Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Clubs/Archive 1

A standard for team squad representations
Even if a sort of "standardization" seems to be implemented, I have seen plenty of different representations of team rosters on football articles (look at AC Milan, S.S. Lazio and US Città di Palermo for a number of examples). I guess we all should definitely define a unique way to represent team squads, and implement it for all the football team articles. In my opinion, the current team squad representation style could be good, even if it contains information that I do not think to be particularly relevant, such as provenience (loan, from youth squad, etc...); by the way, I guess that sold players should not appear, in any case. Tell me your opinion about all this stuff. Ciao. --Angelo 20:37, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I have to say I'm not a massive fan of bulleted squads, as the bullets add visual clutter. I would prefer to tabulate them, as there are multiple columns and they don't line up properly. This is a tabulated version

Everything lines up neatly. Of course, what would be good would be to use templates so that editors don't have to worry tables and all the wikicode. So we would have something like:

...

By using a template we can thus achieve a uniform style across pages. What do you think? Qwghlm 14:57, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I like it, but the problem is that with 30+ players in some teams, the list is too long and there is a lot of empty space to the right... Sometimes a table just looks better, take a look at Boca Juniors or Club Atlético River Plate. --Sebastian Kessel Talk 15:51, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, having two columns is easy, just split the list in half and wrap extra table tags around them:

sjorford #£@%&$?!  16:39, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


 * True, I just wanted to take the table creation out of it... :)
 * --Sebastian Kessel Talk 17:30, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Another easier way to avoid tables, as well as it is done on lots of Wiktionary entries:

...   ... with the "mid" thing planned to automatically start a new column. What about this? (P.S. By the way, I am not just referring to implement a template thing, but also a different graphical way to let the players appear :-) --Angelo 20:59, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Excellent! --Sebastian Kessel Talk 21:51, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

What would this actually look like? Greg321 23:14, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Here's what I had planned with the Arsenal squad, using the template values from the top of this page: This is just for one column, I can't be bothered to do it for the other one just right now - just imagine more of the same on the right. Qwghlm 00:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
 * It looks good; in my opinion, we could even think to finally create and adopt this new template system for both new and existing articles. --Angelo 10:41, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I've just gone on a wild rampage of both updating squad lists and reformatting them to the squad template (mostly among Bundesliga and Ligue 1 clubs. -- JoelCFC25 19:15, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

2nd nationality, alphabet and loan issues

 * Ah, I forgot a little thing: we should also implement a "2nd nationality" option, as it is done on many Spanish football articles, like this; and we should also decide to include more information (like captain, on loan from, on loan to and more) or not (personally, I don't agree about that, those information seems to be unrelevant in my opinion). And, well, another thing: what to do for Russian teams, where team squads are represented in this way? --Angelo 10:59, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

What about just putting Sergei Ovchinnikov (Сергей Овчинников) for the russian names? I think putting loans, capatins etc. is a good thing and the way it is done above seems satisfactory. Perhaps second nationality people could just have two flags? Greg321 15:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Having said that the two flags do look a bit messy, any other ideas? Greg321 15:46, 13 October 2005 (UTC)


 * On loan information - definitely. Captain/vice-captain - I don't see why not. Dual nationality - two flags looks messy and often needless (especially if one flag is the EU flag). Since players can only play for one country, that flag should take precedence. As for Russian names, I think how the Lokomotiv Moscow page has it is fine - wikify the Romanised name, and have the un-wikified name in Cyrillic in brackets after it. Qwghlm 16:10, 13 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I love it, but I would leave non-english spellings out... Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic.... nah, either we do it all or we just don't. As to the flags, I would leave the flag of the national team a player plays for, period. The "On loan To" doesn't make much sense, if the player is not on the squad, is not on the squad... maybe in a separate section.
 * Just my 2 cents.
 * --Sebastian Kessel Talk 18:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I would include players who are out on loan. Many loans are only for a month or two months. I would only consider excluding a loaned out player if he was out on loan for the full season or if his club do not give him a squad number. By a seperate section, do you mean this way? Oldelpaso 10:04, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, I mean all of that you have wrote. What I told is just to exclude loaned out players from the current team squad; of course these information could be included in an appropriate section. --Angelo 12:00, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Is this, Crystal_Palace_F.C., how it should look? Greg321 09:44, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * It should look as divided on two columns; and it should use just templates, not tables. --Angelo 14:12, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

