31, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me Qampunen, the Premiere League, in his own Classification rules specifies that if all rules are not enough to determinate tie-break, the clubs involved share the same position, however, as I said a thousand times, the RFEF, who is the entity to make these rules, specifies that if it's applied all rules continues drawn, then apply Fair-play scales, and then a tie-break match (at the final of the season). It's not the case that if you are bad, but you don't understand the word Democracy and you generate edit wars when someone edits something you disagree. Well, for example in here you you suggest/ORDER if everything is tied then it's sorted alphabetically according to your criteria unilaterally ignoring the rules specified. Not create your own rules and destroy the other editions. I'm very tired of your democratic behavior. --Raul-Reus talk 19:40, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok, but we must include it in the footer in the league table. Otherwise it is too confusing. Until then, lets leave it in alphabetical order to avoid any confusion until it is specified in the league table footer. Qampunen (talk) 19:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

*points to {{Fb cl footer}} and its documentation (the param is named "orfc" and not "rofc", sorry for the typo) and further likes to remind people that articles are not owned by anybody and that Wikipedia is not a democracy, but consensus-driven* --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 19:53, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Is the position after one round of the 38-game season that worth getting into an edit war about? No. Anyway, it's not up to Wikipedia users to define the league order, but La Liga itself. Brad78 (talk) 19:59, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not talking democracy about voting a case which some users desagree or agree, I talk about democracy about users that can accept differences, not destroy the work of others and know to accept suggestions, especially if they are explicit rules of the competent bodies. For Brad78, the discussions it's not only about one round about 38-game, this case can apear in other round, which can't apply head-to-head or head-to-head cannot determinate tie-break, neither Differrence goals neither Scored goals. Finally, I don't know how to use the "orfc" parameter, it's always ignored in my previews. Thanks. --Raul-Reus talk 20:08, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

But it isn't up to you, me or any other wikipedia user to determine the placings but La Liga's organisers themselves. The table should have a reliable source. End of. Brad78 (talk) 21:09, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Strangely enough, I can't find anu table with the "fair-play" rules. I don't think we should bother about it as it is only going to last for one more round. I'd leave as it is. 95.120.247.24 (talk) 20:05, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I put these tables in the Competitive format in La Liga article in May taken from the RFEF official website, yes it's so sad that RFEF don't publish these criteria more formally. --Raul-Reus talk 20:12, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

As long as you can get it into a table format and get reliable sources then it is fine Raul-Reus Supergunner08 (talk) 12:47, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Harry Johnstone

I'm writing an article on the Holditch Colliery Disaster. One of the men killed was a 'Johnstone, Harry (34) overman.' The player and the miner could be the same person, born 1903, starting a football career aged 18 in 1921, leaving the game two years later. It seems like a longshot but can anyone think of a way we could find out?--EchetusXe 10:54, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Could there be an obituary in the local newspaper archive that would give you enough to go on? Even back then, scoring in the Football League would probably have gotten a mention. It's not an ideal line of enquiry, but if Port Vale haven't written about it I'm struggling to think who else might have. --WFC-- 11:17, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

You'll have to look offline I'm afraid. This and this are the sum total of the online information about him unless I'm missing something. Alzarian16 (talk) 11:22, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks for the source.--EchetusXe 13:09, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

FC Lokomotiv Moscow former players/staff w/e

Someone who has contributed to that article has gave many personnel associated with the club multiple nationalities, which seems to be frowned upon here. I have removed most of them who only have represented one national team but the ones that are left (to my knowledge) have switched allegiance from non-FIFA nations, at the time, and the USSR/CIS to Russia. What flags should be besides their name? VEO^onefive 03:10, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Right. From what I know, non-FIFA nationalities should not be used for footballers but I'm still stumped with superseded states. VEO^onefive 05:33, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

First the header is wrong: they are on that list because they are internationals, not because they are "notable" (whatever that means).

Second: the flags are not accompanied by names, so are contrary to policy.

Third: They are sorted by nation, so the flags are redundant.

I'll have a go at it this morning. Kevin McE (talk) 07:48, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

William Fullarton (footballer) and Bill Fullerton

Since we're talking about the subject, would someone mind merging William Fullarton (footballer) and Bill Fullerton? They're clearly one and the same. The only difference seems to be the variation of spelling in the surname. I have no experience of merging two articles together so if I tried then I'm sure I'd mess it up. Cheers. Argyle 4 Life^talk 15:45, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

They are differernt people. Greens on Screen list the player D here, moving on to New Brompton, then list the manager here stating that "Sadly, nothing is known about Fullerton's life or career after he left Home Park."--EchetusXe 15:55, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Bit coincidental that (according to GoS) they were both born in 1882 and both played for Sunderland between 1903 and 1905, though, surely....? Could it be that Fullerton's profile has accidentally acquired some of Fullarton's bio? I'll check my copy of Joyce tonight to see if both really are listed as having played for Sunderland at the same time..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:01, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that D Fullarton is a different player to Bill Fullerton. The problem is that his article was incorrectly titled William Fullarton (footballer) when that isn't his name at all. As a result of the confusion Bill's ended up with some of D's bio. Does that sound reasonable? Alzarian16 (talk) 16:10, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The StatCat (Sunderland) website has an entry for William Fullarton [6] - there is no other Fullerton or Fullarton listed. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 16:12, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Joyce lists only one Fulla/erton as playing for anybody in the Football League, a William M FullArton with William Fullarton (footballer)'s club details and Sunderland/Forest stats. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 16:25, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm fairly confident its the same person, albeit the book I have has the same issue. A former Sunderland half back called William Fullerton managed Plymouth Argyle in the 1906–07 season and was dismissed at the end of that season to make way for a committee. Meanwhile, the section for player statistics lists a W.M. Fullarton, who made 34 Southern League appearances in the 1906–07 season and isn't listed in any other season. I think he was player-manager and then moved on to New Brompton, with the spelling of the name being a common mistake. Argyle 4 Life^talk 16:55, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The player's name was William according to Joyce and The Definitive Gillingham F.C. - where's the reference to "D Fullarton" come into the discussion......? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 17:50, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

GoS gives the Plymouth appearances to "D Fullarton". cheers, Struway2 (talk) 17:59, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

