Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Clubs/Archive 2

Football squad player/other/ and its subtemplates
I'm going to nominate this template and its subtemplates for speedy deletion, as they are not used any more. If any of the participants is admin, I think he can just delete them right now even without the nomination. --Monkbel 10:10, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

To what extent?
Hi, to what extent should we write articles about football clubs (and others)? I mean, what should be an objective? criterion to delete an existant football club article. For example, in Belgium, I will create all the team articles for teams that once played in the 1st division or recently (10 years?) in 2nd division. Another example is that some Swedish 3rd division player articles have been deleted.

So I think we should find a relevant question who could replace the following one: Do we have to create this club article? (Such a question could be "Has it ever played in the 1st or 2nd division of a national championship?"). What do you think? Julien Tuerlinckx 13:24, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * For larger countries (England, Germany, Italy, Spain, ...), I believe that teams down to 4th-8th level is perfectly okay, for smaller ones, (Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Greece, ...), I'd say 2nd-5th level is okay. This also depends on the number of teams in each level. England for example has single-group levels (1-1-1-1-1-2-...) down to the 5th, while Germany has only two single levels (1-1-2-9-...). The more single-group levels, the more levels should be included. Players from for example the Swedish 3rd level is way overkill. 1st and 2nd level players is fine for those "smaller" countries, IMHO. -- Elisson • Talk 13:48, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

What would happen if a team was relegated below the division we had demed it acceptable to have player profiles for? Would we then have to delete the players articles? Why not simply say, any team which has played at a "reasonable" level should have an article, which should include player profiles. I realise "reasonable" not conclusive but i don't believe we need to be, why not simply let this be decided for each team. In my personal opinion it would be any leagues which are made up of a maximum of two halves nationaly. I suggest that in some contries this may not be "reasonable" and so this and other decisions of this type don't need to be decided for the general case. Greg321 15:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm quite sure no articles about players should be deleted, if these players were notable enough at some point of their career. --Monkbel 11:31, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

my humble opinion
I think that this template is ugly compared with similar templates (like NBA teams' rosters). It is a simple list of players with no appeal and poor visibility. does anyone agree with me? any ideas to improve it? I think a restyle is required... (necronudist)

The NBA rosters do look good. Greg321 23:06, 4 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the NBA rosters do look good, but just for their needing. I guess that football squad look so very good for football articles (remember, NBA is not soccer, that could even have more than 30 players for team and lots of different positions, depending on the players' characteristics. So, let's enjoy our one, and forget about NBA: it's not our sport at all, folks!. Thanks and ciao. --Angelo 01:32, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not saying to copy the NBA-style, it is too excessive, I'm just suggesting a little graphical improvement, let it more engaging... more charming! By now it is a template-ized simple list... If for all of you it is good like it is, okay. [I think if someone has suggestions deserve to be listen seriously] Ciao Angelo.romano --necronudist 11:37, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I think you should try and make these templates better, and then show us your efforts. If it will be better than now - why not? Be bold! --Monkbel 13:28, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Well I've already tried to make some templates, having a look at existing templates to understand how to make one, unfortunately it's too complex for me. If someone is unsatisfied by this template like me, can show its try. --necronudist 14:31, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * How about a header line, something like this? The background colour of the header line would be set to match the team colour. I've yet to work out getting the spacing right. Oldelpaso 15:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I think your variant is better than one we have already; be bold to incorporate your changes in football squad start (while they don't break any of existing articles)! You can always drop them if there is any active opposition. --Monkbel 15:42, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * It could look bad for some articles, because of the spaces. It should be implement only when it will not have any bad impact on all the existing articles. I am worried about, especially after to have experienced the "width=100%" impact on some articles (the matter is discussed here). And, by the way, I don't even agree about the proposal of matching the header colour with the team one, better to choose properly one for every squad. About the header itself, well, I would look it favourably just on the conditions explained above. --Angelo 16:26, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Great! It looks fresh, professional and very visible...! For the header colour, I agree with Angelo, the personalized-colours are good for NBA, MLB, MLS, etc where you have n numbers of squad and no more. Here, we want to create a standard for the billions of football-teams allover the world, so it's better a sole solution, I think. --necronudist 17:06, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * If the "width=%" method causes problems, does anybody know of an alternative method? Oldelpaso 14:03, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Nice. I quite like the addition of colour. But I'm not so keen on the white spaces between elements in the header row - is it possible to set cellspacing=0 (this may require a little extra cellpadding to compensate)? As for custom header colours - I'm pretty neutral on that issue, but one note you need to make is that you would also need to set a foreground colour, for teams that play in navy blue or a dark colour could not use black text in the header. Also, please do not be bold when playing with templates! I really think that example code and considerate discussion before bold changes, like you have done, is a better way of doing things, given the number of pages that can be affected by such a change. Qwghlm 18:48, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I can't work out how to get rid of the white space, but then I know very little about tables and markup. Maybe someone more proficient can give it a go. Oldelpaso 21:58, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I've done the necessary edits in User:Oldelpaso/Sandbox. Basically all it involves is adding  after the short   in the  and  templates. Comments on the change welcome... Qwghlm 22:18, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I'd view either as acceptable. Oldelpaso 21:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I have done some corrections to the proposed template, in order to fix a possible width issue. You may find it on my sandbox. Tell me your opinion about. --Angelo 21:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I think you should add the captain and loan info so that we can compare the templates. Actually I think I missed something in the discussion above.  What are the differences between the one of Angelo and the one of of Oldelpaso? Julien Tuerlinckx 13:36, 8 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Julien - Angelo removed width variables which can cause problems with some articles (see Angelo's second comment on this subsection).
 * Angelo - Your version has the second column narrower than the first column on my display. Oldelpaso 19:10, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Shall we change this page (i.e. the project page) so that the new template is include, so that when someone new comes they know what to use. The templates weve got look fine to me, i've used Oldelpaso's for no particular reason. Lets make it official. Greg321 00:04, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