What with players, who can play two positions? Eg. midfielder and forward? ka la  ha  11:09, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Let's adopt the new template? + 2nd nationality issue
Okay, people, it seems that we all agree about the standard discussed above, so I guess we could finally adopt it. May I make the new template, or do you have any other issue to discuss for? --Angelo 00:25, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi! Just wanted you to notice that a player who never played for a national team could still have 2 nationalities.. What should we do for this (I think of Oleg Iachtchouk for example, even if it seems in this case the nationality should be Ukrainian, shouldn't it?).

By the way, I wondered how I could be part of this wikiproject? Do I just need to add myself in the list? Thanx, Julien Tuerlinckx 14:40, 24 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, just add yourself to the list on the main WikiProject Football page. Oldelpaso 20:28, 24 October 2005 (UTC)


 * My idea is to indicate just the country for which a footballer plays; e.g. Iachtchouk plays for Ukraine, even if he is also Belgian. Another prominent case is Mauro German Camoranesi, who is Argentinian-born, but plays for Italy national football team, so he should be represented as Italian. --Angelo 21:20, 24 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah but the point is that Iachtchouk has never played with Ukraine so it should not be as simple, though in the case of Iachtchouk, he was born Ukrainian and took the Belgian nationality after a long stay in the country, but he nevertheless was Ukrainian for a longer time. But what would happen with a player born with 2 nationalities, and who, of course, has never played with any national team? I concur it may concern a small number of players, but it is just in case.  Julien Tuerlinckx 21:41, 24 October 2005 (UTC)


 * In that case, I would just choose the native citizenship of the player (e.g. Ukraine, in the case of Iachtchouk). Then, should he receive a call from another national team (e.g. Belgium), we are in time to update the related information... --Angelo 22:30, 24 October 2005 (UTC)


 * About the two nationalities, I am also in favour of keeping only one flag, but I still can't imagine what will happen with a player born with 2 nationalities: which one will we keep if the player has never played with any national team? For instance, we have a player in K.S.V. Roeselare who was born Neo Zealander? by his mother and Belgian by his father (and this player has never played for any nateam, remember):  what will be his nationality? See also previous section, Julien Tuerlinckx 15:31, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Did you mean Bouckenooghe? He already played for New Zealand: . --Angelo 15:38, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh, sorry. I admit I did not even checked my claim and I should have.  But I could have asked the same question about Musaba Selemani:  following my source, he is from Rwanda and burundi (but it does not say he was born with both nationality, but let us suppose he was) and some internet sources say he is Togolese or sometime Congolese and Rwandese. Sorry to bore you, Julien Tuerlinckx 16:04, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Some problems of new templates
First of all I want to say I greatly appreciate all the work that was done to create some unified pattern of squad list. But I want to highlight some of the problems that are with it yet: --Monkbel 13:59, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) It has too long template names - not too useful :(
 * 2) It lacks some fields for information - such as second nationality (which can be important when counting EU and non-EU players, for example)
 * 3) It makes people to add information like captain, on loan to the Name field; that would be quite odd to users
 * 4) It doesn't allow to include quite useful info - date of arriving to team, and club from which player had arrived



I hope to have been exhaustive enough... :-) --Angelo 14:14, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) On (1), it could be solved, it is just a technical issue: I could even use,  and  , if you guess they fit better;
 * 2) On (2), there has been a longdiscussion about this issue, and it seemed to be useless to hold information about second nationalities (and I still guess it is just unnecessary);
 * 3) On (3), ya, you're right, I'll solve it ASAP;
 * 4) On (4), this kind of information has never been proposed, and it is frequently hard to retrieve, especially for smaller teams (and, IMHO, unnecessary too).