So, to summarise, there was definitely a player called William Fullarton, who played for Sunderland, Plymouth and Brompton, there are multiple sources that confirm that. There was also a manager who was at Plymouth at the same time as this player and who had the same name, however there's no reliable source that actually confirms that they're the same guy (GoS gives some of the same info for both men but doesn't explicitly link them). Is that accurate.....? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 17:52, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The Greens on Screen website lists the footballer as D FULLARTON. Seen as we know he is W FULLARTON that somewhat reduces that site's credibility on the matter. There is also a variation of the spelling, the player being called 'Fullarton' and the manager 'Fullerton'. What would clear it up is a reliable source giving some details on the manager, either seeming to show that he was never a player or seeming to show that his name was actually Fullarton.--EchetusXe 18:01, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually, for extra added confusion value, I've just noticed that Home of the Shouting Men, the Gills centenary book, lists him as D Fullarton too...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 18:05, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

So it's either two blokes of which only one owns the playing history, or it's two blokes whose playing histories have been added together, or it's one bloke christened William with a nickname beginning with D ... cheers, Struway2 (talk) 18:12, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there a "this may actually be the same person as X" template available........? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 18:13, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

You could edit {{Distinguish}} to remove the initial "Not"... cheers, Struway2 (talk) 18:18, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Look at the can of worms I've opened! Thanks for the extra bit of information to back up GoS, Chris. I won't have that websites reliability questioned (the people involved in it are a credit to my club). The book I have specifically states that Fulla/erton the manager played for Sunderland as a half back, so another reliable source should clear it up - the question is where. If only Joyce did Southern League player records. Argyle 4 Life^talk 18:44, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Could the GoS people be contacted directly to see if they can shed any further light? They might not even be aware that they have two profiles of what might be the same man..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 19:18, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

William Fullarton didn't play a single league game at half-back for Sunderland, he played at the number 5 position in every single league game he played. He was transfered to Nottingham Forest 26-10-1905 He played 4 games as right-half the rest centre-half. To complicate things even more: There was a J.Fullerton playing for New Brompton in 1907-08. A William Fullerton played 2 matches in 1897-98 for Dundee on the left wing. It would be nice if the FA published their full registration records. Professional clubs operated with several professional senior teams, it is possible that somewhere down the line a reserve team player got mixed up with a first team player. His middlename is Millwright and he played 37 league games for Queens Park (Emms-Wells) Cattivi (talk) 19:56, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the number 5 position was a half-back, it was the number of the centre-half, while 4 and 6 were the wing halves. BigDom 21:22, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The W.M. Fullarton in my book mostly wore 4 and 6 when he played. Argyle 4 Life^talk 21:37, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, actually he didn't, seeing as numbers weren't used until the late 1920s :) The book just uses the numbers to denote positions. BigDom 06:36, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Smart arse. ;) That is what I meant but indeed it didn't come across like that when I wrote it. Argyle 4 Life^talk 14:19, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, wing half and half back aren't synonymes, my mistake Cattivi (talk) 08:59, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. I've sent an email to Steve (GoS owner), so we'll see if he can shed any light on it. This sort of thing doesn't surprise me really. We're lucky to have what we do now and back then it was much different. I'm sure many records have been mixed up and lost over time because it was all done on paper. I hope the FA do what Cattivi suggests in the future but it'll take a hell of alot of work. Argyle 4 Life^talk 20:18, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

So there is a D Fullarton, W Fullarton, W Fullerton, and a J Fullerton. All of which may be the same person?--EchetusXe 20:23, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

You can be sure that the Dundee player wasn't the Queens Park, Sunderland, Nottingham Forest player. But he could have been the Plymouth manager when the Plymouth manager and player are two different persons. Cattivi (talk) 20:31, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

All my Gills books list the two Fullartons separately, but have no details on where the one who wasn't signed from Plymouth was signed from. Based on what Cattivi says, it seems likely that the Plymouth/Brompton player was D Fullarton, but he didn't play for Sunderland, and that the Plymouth manager was Bill Fullerton and he did play for Sunderland. And J Fullerton was someone else entirely. Does that make sense? Looks like Joyce has merged their records into one........ -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:01, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Its looking that way I agree. I remembered there was a team photo here and hoped that they were both there. They are in the middle row. Fulla/erton the player on the left and Fulla/erton the manager in the centre. A funny coincidence how they both arrived and left at the same time. Argyle 4 Life^talk 16:02, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

The merging of records into one reminds me of William McKay, a Burnley forward who played in the first season of the Football League. In his Wiki article, he is credited with 7 goals in 14 matches. However, according to the book that I accrued after creating the article, Burnley actually had a different player called Mackay (both played in the same position) and the records have been merged together. William McKay apparently actually made 5 apps and scored 4 goals, while Mystery Mackay played 9, scored 2. Can anyone shed some light on the identity of Mackay, who was apparently signed from Cambuslang in December 1888 and left Burnley in May 1889? BigDom 07:14, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I've heard back from Steve and can confirm that the Plymouth manager was indeed called William Fullarton. They did some digging last year and forgot to change his name here, but its sorted now. He also attached a page from the 1906-07 handbook which reads as follows;

“ Among old faces that will be missed this season will be those of H. Wilcox, W. Leech, (both gone to Leicester Fosse), I. Owens (Bristol Rovers), W. Godley (Reading), P. Saul (Liverpool), A. Clark (Leeds City), J. Banks (Leyton), F. Buck (West Bromwich Albion), W. Horne (Fulham), R. McNeil, D. Buchanan, W.F. Bauchop and R. Jack (Southend). Argyle has thus lost thirteen players – one goalkeeper, three backs, three halves, and six forwards. Among the last named also is the ex-manager. The loss of Bob Jack was to many the loss not only of an attractive player at his best, but also of a personal friend. His successor is W.H. Fullarton, late of Notts Forest. For his transfer £500 was paid to Sunderland by the Foresters, and the Midland Club's directorate was not at all pleased to learn that Fullarton was coming West. For a centre half he is the man who would be most acceptable to Notts Forest just now. That fact probably inspires the policy which is being pursued by Notts in refusing their consent for Fullarton to play for Plymouth. While he is at liberty to manage the side there is an objection to his lending it actual assistance on the field. At the time of writing, however, there were hopes that the difficulty might be removed. In any case, if Fullarton proves a first-class manager, as it is believed he will, the club will be extremely fortunate in having retained him. ”

So he was allowed to manage the club but wasn't permitted to play. Below that is a list of players and one of them is David Fullarton, the brother of William. The appearances for Plymouth listed here were made by David. He isn't included in Joyce's book because he didn't play in the Football League and they obviously got merged together at some point. William Fullarton played in the Football League for Sunderland and Nottingham Forest, and only managed Plymouth. His brother David played for Plymouth in the Southern League and then moved on to New Brompton. What happened to William after he left Plymouth I'm not sure, but it looks like we've sorted a few things out atleast. Argyle 4 Life^talk 04:12, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

