Talk:Lists of men's association football players/Archive 1

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Why was this page moved? What about American football players? Are they to be listed here too? --mav

Football is the world's game, and is at football, American football is at American football. So the list for football players is now consistent. You yourself moved it to list of famous football players, it was only moved to Association football an hour or so ago. Mintguy 01:21 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Why is this page called 'football' players when it actually only deals with soccer? Football does not mean soccer, nor does it mean just American football. The name football is used in many countries to describe many different ball-based sports. For example, Association Football (soccer), American football, Rugby football, gaelic football, etc etc. If this site is not intended to cover every code worldwide that is known colloqually as football in each state, and is only intended to refer to soccer, it should be called 'List of soccer players'. JTD 01:40 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

No no no no no. It is not soccer. Soccer is a slang term, Like rugger. The the game as codified by the English football association and became known as association football, soccer is a slang contraction of association. The sport is known as football all around,the world e.g (Fußball, Voetbal etc..) Even the French call it football. Mintguy

Incorrect.

  • To Americans, football means only one thing, American football
  • To Irish people. football means only one thing, Gaelic Football.
    • Not true you only have to look at the FAI website which has "Ireland's Official Football Website" written on it's masthead. Mintguy
  • To Australians, football means only one thing, Australian Rules football
    • Australia belongs to Oceania Football Confederation
  • Ditto in many other states who have their own sports called 'football'.
  • When British people talk of Association football, they use the word soccer interchangably with football.
    • not true soccer is hardly ever used in Britain. Mintguy 03:14 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Furthermore, according to the Oxford dictionary in front of me: 

soccer noun, Association football.

So there is no way this page can be described simply as football. Either it should be soccer, which as the dictionary makes clear, isn't slang (and nothing like 'rugger') or Association Football, not football. JTD 01:57 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

This page was quite happily residing at list of famous football players until about 2 hours ago. It was unnecessarily moved. You can have your Gaelic football etc... soccer is a contraction of Assocation football and rugger is a contraction of Rugby football. We don't list Rugby football under rugger. The sport of football is described at football, Gaelic football at gaelic football you can have list of gaelic football players but this page is consistent with having football at football, and I will not accept a move to soccer or anthing else. Mintguy

If the page is to stay here (and I don't offer an opinion on whether it should or not), there should be links to lists of players of other forms of football at the top of the page (in much the say way as football has links to other forms). --Camembert

What do you mean you will not accept a move to soccer or anything else? Surely it isn't up to you. But it is BLATENTLY ABSURD to use a term that so clearly has so many meanings to Wiki users around the world. Sometimes Wiki can be infuriatingly American-orientated, but that last thing it needs is when it comes to sport to be Anglo-centric. If you expect Australians not to use football but Austalian Rules Football, rugby followers not to use football but Rugby Football, Irish football fans to call their sport Gaelic Football, why shouldn't British football also be called its official name, Association Football. Or soccer, which it is also called worldwide. The word 'football' is not, never has been and never will be, the property of Association Football. JTD 02:19 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

There is no article in the French wikipedia called Assocation foootball or anything similar. There is an article on football and it is about football. The germans have an article on fussball etc.. The world sport is football. These other games you mention are played in isolated places, Gaelic football is little played outside of Ireland and similarly for aussie rules. The world name for the game is not association football. Fifa don't use that term. The world-wide name for the game is football and not soccer or assocation football. Mintguy

Again incorrect. Gaelic football is played in Ireland, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and the United States. Australian Rules Football is also played internationally, with a special mix of Australian Rules and Gaelic football played internationally as an international rules series. A couple of weeks ago I had a chat with some german fans of the sport you wish to call 'football', while on a visit to Frankfurt. They called it soccer. French and Belgian friends of mine also call the sport both soccer and football. So your idea that football is instantly recognised as meaning association football is a gross simplification. At the very least, you should create a distinction by referring to it as [Football (soccer)]. JTD 02:35 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

The world's governing bodies use the word football in almost every case. Even in Ireland it is called 'The Irish Football Association' (not soccer). The mexicans call their organization the Mexican Football Federation. In Africa it's CAF the F being football. In Asia we have the Asian football federation. In Bosnia we have the football Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina. Mintguy

Since American football is located at, well, American football, the list of its famous players should be at List of American football players. But then we're going to need a separate list of List of Canadian football players, though they will overlap in places. -- Zoe