Extra info (like captain or loan) issue

 * I don't understand - what's the problem with adding extra info to the name section? I think it's best to keep it as it is and allow some flexibility of use. Also, I don't think it's a wise idea to add too much information - date of arrival and previous team are not as relevant as the information already included. Qwghlm 14:42, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I have added a "other" tag that could be setted to "captain" or "vice-captain", instead of adding this information to the "name"; for "onloan" information, I am experiencing some relevant troubles for implementing this functionality. But I guess a solution must exist. By the way, I guess these information should be implemented in external tags. --Angelo 14:51, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The problem with that is the "other" value will have to be specified as blank when there is nothing to add (i.e. ), which will be for the majority of players. If a user forgets to specify it as blank,  will appear when the template is produced, which will look ugly. How about we just let the minority of players who need extra information have it specified in the   variable, as I have implemented it? It allows flexibility for all the different uses (captaincy, on loan from, on loan to, not arriving till the transfer window is open) and means you don't have to do a lot of extra work. Qwghlm 15:06, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Absolutely no. Look at the US Palermo article for a proof. --Angelo 15:09, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * OK, I've seen what you've done now and understand. That's quite nice, if a lot of extra work. Can you update the documentation for the template so we know what values  can take? Qwghlm 15:15, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Done. --Angelo 15:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok. I'm not sure whether we really need two flags; but I'm quite positive about usefulness of having info about player's arriving into the club. It is info that could be acquired quite easily for most players; and it is also provided in some articles - and I'm quite sure we shouldn't delete it. Thanks for solving 3rd point.

Also, I guess fs-start and so on (may be just redirects?) would be more useful to people.

So I see now one points left and few new: --Monkbel 09:52, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Addition (and returning to the articles like A.C. Milan) of information about arriving to the team.
 * 2) Design. Current now looks not too convenient for the readers, I think.
 * 3) Link to the national team of the player. I think it would be great if the flag of the country was a link to the player's national team.


 * I am not sure whether the info 'previous club' is really relevant here. A single click on the player provides more info on him and if he's got the player infobox, you directly see what was (all) his previous clubs.  Julien Tuerlinckx 10:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Most players (really, most) don't have their articles yet. But user has his right to know at a glance when this player has joined the team. --Monkbel 10:05, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with Julien that previous club is not relevant. It will overcrowd the template, while that information is available in much more detail on the player's bio page. It is meant to be a quick set of links to players' names, not a comprehensive table of everything about them (what else shall we have - height? date of birth? appearances & goals?). Monkbel, you are going to have to back up your assertions with some decent arguments, not just say things arbitarily. Why does the user "have a right" to the extra information? In what way is the design "not too convenient" for them?
 * As for the national flag thing, (a) I don't think it's possible, and (b) it would imply the player is an international, when that is not always the case. Qwghlm 10:57, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Additionally, the extra information that Monkbel insists on including isn't actually included in most football squad articles on WP, so we would have to find that information out first, for every single club, before adding them in as parameters to the template. For those clubs that do currently have this information, I resolve not to use the new template on them until the dispute is resolved. Qwghlm 11:16, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 1. Ok, since I see that no unanimous decision could be reached at a glance here, I propose a vote. Alternative: creating second template for the player, which includes information about player's arrival; and we'll be able to show information where it is available.
 * 2. Ok, I see we shouldn't link to the national team since player may not be an international; But we need some possibility to write, show or link to the name of the country (other than looking on flag's filename), since some flags are not so well-known to most readers.
 * 3. Design... I can't say it is very unconvenient; but it seems there is a way to make it better... but right now I can't say how exactly to do it, so I withdraw this question for a while. --Monkbel 11:57, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Too few positions issue