If I understand well...William Fullarton (footballer) and Bill Fullerton are one and the same. Both articles should be merged.--Latouffedisco (talk) 09:53, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I'll leave that to someone with experience of merging. Argyle 4 Life^talk 00:44, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Now merged under William Fullarton (footballer). I have copied this thread to the article talk page; I hope no-one objects. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 20:27, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with that. I was just thinking that perhaps we should have an article on David Fullarton too... Alzarian16 (talk) 20:36, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

He never played in a recognised fully professional league, though...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 20:46, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I was forgetting the Southern League wasn't professional. Scratch my last comment. Alzarian16 (talk) 20:50, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I realise this is going off on a tangent, but the Southern League was as professional as the Football League prior to 1920; neither was "fully professional". There were many amateur players in the Football League and many Southern League clubs were virtually 100% professional. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 20:56, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Harry Topping

This reminds me of Harry Topping a full-back from Lancashire, or as it turned out to be: three full-backs from Lancashire.Cattivi (talk) 20:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Tell us more! Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 21:58, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Michael Joyce has two players by this name; one who played for Manchester United and is included on WP at Henry Topping. The other is Henry Westley Topping, born Kearsley (Bolton) on 21 September 1913, who played at full back. Prior to WWII, he had brief spells with several clubs (Swindon Town, Bath City, Manchester City, Exeter City (1 league appearance) and New Brighton (5 league appearances) before settling at Stockport County from 1938-1945. He next appeared for New Brighton again from 1946 to 1947, making 67 appearances, before ending up with "Prescot Cables".

The Harry Topping shown here apparently only played in the FA Cup for Bristol Rovers in 1945-46, (see http://www.bristolrovers.co.uk/page/LatestNews/0,,10328~1325830,00.html) and was coach at Feyenoord in 1950-51, as well as PSV Eindhoven the following season. His birth date is given as 1913 (unsourced). Could these be the same people?

Likewise, could either be the Harry Topping who was a trainer at Norwich City in 1958-59 (see http://www.canaries.co.uk/page/cuprun/0,,10355~1510356,00.html) or at Torquay later (see http://www.torbayaac.co.uk/Pages/club_history.htm)? -- Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 18:57, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

You can find all the details here: [7] Cattivi (talk) 19:32, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Is this a reliable source that can be cited in the article? -Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 21:51, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Michael Joyce is considered to be reliable, unfortunately his website is offline , allfootballers.com (his technician suddenly left without explanation) He's working on a third edition of his book, I'm not sure this information was included in edition 2, it was on his website. Cattivi (talk) 22:11, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I have expanded the Harry Topping article to include his playing career, and added an article for the third player, Henry Westby Topping. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 06:14, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there a disambiguation page? GiantSnowman 13:42, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

They are all three listed at Topping (surname). That should suffice. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 13:40, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Deletion review

Just to let you know, Samuel Galindo is under a deletion review here. --Jimbo^[online] 13:11, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Kits list in season articles

I've been seeing an increase in the appearance of tables that show the managers, team captains, kit providers, and main sponsor in the league season articles. I know they have been around, but it seems to me to be a table of mainly useless tidbits of info (knowing who the managers is where I draw the line). I remember a discussion here sort of agreeing (by lack of dissent) that they should not be around. I open it up here again: should we have a table with that info (managers, captains, kit providers, sponsors, etc) in league season articles? Digirami (talk) 15:29, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

In my humble opinion kit makers and sponsorships are a pretty useless addition to league season articles. If for any reason this sort of information is seen as relevant (perhaps in cases such as FC Barcelona's UNICEF deal for example), it should probably belong to club articles or club season articles. Also, there are many clubs out there in smaller leagues who are sponsored by several companies (Dinamo Zagreb kits for instance are plastered with 5-6 different ads) or none at all. Timbouctou 17:51, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I think managers, arguably captains and in the modern game chairmen should be listed. I justify chairmen on the basis that when you think of Leeds in recent seasons, you think Risdale and Bates. When you think of Portsmouth, you think of Mandaric, Storie and Androikou. You think Wigan, you think Whelan, you think Palace you think Jordan, and so on and so forth.

Yes to managers, captains, and vice-captains. I don't really have a problem with including kit manufacturers or shirt sponsors on season pages either (I would only include the sponsor from the chest of the shirt). I don't really have a strong feeling for or against, it is pretty extraneous after all, but if we're going by notability there are probably enough third party sources, etc. to meet the criteria. These items have become a part of the identity of many clubs. Nike, Adidas, Puma, Pirelli, Samsung, Carlsberg, etc. all bring up specific images in football circles.Udeezy (talk) 18:41, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Can we clarify that we are discussing league season articles and not club season articles? Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 19:40, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm talking about league season articles. Digirami (talk) 21:16, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Tommy Dixon (footballer from Northumberland)

I created this a few weeks back, and named it the way I named it because the younger Tommy Dixon was also a footballer, I don't know this guy's date of birth, and the other Tommy Dixon was also a forward. Does anyone know his date of birth? Given that Struway subsequently edited I doubt there's a record, but you never know. Failing that, given that the two players are of similar notability, how should they be named? Even if consensus is that the West Ham player is more notable, the Watford player's current title is inappropriate, as the other guy was born in Newcastle.

Thanks in advance, --WFC-- 17:59, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

• I never understood why there's so much activity around these obscure footballers. If they are hardly mentioned in some 2000-pages stats book, why care? Perhaps it's a British thing. Sandman888 (talk) 18:09, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Given that Struway subsequently edited I doubt there's a record, but you never know. are you taking the p :-) Have you tried asking Gasheadsteve to look him up in a Bristol Rovers book? Or any regular Middlesbrough editor? Or Cattivi, who's got more books than I could dream of. If that gets nowhere, I'd be inclined to argue Tommy Dixon, with 300+ FL appearances, is more notable, so how about (1900s–1910s footballer)? I don't like it either, but neither individual decade would be accurate enough, unless he only played a couple of games or whatever in the 1900s. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 19:13, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

According to the 1911 census he was born in 1882. BigDom 19:23, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