 * This is how the new style looks for an article previously affected by the width issue (K.S.V. Roeselare). That "captain" info looks particularly bad, by the way: I'll look for a solution on this. Tell me your opinion, WikiFolks! --Angelo 23:35, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I have to admit I don't like the changes -
 * The colors hardly fit into any article
 * The position-column is way too wide
 * The "player"-header being centered doesn't look very good
 * The absence of a header at the country-flags
 * Well, as you can see, I'm in big favor of the old style - I thought that was less... say... missimashy. In this case, I think that less is more. It's a friggin squad list... The informations are as self-explanatory as can be! And if you don't understand any of the "FW", etc., a simple click will tell you what it is. I apologize if this sounds a bit harsh, but this is just my honest opinion /AB-me (chit-chat) 00:44, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I realized that the colors should be matched to every team individually (which I still think can be painfully ugly, especially with certain teams with purple or magenta jerseys/logos).
 * However, one thing that I would like, and that would not interfere with the current template-style was that the "last update"-date was incorporated into the -template - this would also standardize it. /AB-me (chit-chat) 22:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes...good idea. --necronudist 23:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Dear AB-me, I don't agree about your date-related update for . It's kinda thing so definitely small that I think it should better be left outside it. And, by the way, remember that, as of today, the heavy majority of football team articles use the current system, with the update date outside of the template schema. About the colour issue, as I always said, I guess the whole schema should look uniformly in all articles. But they're just opinions of mine. --Angelo 01:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Sure. But is the still work in progress, then? Secondly, I don't think implementing the last update-date into the start-template is any harder than implementing these football squad-templates into the articles. I see your point - but I don't think deleting a line of text and then adding |date=January 25, 2005 into a template is that much work. Obviously it would be implemented with, so that articles like you mention wouldn't be harmed. Hope this makes sense. /AB-me (chit-chat) 13:00, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