 * 1) And I have just found out - we have too little position options! only DF, MF, FW; but a lot of players have more specific info - like DM, CM, RW, LW, LB and so on. I'm also positive we can't throw this info away. --Monkbel 10:05, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Don't forget GK too :). I think it good as it is now.  Indeed, for some players it is already unclear whether he is a midfielder or a defender for example.  Thus by splitting those categories, we expose ourselves to the (mainly graphical) problem of multiple positions.  The multiple positions of a player should be listed in the player infobox (in the player article) and not in the team article I think. Julien 11:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * But there are players which always play in the same position, and it should be noted for them, I think; like Kaká is AM, and Roy Keane is DM - and we shouldn't make them both just midfielders. Of course, I don't insist to put this specific info for all players; MF, DF is enough for most of them. --Monkbel 11:57, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Creating several sub-categories for positions could become confusing for many readers. I doubt the average Wikipedia user is familiar with terminology of the style of Championship Manager ;-) Oldelpaso 22:11, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't see what the issue with adding more positions is? The people who are interested in this type of information are the people who would understand the terminology. Why would they not be able to figure out DLRC when we are expecting them to figure out DF now? John the mackem 00:30, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Would it not be possible to have multiple positions linking to the general position articles? For instance, LW/RW/AM/DM would all link back to 'Midfielder'. These abbreviations would be explained in the relevant articles, for those or are unfamiliar with their meanings. And it could be limited to a maximum of two positions - one player having CB/RB isn't going to over-comlicate things. If a player can play anywhere in defence, or is pretty much unknown, simply leave it as DF. CharlieT 15:24, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I won't support at all to have more positions than the most generic four ones. Firstly, because I think we should make things simple, and it would be very hard, for example, to represent a player who plays in several positions: an attacking midfielder who is able to play also as left/right winger would make the players' list look in a messy way (and it is also hard to be fitted in this template, by the way). Secondly, despite what John said on his previous comment, I guess that these articles should be easily understood also by who has no kind of familiarity with football positions. I love Football Manager, but it's not the case to let the squads look like on the game. --Angelo 02:04, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with Angelo. And if someone wants to know more about a player, just klick the link. This goes for other info as well, like birth date, date the player joined the club, and so on. The squad list is not there to give you all info there is, it just provides the most basic info, and suggests interrested readers to read more at the players' articles. -- Elisson • Talk 15:20, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * But most players (especially in lower leagues) don't have pages, and it would be cumbersome & unneccessary to create stubs for every single one just to include their position. When looking at my team's squad I know the players' positions, but not those of other teams, and I think it'd be helpful to have simple but useful information like which wing they play on etc. CharlieT 15:34, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * If the player isn't worthy of having his own page, then maybe it isn't a big deal not having his exact position (you still know if he's a keeper, defender, midfielder or forward). And a related question, do you believe it is more important to include a "non notable" player's exact position than his age, place of birth, or which other clubs he has played for? -- Elisson • Talk 18:26, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

What should a put on a player who can play everywhere on the field? I have that problem on Freddy dos Santos on Vålerenga since he plays all positions... Arnemann 17:03, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * The most common position he plays on. Or, if the official site lists positions for its players, the one stated there (although I see that VIF's official states he can play everywhere). -- Elisson • Talk 18:07, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Young players issue