So he should be Tommy Dixon (footballer born 1882) then. And to answer Sandman888, a footballer from 100 years ago is just as entitled to be on Wikipedia as someone who has 10 minutes of fame on so-called "Reality TV" today. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 19:46, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Well found. That site wants me to register to see his details, but it won't let me do so... Out of interest, does the Cramlington bloke list his occupation as footballer, or does he give a real job? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 19:57, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know, I've only used the free search as I refuse to pay 60 pounds or whatever it costs. But he is the only Thomas Dixon from Cramlington living in the Middlesbrough area in 1911, so it seems like it must be the right person. BigDom 20:03, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the help guys. And Sandman, I wouldn't call that person obscure, what with being the two-season top scorer at a club that at the time was regularly winning things. This is what I would call an obscure footballer. --WFC-- 20:42, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I wasn't going to pay either, but it still wouldn't let me "register free"... No, I was just wondering what he'd described himself as. In earlier censuses, the ones that are freely accessible, I've come across several players who were undoubtedly footballers at least some of the time, but on the census they put "real" jobs. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 20:45, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Thing that never struck me last night: in the 1911 census, they didn't ask for date of birth, they asked for age, as confirmed here. Which means those birth years must be extrapolated from the age, so are only accurate give or take a year. So if you're convinced that's the right Tommy Dixon, you'd have to call him (footballer born c. 1882). cheers, Struway2 (talk) 07:13, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Team squads

For the team pages and their season article, what do we use for the "Current squad" players? Is it ALL players that are under contract (or play for them on loan), or just the first-teamers?

Also, some team's websites (like Manchester United) show ALL players, even the reserves. Others, like Napoli, show only the first team players. (And whenever I set the squad to one of those, it gets reverted to the other way.)

Can somebody help me here? Azzurre (talk) 18:12, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I understand your point. Manchester United clearly delineate their player lists between first team, reserves and youth academy. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 18:21, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I think he means in the club season articles. – PeeJay 18:24, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, could've clarified a bit more.. okay, take a look at {{Manchester United F.C. squad}} and {{S.S.C. Napoli squad}}. Both are taken right from the team websites. But as you can see, one has many more players than the other. (And also, those are the same players as what's on the articles, both for the team and the individual season article.)

I know what I'm trying to say, but I'm finding it hard to put in words... many of those Man Utd players have never played a game for the club, but they're still on there. So, for Napoli, should I just include every player that signed with them and is currently under contract? (For Napoli, I can't find anything on reserves, youth academy, et cetera.) What is the norm for all/most teams? Azzurre (talk) 18:30, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Well the players listed in the Manchester United squad template are the same ones as are listed in the first-team squad list on the official website (which Jmorrison has already kindly linked to). Clubs do not have a limit on the number of players they can consider first-teamers, so this kind of disparity is to be expected. – PeeJay 18:38, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Italian clubs don't have reserve teams, from memory. I think it's just a difference in policy between England and other countries. It's up to each club who they decide to list in their first team squad. Any other interpretation by wikipedia users would be OR. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 18:40, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so what about players like Cristian Bucchi who's signed with Napoli, but not listed on the official website? Should those guys be put in also? (And if so, where would I find all the players who that would apply to?) Azzurre (talk) 18:43, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Josh McEachran

Does playing in a friendly game indicate notability? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 23:55, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Playing a friendly for a club does not confer notability. What's more relevant in this case is that this article was AfD'ed a few months ago. I've put it up for speedy deletion under WP:CSD G4. Sir Sputnik (talk) 00:49, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Charlie McEleny

Sorry to bring up another "obscure" footballer from 100 years ago. I have just re-written this article which was in a state, but am having trouble confirming his place and date of birth. For more details, see the article's talk page. Google produces hits in the book "Northern Irish Football Biographies" by Corry Evans and others,[8] and in "New Brighton Tower F.C. Players".[9] I know this is a longshot, but does anyone have a copy of either who can see what they say? Neither is listed on the booklist. Cheers. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 06:42, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Those books aren't "real" books, they're compilations of WP articles. Compare the synopsis of the New Brighton one to the Alf Milward article. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 07:18, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I should have spotted that, especially as I wrote most of the Milward article. Doh! Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 08:40, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

European Regional Challenge Cup

Is the "European Regional Challenge Cup" an official European tournament? I can't find any mention of it on the internet, not even on the UEFA website. The reason I'm asking this is the article AEL Limassol, which states: "AEL is the only Cypriot team that possessed a European tittle (European Regional Challenge Cup)." If the tournament isn't official (which is what I presume), can it be listed on Wikipedia? 83.84.195.88 (talk) 14:31, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Found this here http://www.mlahanas.de/Cyprus/Sport/ApollonLimassol.html :

Basketball

Apollon has its own Indoor Hall, the Apollon Stadium, with capacity of 2,600 and as it was said it hosted the Southern European Regional Challenge Cup Final Four. In the Cup Final, AEL Limassol beat KK Igokea 82-92 and became the first Cypriot team to win a European Trophy. It is home of Apollon's basketball and volleyball team.

It seems that the club is a 'sports club' that is made up of a football team, basketball team volleyball team - The cup you mentioned seems to refer a victory for the resident basketball team... hope that goes some way to helping Darigan (talk) 15:23, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Having had a quick look at the article, the club is represented as a 'multi-sport sport' club. The mention of the award is beautifully vague, and does not clarify which sport the award was awarded for. I'm not convinced that the source I used above is rock solid, but I think that it might be good enough to clear up this particular issue. I'm a little busy right now, and might look to edit the article later if no body gets the chance in the meantime. Darigan (talk) 15:32, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

There is a UEFA Regions' Cup, but it has only been operating since 1999 and is only open to amateur teams composed of players from a region (the England representative is a Step 7 (level 11) league). пﮟოьεԻ 57 15:33, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

That article covers the whole sports club AEL Limassol, not just the football club. It is the basketball section, see Proteas EKA AEL#History, that held that title. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 15:40, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Templates for the deviated matches

I made some changes to the {{fb r}} template so now it is able to reflex match results in case the rules of the tournament were "improved" and included extra time or penalty shootout in case of a draw. I've made this primarily for the Japanese football which had those deviations during its early years but if some other leagues have changed the rules as well, this may come in handy. Everything is explained on its documentation page and nothing is changed for the "normal" use of the template so don't worry. —WiJG? 18:12, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, there are templates like {{fb cl header otwins}}/{{fb cl header nodraws}} and {{fb cl team otw}}/{{fb cl team nd}} made for the tables with the same "deviated" results. —WiJG? 18:12, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Asteras Nikaias

Can somebody with knowledge of Greece heirarchy take a look at this one? There's no text other than a list of players and the only outside sources are in Greek, so it's impossible for me to evaluate if this is a notable club or not. I generally stay far, far away from these types of articles. 69.181.249.92 (talk) 01:40, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

It appears to be a club that plays in the Piraeus state championships (appears to be playing in the third level of the state championship which I think would be the seventh level of Greek football). I checked RSSSF, and the club has never played in the top three levels of Greek football. They may be eligible for the Greek Cup, but I'm not sure. I really doubt the club is notable. Jogurney (talk) 02:47, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay, that tells me what I wanted to know. Since, as an IP editor, I'm unable to complete the entire AFD process, would somebody mind nominating it for deletion? 69.181.249.92 (talk) 04:32, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Whether or not we're going to delete this, we certainly need to delete the articles on two of their decidedly non-notable players. It looks like they were all created by the same guy, Asterasnikaias (talk · contribs). Alzarian16 (talk) 10:05, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Both player articles now have BLP PRODs. I'm not sure the club article should be PRODed, but I'll give it a try. Jogurney (talk) 14:38, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

The club PROD has been removed, so it looks like it needs to go to AFD. Argyle 4 Life^talk 11:02, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I've moved it to AfD. Jogurney (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Consensus/MoS on statistics table?