reorganizing talk page
I propose reorganizing talk page, since now it is too difficult to read the discussions. I think it would be better to put all the questions about new templates under one headline, and to put the separate section for every question: age, arrival, design, template names and so on. --Monkbel 12:02, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Julien Tuerlinckx 12:14, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I started a bit of reorganization. Basically, I just added some headers except for the 2nd nationality issue for which I moved the content of a discussion to the section Let's adopt the new template which already contained a previous bit of discussion.  Feel free to change it again as it is still messy. Julien Tuerlinckx 15:01, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Honours section
I think the honours section should be like the 1 on the Bayern Munich page. Kingjeff 02:36, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Standard?
According to the manual of style we're supposed to use the term "Achievements", and a fixed setup, for whatever trophies each club may have won. Is this still only a proposal, or is it now the way of doing it? At the moment there are a whole bunch of standards out there (inconsistency galore!) and even our two featured articles haven't been built up in the same way. In my opinion the setup used in the manual works perfectly well (although I do prefer the term "Honours"), and I would start implementing it all over, but is this the accepted norm yet? --Léman 21:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that "Honours" is better than "Achievements" but I suspect opinion would split on that one. The proposed format is what I've been implementing on a few French clubs, although there are some minor differences so I should go back and clean them up. The table as used on the Bayern Munich page is not very nice to look at, lots of wasted space, etc. My take is that the indented bulleted lists look much nicer. -- JoelCFC25 14:32, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I see it as highly dependent on the club and its history - clubs like Arsenal F.C. might have an "Honours" section for their many trophies, while lesser clubs like Brøndby IF might be better served by "Achievements", in order to fit in merriting "also-rans" achievements (i.e. the Brøndby's UEFA Cup semi final). So for me it's individual whether to adopt either Honours or Achievements, as long as the section header describes the section contents. I agree with JoelCFC25 on the bulleted lists, though. Poulsen 14:54, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * That's a good point, "Achievements" would be more befitting of a smaller club that might be rightly proud of making a good cup run, finishing near the top of the table against the odds, that sort of thing. It would be noteworthy but not something you could call an "Honour" like actually winning a league or cup. JoelCFC25 15:22, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Why not Honors and achievements? --Elliskev 14:59, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

2nd nationality proposal
My view on the 2nd nationality is it would be better to write a short text just below the "Current roster" heading, as just depicting two flags does nothing but confuse the uninitiated. Something like:
 * Under the rules of the Royal Spanish Football Federation or RFEF or La Liga, each team is allowed the maximum quota of three non-European citizens. Currently Real Madrid have only two non-EU players in Júlio Baptista and Robinho or Currently FC Barcelona have filled their quota of non-EU players with Samuel Eto'o, Rafael Marquez, and Ronaldinho.

I can't remember if it's three or four players, but just for the sake of an example. Still, it won't make clear why the other Brazilians in the squads aren't treated as Non-EU players, but could the idea of a small text be built upon? Poulsen 03:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

If it could be a short sentence, I think it would be a good idea but as my English is not that good, I'll let other people find a text. Otherwise, maybe we could create an article about this regulation in the different countries where it applies and make a link to it in the short sentence below the current roster section of each team concerned. Julien Tuerlinckx 21:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

well...maybe a linked sentence could be the way :) --necronudist 00:24, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

No nationality proposal
This template has been added to Australia national soccer team; I don't suppose there's any chance of someone whipping up a version without the flags, which are decidedly redundant in this context? ～J.K. 12:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Check out nat fs start, nat fs player and nat fs end - or alternately nat fs g start and nat fs g player. Poulsen 19:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Trivia
Not sure we should have a Trivia section here. Normally when an article on FAC has one, they suggest moving the info from the Trivia section into other parts of the article and deleting the Trivia section. CTOAGN (talk) 13:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Colours and Badge
Is this neccesary, considering they are already on the infobox? any other info on them (e.g. how they were chosen) can go in history cant it? Philc 0780 22:33, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * No, better to have it in separate sections. See for example how Arsenal F.C. and IFK Göteborg (both featured articles) uses the sections. Mixing it with the history section just makes it harder to find. – Elisson • Talk 22:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Plus not all visitors are fully-sighted. Visual content should add to the text, not replace it. Oldelpaso 19:33, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Standardized club names
I am new here and I searched the discussion of all the templates to see if this has been addressed, so if this is the wrong place I apologize. Has there been a determination to uniformly refer to clubs using their local language (or not)? For example, in a page that lists numerous clubs would you use FC Bayern Munich or FC Bayern München? FK Red Star Belgrade or FK Crvena Zvezda? The list of European Cup winners I just linked uses a mish-mash of both and before I or anyone else tries to clean it up I would like to know what the rule is (perhaps there is just a general Wikipedia guideline I need to go read). -- JoelCFC25 15:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I am not aware of the existence of a naming convention policy for football clubs, so I suppose Naming conventions and in particular Proper names should apply here. Would you please take a look there and see the policies there are consistent with how the football clubs are described in practice?  --Pkchan 18:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