 * In general, I think the squad template is quite good right know: not too much info so it is easy to fullfill, and enough info to have a quick overview of the squad. I just thought of another thing to improve but I'm not sure it will be that good: we could find a way to "emphasize" young players (under 21?) so we could quickly see if the team is a "young" one or not.  Or we could add the average age of the players.  What do you think? Julien Tuerlinckx 11:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't see any necessity in adding average age to the templates. Anyone can just add this info to the article, without templates. --Monkbel 12:02, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Maybe we can just change the background colour for the young players? A light yellow would be nice.  Julien Tuerlinckx 11:35, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. --Monkbel 11:57, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not very keen, myself. Not just because I don't like the colour but because it presents certain difficulties. For starters, define "young". Under 21? Under 18? What if a player is "young" but plays in the first team rather than the youth team (e.g. Rooney, Fabregas)? Plus it would need continual updating every time a player passes the relevant birthday. Qwghlm 11:49, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


 * At a first glance, a "young" would be a player under 21. If the "young" player plays in the youth team, he won't generally even be mentionned in the article.  Actually I was only speaking about first team players.  We are still left with the problem of updating.  We could act like cowards and just take advantage of the following sentence who is (or should be) included at the beginning of each "current squad" section:  As of Brumaire 33, 2689:.  But I agree it is maybe not the best solution...  Wait and see, Julien Tuerlinckx 12:19, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The problem with my solution up here is that, for consistency, it would be better to have all teams updated "at the same time" (virtually) so that the coloured thing will keep having sense. For instance, if we highlight the under 21 players of the MUFC squad as of November 2, 2005 and those of Arsenal as of, say, August 21, 2005, the comparison between the numbers of supposed "youth" players will be quite truncated... Julien Tuerlinckx 12:24, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I quote Qwghlm. And, by the way, I don't even think it could be a good idea. Sincerely, I don't see the need of that; when a player plays in the first team, he just plays there, regardless of his age. --Angelo 12:29, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The point here is that it could be interesting to have at a first glance an idea of the number of under21 players in a team. So you can for example see if a team is likely to give a chance to young players.  Furthermore, in the Jupiler League, each match must begin with 2 under21 players.  Maybe it is the case in other leagues too?  But this argument is quite weak as it is comparable to the one of the supporters of a 2nd nationality flag.  It is just a suggestion, but I feel like there are more important issues to discuss first, for example the so-called Template:Football player infobox :). Julien Tuerlinckx 17:02, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Redirect template
Following some requests on this discussion, I have realized a number of redirect templates with a shorter name. Actually they are, , and. I have tried them and they seem to work properly. Ciao. --Angelo 22:46, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Full nationalities name
I suggest using only full nationalities (like England) name in nat parameter (as opposed to 3-letter acronyms like ENG), since it is much more informative and intuitional. I'm going to fix this issue in a few articles. --Monkbel 22:24, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't agree at all. Sometimes it is easier to write the only abbreviation instead of the full nationality (e.g. CIV instead of Cote d'Ivoire, SCG instead of "Serbia and Montenegro" and so on). Anyway, this decision should be left to be taken by the one who writes a team squad. And, in both case, the article looks the same. --Angelo 22:35, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * First of all, of course, the article looks the same. This is just a case of article being convenient for editors. May be sometimes it is easier to write CIV instead of Cote d'Ivoire, but what if you read CIV? For me it means nothing - but Cote d'Ivoire is quite informative. And what if someone needs to add player or fix one in the squad? We can assume usual newbie editor is not aware about flagicon being able to show flags by both full name and abbreviation; so if he sees abbreviations in the article, he will be forced to search abbreviation for the nationalities of newly added players, and this is not so easy... could you provide abbreviations for Costa-Rica, Brunei, Ghana, etc., at a glance? However, when you already have the squad with acronyms instead of full names (e.g. you retrieved it from uefa.com), it's not so hard to get all the full names instead of acronyms. --Monkbel 06:39, 4 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The list of acronyms for each country in the world is available, and even linked by the template guide itself. It is actually the list of IOC country codes, an authoritative source I guess. Secondly, there are so many squads, by the way, which uses these codes instead of full nationalities; a decision like this one will make a big, bad, impact on these articles. Anyway, I guess that the decision should be left to the editor. --Angelo 16:35, 5 November 2005 (UTC)