Hey guys. I wanted to ask if there was any consensus on how the statistics box should be on players pages. I bring this up because a user recently changed the style on a page I'm working on (Okan Alkan#Career statistics). The current version is what he changed it to, from this. What bugs me is that it only says "Fenerbahçe Performance", which would mean a separate table would be necessary, should he change clubs in the future. It also lists assists, but there are no sources that readily give information about assists (TFF.org only gives appearances/call-ups and goals). Would I have good reason to change it back, and should the wikitable be made MoS, because the same thing is going on at Alexsandro de Souza, and possibly other pages related to Turkish football. Thanks. Invisibletr (talk) 16:30, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Change it back for consistency reasons, as the table is the standard table used in football BLPs (see Raul or Michael Ballack, and there are many more). The change was probably introduced by a Fenerbahce fanboy, but does not reflect current consensus on the matter. --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 16:39, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd change it back too. Different table layouts seem to be popping up all the time now. I stumbled across this one today on Moussa Dembélé's article which I think is hideous. It looks like something you would have on Sky Sports, not an encyclopedia. Argyle 4 Life^talk 16:44, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I thought I chose the right table because I was going off of what I saw at Thierry Henry, an FA. Glad to know I was in the right. Thank you, gentleman. Invisibletr (talk) 16:58, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I've converted Moussa Dembélé to use a normal wikitable. I didn't actually mind how it looked, but that's still no reason to arbitrarily tart it up. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 10:32, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

One-club men

Me again, teammates!

Although i am almost sure about this one, i bring it to your attention. With the example being João Alexandre Santos, an obscure Portuguese player: this guy played for nearly 20 years as a senior with one team, Varzim SC, then left for the regional leagues in 2009 (in Portugal 100% amateur).

I removed the template about "List of one-club men" when he changed clubs, but now have this tiny doubt (very very tiny!): should this amateur club, with all due respect, count, with the articles some people create for obscure an non-notable players being eventually/immediately deleted? I think i know the answer to that one, but would like to have some more inputs, please. Thanks in advance, cheers - --Vasco Amaral (talk) 16:01, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The intro to the list states '...professional career' so if he has only moved to an 'amateur' team then technically he should stay on the list, based on its current wording. Regards. Eldumpo (talk) 20:19, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

George Harris of Hartlepools

Does anyone know the birth year of George Harris, the centre forward who played one league match for Hartlepools United in 1935-36? The Michael Joyce book does not give a year. Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 20:26, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Current squad lists

What is the threshold for a player to be included in a club article's current squad section? Specifically, should Marco Djuricin be included in the current squad section for Hertha BSC? He played a 2. Bundesliga game, and sat on the bench for another. However, Hertha do not list him as a member of their first team on their website (found here). Thanks. Sir Sputnik (talk) 20:07, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

If he has a contract with the club, a squad number, and especially if he is playing first team games for the club then he should be on the squad list regardless of whether the club list him on their website or not.--EchetusXe 21:49, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. Clubs often select players from their reserve team/B team for first-team matches. If Hertha BSC doesn't consider Djuricin to be a member of their first-team, we shouldn't second-guess that, even if he is playing regular first-team football. – PeeJay 23:08, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Well I can't speak German but the club website may simply be out of date.--EchetusXe 23:27, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I asked this question a few sections up... from what I've seen, some official team websites (particularly the top clubs in Europe) show mostly every player on first-team and reserves, while some lower clubs list just the first-team players. So questioning a bit whether those should really be used, as different sites classify their squads somewhat differently.

However, for some of the "smaller" clubs, it would be more difficult to find an official source showing every player under contract (or playing on loan), so... yeah, it's a bit of an issue.

And going to what Echetus just said above, quite often a team's website may be out of date. For example, S.S.C. Napoli's website still shows a player who was loaned out (or sold to another club, I forget which) about three or four days ago. They're often times a bit slow. Azzurre (talk) 05:35, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

While I get what your saying with the distinction between first team and reserves, it's not much of an issue here. Hertha's website has a seperate section for the reserves and youth academy, where Djuricin is listed as a member of the reserves. I guess my question really is: Is having played for the first team enough to deviate from the official list? While its possible that the list is out of date, I think Djuricin was just called up because of the large number of injured players. Sir Sputnik (talk) 14:53, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

A squad list should be a list of players available in contention for selection. If a player has a first-team squad number, he is part of that. If he's in the matchday squad, and if he plays then of course he is. You can't let what's listed on a website take precedence over what happens in football matches, it's leading you to list correct and incomplete information. Forget about the exact letter of the rules, try and think about the spirit of what Wikipedia is for, to provide information. ArtVandelay13 (talk) 13:13, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I concur with ArtVandelay13.--EchetusXe 14:09, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about that. He was called up to cover for a number of injured players. So what happens when they get fit, and he's sent back to the reserves? We remove him again? The way I see it anyways, the curret squad list should be a little more permanent than that. Sir Sputnik (talk) 14:53, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, there are few things less permanent than current squad lists - I'd estimate that they comprise one of the most-edited parts of this project. And it doesn't really matter why it changed - that is not something that's not for us to second guess. The fact is, as soon as someone's played in a season (in fact as soon as they've been given a number) they are registered members of that squad until they leave, or until the next season,. when they might be left off the list. Until that happens, no-one else can take Djuricin's number 35 - he is locked into the squad. Of course he'll probably go back to the reserves, but there's always overlap been reserve and first-team football, by its very nature - and Wikipedia ought to reflect that. ArtVandelay13 (talk) 16:18, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

• In a related CURRENT SQUADS issue: i have seen in Dudu Aouate a template named "UEFA EURO 2012 qualifying squad". Isn't that raising the bar too high? National team templates for finals are totally and 100% - never mind the redundancy :) - OK, because they are permanent. Club templates only change now and then (only in January and during the offseason with very few exceptions if i am not mistaken). But these new template would have to be constantly updated, what is your opinion? Of course i did not remove the template in Aouate, rest your spirits folks!