MLS soccer club articles vs. European soccer club articles
Aparently there is some standard for MLS club articles that is different from the standard European club article. Does anyone think that there should be only 1 standard for all soccer club articles?Kingjeff 16:59, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
 * All MLS club articles adhere to a standard, which is not necessarily equal to the standard for other club articles. I have worked very hard for the past 2 years in keeping and maintining that standard. For example, they have a detailed info box, which other clubs do not have. They also have a specific order of sections. I think it's stupid to have sections with one sentence in them, which is what you tried to do. In fact, when WikiProject Football started, Elisson and I talked about keeping different formats for different countries. Please try to respect others' work. DR31 (talk) 18:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Thats not what I tried to do and you know it. I think MLS club article standards are inferior to the European club article standards. Kingjeff 18:20, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
 * And I think they're better; the only thing missing is history subsections for a few of the teams; the rest is incredibly consistent. I worked for 2 years to keep them up, you just showed up. Your point is? DR31 (talk) 18:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

STOP REVERTING THE PAGES UNTIL CONSENSUS IS REACHED DR31 (talk) 18:31, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Is this consensus being reached anywhere in particular or is it spread across several talk pages? Just remember that the manual of style "is a proposal for the general style and contents of an article on a football club" not set guide lines, best attested in the featured club article Arsenal F.C., which doesn't "live up" to the manual of style 100%. Poulsen 19:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * An interresting discussion. There are a few things that I would like to point out before I participate any more in it:


 * 1) Kingjeff, please calm down. Do not revert pages, or make large changes to the layout, unless you have a really, really, good reason. Extensive discussion is often necessary, and the way you have behaved before makes it even more necessary in some cases.
 * 2) I do want a standard for all football (soccer) clubs, including MLS ones. That's one of the reasons why I started the WikiProject.
 * 3) I don't want to ruin other people's hard work. That's why I am not very willing to just "overwrite" all of Dr31's work on the MLS club articles.
 * That's all I have to say at the moment. And my condolences to Dr31 regarding the Red Bull takeover. :( – Elisson • Talk 19:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I am more than willing to work on a compromise which would help enhance the MLS pages in the long run. Btw, the Red Bull New York article which Kingjeff keeps reverting was a featured article in its MetroStars existance very recently. DR31 (talk) 19:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm the one calm here. Dr31 is the one freaking out over this. The really really good reason is that I'm standardizing the article to proper standards. All the information on the articles is exactly the same except the headers.Kingjeff 20:56, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
 * You are pathetic. You told me that this should be discussed here. You disregard this discussion and go ahead and revert the pages. You are a sad man, Kingjeff. Adding section headings to 1-sentence paragraphs does not add anything to the article; it makes it ugly and hard to read. If you read Manual of Style, you will see it clearly spelled out: Avoid overuse of subheadings. Please stop. DR31 (talk) 21:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you looking for somekind of war. If so don't write anything to me unless you're going to be civil to me. Kingjeff 23:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Dr31, the length of time you spent working on these articles is irrelavent to their standard. Also the infoboxes in the European articles have more relevant information in them while the MSL ones seem to be cluttered with what is no more that random facts. I also think it is better to have a standard, even if the paragraphs are short, it is easier to locate information that you are looking for, and easier for other users to see where to place any information. Especially if all the articles are standardized. Now i dont mean to cause any disrespect, but you seem to be regarding the MSL articles as your 'pet' project, and unwilling to accept any change. Even if Kingjeff approched the issue a bit harshly, you responded in an equal fashion. Also you seem to be reverting for consistency with MLS articles, and Kingjeff for consistency with the Football (soccer) articles standard, so couldnt this be solved by changing all of the MLS articles to meet the standard? Philc 0780 23:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I apologize for the harshness. I just find it pathetic when someone promises to talk it out and then goes ahead and makes the changes anyway. First of all, I don't think the amount of time of the work put in is irrelevant. We should respect other editors for their amount of effort and expect the same in return. Now, the question about MLS standard vs other teams. Yes, it's different. The MLS box, which I worked hard on finding the right data on, was based on Template:National football team, and does not contain random facts, but rather summarizes important club information. And no, we can't use the standard club template. For example, MLS teams don't have "chairmen". They have "general managers". And there are other subtle differences throughout.


 * Am I unwilling to accept any change? Don't be ridiculous. Look above where it says I'm willing to compromise. I've worked on many other editors on these articles over the past two years. These editors come and go, but somehow I remain. Now, what I think Kingjeff is doing is making the articles look horrible. You think short paragraphs are good; I think they look like crap. Does my opinion matter more than yours, because I worked on these pages for so long? Who knows. But if you read Manual of Style, you will see it clearly spelled out: Avoid overuse of subheadings. And no well-written article on Wikipedia has subheadings for 1-sentence paragraphs. It's just NOT done.