That STILL does not mean that entire word identifies the word soccer with football because in many many countries it does not mean that. And by the way, the Irish Football Association is not the name of the soccer organising body in Ireland. It is the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). And the sport it regulates is generally known as SOCCER. (The Irish Football Association runs soccer in Northern Ireland, where it is also sometimes called soccer, as elsewhere in Europe!) JTD 02:55 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)
Try looking up soccer on the German or French Wikipedia, and the only mention of it is on the German wiki under football which says "welches man in Amerika als Soccer kennt". In Britain contrary to what you said above it is hardly ever used. The Game is football and all other games are prefixed with something. This fuss only arose because of a move of this page a few hours ago. I moved it back. Mintguy
One more thing The Olympics [1] call the sport football, not soccer and not association football! Mintguy


No no no. The name of the sport is football, it is not association football. The Olympic movement call it football. FFS. Mintguy

The list starts off by calling it Association football and this is the precise name for it. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) for details. Everything dealing with soccer really should also be moved to Association football and football turned into a disambiguation page but that would require a lot of link fixing. But the fact remains that "football" is ambiguous in English esp when 250+ million Americans think of this term only refers to American football and many millions more think of this terms as meaning other things. --mav

No. Put your disambiguation at football (disambiguation), or games known as football, but leave football where it is, and the same for this page. Mintguy

Why? "Football" is too ambiguous a term for us to use for an article title since there are just too many people who think of the word "football" meaning different things. No one usage is clearly the one which can lay exclusive claim over its use therefore full disambiguation is warrented. --mav 03:42 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)
The olympic movement call it football, the French call it football. The FIA the governing body of Ireland call it football, most of rest of the world calls the sport football and not Association football or soccer, and this wasn't a problem on wikipedia until I decided to reverse a move made a few hours ago. Mintguy
But you uncovered a very important issue. Nobody in the United States refers to their football as American football - it is just "Football". Same thing for the US civial war - it is just called the Civil War. But here on Wikipedia we have to be sensitive that other people may also use those terms so we therefore have American football and American Civil War. So there is a major ambiguity problem with us having Association football at Football - look at that article - it is a mess because of this. The first four paragraphs are devoted to disambiguating the term "football" instead of describing Association football. In the context of a world-wide encyclopedia we can't have such ambiguity that favors the usage of one large group of people over the usage of another large group of people. --mav
Association football is an infrequently used term google finds only 18,900 hits for "association football". Have you read what I put on talk:football about a month ago? No. It wasn't an issue that you were concerned with until just now. You yourself moved this page from famous football players to list of famous football players. It wasn' an issue then. Why is it an issue now? Football is the world's sport, THE single most popular sport in the world and it is known world-wide as football. Not association football and not soccer but football. Mintguy

Note on google --

  • "rugby football" brings up 147,000
  • "American football" brings up 277,000
  • "Australian football" 35,000
  • "Australian rules football" 20,900
  • "gaelic football" 25,100
  • "assocation football" 18,900!!!!!!
Mintguy 04:18 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)


Football is still too ambiguous to use. The reason I didn't raise this issue before is that I didn't feel like getting into a fight with non-Americans over this. But since you seem to be the only one defending the continued use of the ambiguous term. It simply is not fair that American football has a disambiguated title while soccer gets to reside at Football (well at least most of it). BTW, you shouldn't have mentioned Google since a search for "soccer" gets 4,880,000 and "football" gets 4,300,000. Therefore I agree that "Association football" is an inferior term. Soccer would be a much better home for that sport. --mav

I'm the only one defending this because it's 4.28!! in the morning in the UK. Soccer as I keep trying to tell you is just plain wrong wrong wrong. If you could take out the US sites from your google hits and you'll see this. Look at sv:Fotboll; de:Fußball; fr:football; nl:Voetbal, there's no mention of the word soccer. On the polish wikipedia American football is at pl:Football amerykañski The world world knows the game as football. Mintguy 04:31 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