Attentively - --Vasco Amaral (talk) 15:54, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree completely. Not only do these change too much for practically useful template, there are, in my opinion, not notable enough, in part because they change so much, to merrit their own templates. Sir Sputnik (talk) 17:01, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, any national team qualifying squad navbox templates should be deleted. Consensus is that they are only for the finals of senior competitions, and only Confederation, FIFA or Olympic tournaments. Jogurney (talk) 18:38, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I have nominated it for deletion here. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 05:31, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

German football club names

I've written a brief essay on how German club names should be written, because there seems to be a lot of confusion. ArtVandelay13 (talk) 12:57, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree with your essay except for one question: Officially it's Bayer 04 Leverkusen and you shortened it to Bayer Leverkusen. Should we keep the numbers like in FC Schalke 04 or TSG 1899 Hoffenheim or drop them? --Jaellee (talk) 15:28, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

First of all, thanks for writing that. It's about time someone tried to set German club naming conventions straight. As for numbers, I would go with whatever the club themselves use. Hoffenheim, for example, keep the 1899 but drop the TSG. If the club name with and without the number are in common use (Schalke, Bayer Leverkusen), I would leave at the discretion of the editor, mainly for space and consistancy reasons. Sir Sputnik (talk) 15:41, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be the full name - Bayer Leverkusen is fine, without the 04, because it's not just a place name. Usually you can leave one or more of the elements of the name out, as long as it's not just a place name - it used to be TSG Hoffenheim, but now they style themselves as 1899 Hoffenheim. If in doubt, look at what Kicker do - but maybe I should add a list to the page. ArtVandelay13 (talk) 16:02, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

1939–40

I'm sure this has been asked before, but are player statistics from the abandoned 1939–40 Football League campaign counted in official records? - Dudesleeper talk 16:50, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Some sources include them, notably Michael Joyce's book "Football League Players Records 1888-1939", but most don't, since the stats were officially expunged from the record. – PeeJay 00:29, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Criteria for Stadium articles?

The criteria for club notability is level 10 I believe, so I assume that the criteria for inclusion of club grounds is also level 10? I only ask as this editor User:Number_57 has recently delinked some articles from Template:Conference North Venues, using the reason of never hosted national level football or rugby as I'm merging them into the club articles. Is this a recent change in WP:Football criteria, or is it a POV change? If it's a POV change then what is the definition of never hosted national level football? My argument would be that the FA Cup is a national level competition. My example would be Croft Park which has been delinked from the Template:Conference North Venues ready to be merged into the main article for Blyth Spartans F.C.. Only 2 season ago this ground hosted Shrewsbury Town F.C. and Blackburn Rovers F.C., the later shown live on TV. How does that not have notability for it's own article. without having done further research, I could bet there would be a few more 'stadium articles' merged on that POV criteria that deserve their own article. DJhinckley (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

For the record I broadly agree with Number 57's line on stadium notability, but also agree that by doing it independently the risk of false positives was quite high. No harm done though- nothing has been deleted as far as I can see. Now's probably a good time to discuss whether any should be reinstated. --WFC-- 18:04, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

As noted above, I have been doing this recently. The vast majority of articles which I have merged so far were stubs that held no information except to state the stadium name, club playing there and its capacity. But yes, I do believe that stadia which have not hosted national level sports competition (some non-League grounds have hosted national-level rugby league or union or are noteworthy cricket or athletics venues) are not sufficiently notable for their own articles. Yes, Croft Park has hosted some professional clubs in cup matches recently, but these clubs play at a whole variety of grounds in friendlies, county cups etc. I think a more appropriate parallel for stadia notability is player notability. A non-League player playing against League opposition in a cup does not confer notability, so I do not see why stadia should acquire it this way - I have seen a Football League club (Brighton) play at the Priory Stadium in Sudbury, but this in no way makes it notable. пﮟოьεԻ 57 19:11, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it's different for stadia. Continuing with this example, two years ago there was an abundance of coverage of Blyth's run in the cup, not least two live televised matches, with a terrestrial channel also giving the matches fairly prominent exposure in their highlights show. Taking the Blackburn game in particular, the build-up was extensive (try finding the following depth of national coverage for a run-of-the-mill League One or Two fixture: [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]). I'll wager that there are many, many stadia that meet the precise criteria you state that have never hosted a match with anything like the national coverage of the Blackburn one. --WFC-- 20:44, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

To clarify though, I'm not saying hosting a Football League team is an automatic qualification for notability, simply that the way we tend to treat the FA Cup for player notability does not translate perfectly as far as stadia are concerned. --WFC-- 20:52, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Maltese Independence Cup

Calling all fans of Maltese football. This article states that Stanley Matthews, in his one season as player-manager of Hibernians, led them to victory in the Independence Cup. Thing is, the article of that competition doesn't list Hibernians as the winners of that 1970–71 season. I'm looking for clarification on this, if anybody can assist. - Dudesleeper talk 02:03, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

The Independence Cup article is about a Gozo competition. The Maltese Independence Cup is a former name of the Maltese Super Cup, see RSSSF. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:36, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Strangely enough, neither article lists any winners before 1985. Alzarian16 (talk) 08:40, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I should have said "predecessor of the Maltese Super Cup"; the RSSSF page says the previous incarnations (before 1984/5) were unofficial comps. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:43, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

List of English football transfers winter 2010–11

I had no idea winter starts in September. - Dudesleeper talk 02:41, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Apparently it does in the strange world of some editors. The article itself even states that the window opens on 1 January 2011, but then goes on to list transfers in September. What is the world coming to? BigDom 09:14, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

It did last year too.--EchetusXe 10:03, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't think there's any real problem with the name as an abbreviation for something horrible like List of English football transfers completed after the summer 2010 window closes and before the end of the winter 2010-11 window, assuming local consensus is that signings between the windows belong in with the window to come. But it'd be helpful if the prose of the lead made it clear what the inclusion criteria are, given that the title doesn't. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 15:56, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

We don't invent article titles. "Winter" is not used as a defining adjective for the August→January period in general in reliable sources AFAIK, so we can't use it as a title. Rather more to the point than "what these articles should be named" is "why these articles exist in the first place", being as they are news-type aggregations of disparate facts. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 21:18, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Colin Clarke