 * If we want to go ahead and standardize MLS articles on par with the rest of the soccer world, fine. When one does so, he should pay close attention to American soccer vs European football lingo such as the "chairman" tidbit explained above. And if one does so, he should start out by expanding the content of these articles, so that there's enough to be put under each subheading. As it was said above, it's a prosposal, not a set guide line. DR31 (talk) 00:17, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Even if probably Kingjeff did wrong to unilaterally change the articles without having a clear consesus on these pages, Dr31's work on US soccer articles is, in my opinion, of (much) lower quality than the European ones. I think Dr31 should turn these articles according to the standardization suggestions of WikiProject Football; I don't mean to make any drastic revert, just some adaptation work. I could make the job, if you all agree. --Angelo 00:05, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I do not claim that the articles are great, in fact, I've stayed away from writing text in them, since I'm incredibly biased towards one team and do not want my opinion getting in there. One must also remember that our league has been around for only 10 years and our teams do not have as much support as many European teams with great Wikipedia articles. On the other hand, I believe that the MLS info boxes are better than anything you see on European pages. And I've gone to great lengths of keeping the information current. Now, if you want to create some kind of compromised layout -- without killing the MLS info box please, and without reserving to minimalist paragraphs with headings -- be my guest, but it would be great if you did that on a temp page somewhere, discuss those changes with myself and others, and only then, when a consensus is reached, apply them to the pages. DR31 (talk) 00:22, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, I don't really see any major differences between MLS pages and WikiProject Football/Clubs, except for the Colours and badge, Stadium, and Supporters sections, which as I said above don't think warrant their own section with that little content there for now. The only other differences are in section headers, where I used terms more often used in the US. I will start converting the squads using the preferred templates myself. DR31 (talk) 00:30, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, let's see... Going more in detail:
 * About the infobox issue, it was already discussed to make changes on it some time ago, and the proposal was turned down. The standard for football (soccer) clubs provides a "Records" section where to put the additional info you included in your infobox. I think you should use the suggested approach with the regular infobox.
 * As I explained, the regular infobox does not suit well because of difference of terminology (lack of "chairman", "ground" vs "stadium", "manager" vs "coach", "colours" vs "colors" (yes, that's American English vs British English, but these are AMERICAN teams), with MLS teams, nicknames are imbedded in the name (except in a couple of cases), so repeating them is pointless. When I saw that the regular infobox will not do for MLS teams, I went ahead and made that one. I was BOLD. I just don't see the big problem. If you really think it's important, I can go and make an infobox exactly like the current European one, but use American terminology. But what's the point, if that's not gonna conform either? Might as well leave the one there now.  DR31 (talk) 01:28, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) The "chairman" and "nickname" fields might easily be turned as conditional, just properly modifying the template code in order to let them hide when unspecified;
 * Yes, but then we have an empty infobox. DR31 (talk) 03:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Doesn't the infobox already allow specifying mgrtitle so you could have either Coach, Manager, Head Coach or something else? Couldn't the infobox be tweaked to also allow the substitution of General Manager for Chairman, or Stadium for Ground? -- JoelCFC25 15:11, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) The other stuff you talk about concerns only some linguistical issues; sincerely I wouldn't support you in it, as I wouldn't like to authorize a different infobox for each variant of English: isn't just USA and England, you know?!? What about Canada, Scotland, Ireland, and so on...
 * We're not dealing with Canada, Scotland, and Ireland. These are articles about AMERICAN teams. And since the whole "soccer vs football" debate has been going on for years, the resolution has always been to use American terms when dealing with the game in America. It's that simple. DR31 (talk) 03:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) What about the "records" section on your infobox? I think that's acutally the real issue.
 * Is it really an issue? How is it different from "most caps" and "most goals" for national teams? If you really think it's a big deal, I'll alter it. Fine. DR31 (talk) 03:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

--Angelo 03:21, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * About the paragraphs, for sure you don't have to add empty or quasi-empty paragraphs only because they're listed among the suggested ones. Actually, you may be bold on this issue, but following what our WikiProject suggests. --Angelo 01:12, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I will be bold in leaving them out unless there's enough information for each section. DR31 (talk) 01:28, 21 March 2006 (UTC)