I was about to convert the original Colin Clarke article (about the N. Ireland international) into a disambiguation page, so moved it to Colin Clarke (footballer born 1962). I then moved Colin Clarke (Scottish footballer) to Colin Clarke (footballer born 1946), but then came across Colin Clarke (footballer), who is described as an "English footballer" although he was born in Glasgow in 1946. How should I disambiguate him? Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 05:27, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Colin Clarke (footballer) is Colin Clarke (Scottish footballer) is Colin Clarke (footballer born 1946) ... heaven only knows why. Merge them. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:41, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that's it fixed now. I'm checking the links to Colin Clarke to ensure those are in order. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 09:58, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

THanks guys for sorting that out - I must have had a senior moment not spotting that the two article referred to the same player! Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 12:53, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Season list notability

What level does a club have to reach to be eligible for a "List of XXXX F.C. seasons" article? For example, would a Welsh Premier League side qualify for one? Kosack (talk) 15:08, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

If it's a professional club then sure. Tho it might change with the recent rfc on what a list is. Sandman888 (talk) 15:27, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Some semi-professional sides also have season lists. Imo WPL teams qualify. —Half Price 15:30, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I would say that any team that plays or has played in a professional national league would be worthy of a list. BigDom 16:37, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd roughly go along with Dom, with the addendum that it's impossible to have a hard-and-fast rule. There are several countries where some clubs are clearly notable, whereas a lot of others who have once competed at that level might not be, with Northern Ireland and the Republic being good examples. --WFC-- 16:56, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I suppose what I said would work well in countries like England, Germany or France but maybe not as well in Ireland. I was really just thinking of former Football League clubs like Nelson, New Brighton, Glossop, Southport etc. BigDom 05:54, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Terminology

Wikipedia, being an international website, should be neutral in terms of the terminology towards association football. E.g. the article: Soccer in the United States should be renamed to "Association Football in the United States". Though soccer is the common slang used to reffer to the sport in the United States, it should still be reffered by its international term. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.111.62.45 (talk) 04:35, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:ENGVAR says that the form of the Enlish language used in the country most closely associated with the subject should be used, therefore it is correct to refer to "soccer" in articles on the sport in the USA -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:42, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

More Kit Template talk

Spent a good part of the day reorganizing the Football kit templates category on Wikimedia Commons and I've got things relatively cleaned out. I am having an issue, however with the Template: Football kit template. If there's someone who knows how to add categories to templates using some if/then logic, please see my Commons Talk Page. Also, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the reorganization. Thanks! -Udeezy (talk) 06:16, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Template trouble or not

I'm pretty sure Template:F.C. Internazionale Milano shouldn't contain external links to YouTube or the club's website in it, but for some reason it does. No others that I've seen do. Should these be removed? Alzarian16 (talk) 18:59, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

They should. Navigational templates are to navigate within Wikipedia, not outside it. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 19:05, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I removed them. Gah. Good spot Alzarian16. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:08, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

FC Barcelona

Anyone interested in reviewing Featured Article nominations might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/FC Barcelona/archive3, or it's likely that it might be archived due to a lack of reviewers. All comments, supports and/or indeed opposes are welcome. Cheers, Sandman888 (talk) 21:50, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

AfD - Request and "asking for directions"

Teammates, i am in need of assistance,

Yes, i am sure this is not the right place technically, but i hope to - also getting my way as far as my request goes - know after this "one" attempt, getting in right the future - i still do not know exactly where to address these situations.

I think this article, Sergio Floro, should be deleted on the grounds of non-notability, as this player - aged almost 30 - has NEVER played in higher than the third division (as the people around the world who don't like to keep it simple put it, Segunda División B). Attentively - --Vasco Amaral (talk) 00:56, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

May I direct you to WP:PROD, and WP:AFD which outline the procedures for article deletion. Sir Sputnik (talk) 01:11, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks Sputnik. But where exactly there do i ask for (an eventual) deletion? In the discussion? Thanks in advance again - --Vasco Amaral (talk) 01:44, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
  • done. Please see this for how to do it easily. Sandman888 (talk) 05:23, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks as always my friend Sandman, a "double" thanks...Cheers - --Vasco Amaral (talk) 05:25, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Links

Several of the databases listed on the links page are now no longer available. I have marked the English ones as "(Broken link)". Any help redirecting the links would be greatly appreciated. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 05:16, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Premier League FAR

I have nominated Premier League for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Cordless Larry (talk) 15:31, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Line-up images in current squad section

I note that quite a few club articles, particularly Greek ones, seem to be including an image of a "starting line-up" in with the current squad section - see examples at Olympiacos F.C., Panathinaikos F.C. and PAOK F.C.. Apart from looking a bit rubbish, this seems to be particularly recentist, as it could change on a game-by-game basis, and could well be OR, in many cases. Do any other folks have an opinion? I'm engaged in a discussion regarding this at Talk:AEK_Athens_F.C.#Line-up_image, too. Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 15:52, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I hate them, for all the reasons you stated. Vanquish on sight. --JonBroxton (talk) 16:28, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Remove them on sight as violation of WP:SYN. There is almost certainly no graphics available, at least from a reliable source, which would make the content able to be included. Aside from that, if, in a far away future, a website decides to create and host these charts, they should definitely go into the respective season articles and not into the general articles of the clubs. (Note: I have given a similar statement here.) --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 16:49, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, these represent someone's idea of the "best" team. Nonsense, get rid. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:54, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Soccer-holic. Search and destroy. Argyle 4 Life^talk 17:46, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

These should be removed as a WP:OR violation. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:06, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree with all the above, "seek and destroy". To make it even "better", those lineups should contain the three subs "most likely to enter the team's matches", and the minutes. Quite unencyclopedical... :) - --Vasco Amaral (talk) 20:57, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Found one; Puebla F.C.. But this one's a bit different: it manages three of them, but for "notable" games that have already happened. Not OR, but not a great idea from a readability point of view. Are these acceptable? Alzarian16 (talk) 21:09, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

The first two of these mirror the same problem as described above. You simply cannot conclude from a set of stats to a certain formation, at least not with the given source. If necessary at all, I would replace these images with something similar to this. The third graphic, however, would be fine for a season article – but definitely not for the general article of the club unless the match in question was one of Puebla's most important matches in its history.

By the way – the whole Puebla article desperately needs a lot of fixing, especially regarding sources (Youtube links?) and formatting of graphics... --Soccer-holic^{I hear voices in my head...} 21:36, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Llanelli A.F.C.

Due to flagrant copyright violation, this article has now been reverted to the state it was in on 3 March 2010. It obviously needs some work to update it. I'd also advise keeping a watch on it; if any new material is added en masse without references please check it carefully to ensure that it isn't an additional copyvio. I've issued a final warning to Llanelliafc (talk · contribs), the SPA responsible for it. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 18:09, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Season articles

At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Torquay United F.C. season 1996–97, the nominator states that the article "fails the notability requirements of WP:NSPORTS#Individual seasons" - this seems to be based on the inclusion of the line "Articles can be created on individual seasons of teams in top professional leagues, as these articles almost always meet the notability requirements" at NSPORTS. When was it decided that only (in the case of England) Premier League teams could have season articles? If that's the new rule, then there are literally hundreds of articles which don't meet it...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 20:19, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that "policy" should be disregarded because it has clearly been written from an American-centric viewpoint, droning on about the notability of college football seasons. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 20:37, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Nowhere in that policy does it say "only" top level anyway. It goes on to say national college might be notable. Brad78 (talk) 21:33, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

If I see one more problem with NSPORTS this week, I'm nominating the whole bloody thing for deletion. Even ATHLETE was less of a pain in the proverbial. --WFC-- 21:47, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I have a feeling that it wouldn't take you long to find more problems with it, WFC! BigDom 21:49, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Follow up: Indeed, one problem I've always had with it is that players who appear in any number of international friendly football matches are not considered to pass NSPORT, whereas anyone who has played one inning of first-class cricket over the last 300 years does meet the guideline. Work that one out! (By the way, I have nothing against cricket but it just seems awfully contrary) BigDom 21:54, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I imagine that's due to a desire to prevent participants in matches of similar standard but lesser prominence than The Other Final to have biographies. The general problem is extremely simple; WikiProject Football feels that it is above the GNG, and has a particularly strong resistance to change, even in comparison to most other WikiProjects.

Stat of the day. We have 1,564 BLPs that have been identified as completely unreferenced. The number of identified unreferenced BLPs on the whole of Wikipedia is 25,369. We need to take a lead from other, lesser but better covered sports. It pains me to say it, but primarily American sports. They have fewer problems with BLPs not because they are better editors. Heck, I firmly believe we have many of the finest here, and I include several people that I routinely get into robust arguments with in that number. They have fewer problems because their guidelines work better. NSPORTS is only two months old, but the principles there have been in place for those individual sports for far longer, in the form of WikiProject guides. We need to set arbitrary guidelines that reflect the general consensus of when sources confirming notability will always exist. For instance, one appearance in the Premier League is pretty much always going to guarantee notability. The same may or may not be true in League Two or the Paint Pot; for players at that end of the spectrum, it may be closer to a season's worth of appearances (whatever that is). Once these hypothetical guides were written, the burden would fall on articles below that mark to prove that they meet the general notability guideline. There would probably need to be a transitional period, maybe even a calendar year, to work on the huge number of articles potentially affected. But if, as I am constantly told, someone who plays one game in the Football League is inherently notable, the end result would be a lot of improved articles with absolutely nothing deleted. If on the other hand the true notability bar lies a bit higher, we would only be losing articles that are generally of terrible quality and impossible to maintain, articles that could always be restored if someone was determined enough to demonstrate their notability. --WFC-- 23:17, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Of course, I have completely wasted my time, because as I said, we are above the general notability guideline, and there is no problem with the fact that we are writing crap articles on people whose notability is highly dubious. --WFC-- 23:17, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Would a player who could have made a league appearance (there are 78 of them, page 274 of Michael Joyce's book first edition) be notable? Primary sources don't always agree with each other, sometimes clubhistorians have to make a choice. Cattivi (talk) 06:40, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I can ksee where you're coming from with requiring differing amounts of games to have been played depending on the level, but I think it would take from now till the end of time to come up with any sort of coherent criteria that covered every level in every country in the world. Plus, wouldn't any criteria be inherently abritrary? If we said that a player who'd never played above League Two needed to have played 50 games, someone would just come along and say "why not 25? why not 100?" and there couldn't really be any response other than "it seemed like a good number......" -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:49, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Empirically there will of course be a correlation between number of matches and press coverage. Sandman888 (talk) 07:58, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there is, but a line-up in newspaper A isn't always identical to a line-up in newspaper B. I've seen many newspaper reports that are obviously wrong. That's no big deal when you write an encyclopedia (you just follow any reliable secondary source) But it's something you should be aware of. Wouldn't "a first name of a footballer must be known" be a objective addition to the current guidelines? There are a lot of pre-war footballers without known first name Cattivi (talk) 08:16, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. The worst one I can think of is the first player ever to score at Kenilworth Road, who incidentally was a Watford player. His isn't known. As for these arbitrary numbers the way to do it is to set the arbitrary number at a level where if the GNG was the only criteria, nigh on 100% of players would meet it, and then state, unequivocally, that if a player meets the GNG he is notable regardless of what arbitrary criteria he meets or does not meet. --WFC-- 13:59, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Addressing the "stat of the day", the reason this project has so many completely unreferenced articles

(and articles needed additional citations) is it is a very popular sport and we have editors from around the world contributing. It's almost impossible to "police" (not the right word, I know) every new editor that creates 50 unreferenced articles about Macedonian footballers and then leaves Wikipedia. We try our best (this project has cleared more than 10,000 articles from the uBLP backlog over the past year or two) but I don't blame ATHLETE or NSPORTS for the unreferenced articles, just the scope of this sport and the amount of interested editors that want to contribute. Jogurney (talk) 16:48, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Go Nagaoka

Can an admin intervene at Go Nagaoka please; an IP user (who has ignored my comments on their talk page) insists on adding factually incorrect information to the article, namely describing a Brazilian as "local" (despite the player being Japanese), and putting his stats to 0, despite then describing his league debut! I have already reverted three times today and don't want to exacerbate the situation. Thanks, GiantSnowman 21:54, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

This isn't obviously vandalism. The last IP revert includes several productive changes to prose. The article talk page is the first place to raise content disputes. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 00:50, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I never claimed it was vandalism; I merely said it was factually incorrect. The IP is also adding unreferenced info about a BLP. GiantSnowman 01:46, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of references either way. I've tagged the article for attention. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 10:57, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Manchester Senior Cup 2010 - Factual Error

In the article Manchester United are listed as winners 2010. This is not correct, as Manchester City beat Bolton 1-0 in the final on May 6th 2010. 62.16.140.104 (talk) 15:20, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

This seems to be supported by the evdence - see report here. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 15:38, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Twas longstanding vandalism which I've now reverted. They also added the win to Manchester United F.C. Reserves and Academy's honours :-) Thanks both for pointing it out and for finding a source, Struway2 (talk) 15:57, 9 September 2010 (UTC)