The world is a separate matter since this is the English Wikipedia so usage by English speakers, especially native ones (of which the US is the number one supplier), is all that matters. So since you use Google as a part of your argument I have used Google as part of mine. The word "football" is still too ambiguous for us to use in an English encyclopedia. It has just too many common and widely-used meanings. --mav
Well there are 65 million English speakers or so in Britain. Are you saying non-native English speakers don't count? There are 900 million Indians and roughly 2.5% of them speak English, that's 25 million English speakers, and the Indian governing body is the "ALL INDIA FOOTBALL FEDERATION" All of the African nations use the word football to describe the game. I would guess all of these English speakers exceed the US population. The International Olympic movement are quite happy to use the term football without it being ambiguous. The sport of American football is played almost exclusively by people the US and Canada, that needs to be disambiguated, football does not, it is the world's game. you just don't seem to realise how big football is outside of the USA. the Football World Cup (not soccer) is the biggest sporting event in the world. It is watched by many more people than the Olympics, and it is Organised by FIFA(guess what one of the F stands for). Mintguy 04:55 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)
Please note that it's Jtdirl who's objecting. He's Irish, not American. Not anything against him, but please don't make it seem like it's Americans who are objecting to this. -- Zoe
Yes JTD is Irish and the Irish governing body for the sport is the 'Football Association of Ireland' (FAI), on the masthead to their website they say - "Ireland's Official Football Website". you can't get much clearer than that. Mintguy


FYI - The page was happily residing at list of famous football players until someone moved it to List of Association football players a few hours ago, I moved it to List of football players. and Mav objected first of all, then JTD objected, but Mav moved it back again to List of Association football players. Mintguy
It should also be noted that google isn't going to give you a valid hit count here, since virtually all nationalities are only going to call it "football" no matter what they're talking about. Except for Aussies, probably, who would call it footie.  :-) -- Zoe
It's frequently called footie in Britain too (football that is). Mintguy
Well of course the International Olympic movement calls soccer "football" because American football is not an Olympic sport. So in the context of the Olympics there is no need to differentiate soccer from other sports since soccer is the only sport played in the Olympics that is called football. But soccer and American football (along with other sports) both co-exist here, in a single medium called Wikipedia. When two students have the same first name and are in the same class the teacher automatically disambiguates both of their names - the teacher doesn't call one student just by their first name and the second student by a disambiguated name. That would be unfair. The size of the populations of people using the term "football" to mean different things is definitely large enough to cause ambiguity over which sport somebody is referring to when they simply write "football". Therefore full disambiguation is warrented. --mav
But that's not what we do on Wikipedia for things like London or Paris is it!? The vast majority of the world recognize London to mean London, England and we have London (disambiguation) to list the others. I suggested some time ago on Talk:Football a smilar thing, although perhaps calling the page games known as football or similar, but football (disambiguation) would serve the same purpose and could be linked using the pipe trick. Mintguy
That defeats the whole purpose of a disambiguation page -- nobody is going to link to Football (disambiguation). They are going to link to either football or one of the many sports known as "football". The main reason why the parenthetical special purpose (disambiguation) pages exist is so that the disambiguation blocks at subjects like Paris and London don't overwhelm the article. Your example of London and Paris are not very good ones either -- there simply are no other cities (or much of anything for that matter) that are very widely known and used called "Paris" or "London". The closest competitor for "Paris" would be the mythical figure involved in the Trojan War. But that is a rather obscure usage compared with the very famous city by the same name. Get some sleep - I'm not going to act on anything tonight. :-) --mav
Ok What about Color (disambiguation), or Bath (disambiguation) Apollo (disambiguation) Mintguy
Ok final word for tonight. The move made to List of Association football players is clearly wrong as ,I demonstrated above, because the term association football is so infrequently used. Therefore I was right to move the page back and you were wrong to move it here again. And I think you should move it back, although you might want to move it to soccer (but please don't). The word soccer would be like me moving American football to Gridiron football. Goodnight. Mintguy

One final thought re Mintguy's mention of the Football Association of Ireland's letter head. That does not mean they call the sport football 100% of the time. Or even 50%.

  • Example No 1 When the FAI had a big row with the Irish Government over the funding of a statium they wanted to call Eircom Park, they issued a press release talking about Ireland's proposed national soccer stadium.
  • Example No. 2 There has been a campaign to allow soccer to be played at Croke Park (the home of Irish football, gaelic football!)


  • Example No. 3 Brian Kerr, the new Irish soccer manager (according to one press statement!) talked on his appointment recently about the importance of promoting "schoolboy soccer". And we talk about the schoolboy soccer league. etc etc etc etc etc etc .

In other words, whatever Mintguy may think,

  • (a) it is nowhere near as simple as he suggests with the world (except the US) calling the sport 'football';
  • (b) soccer is regularly used as a description of Association football, particularly where another sport called 'football' co-exists. It is widely used in sporting organisations, widely used in the media, widely used by fans and players themselves. And other sporting football codes bitterly resent the 'claiming' of the word 'football' by Association Football, especially when some of the codes (eg gaelic football) are in fact older than Association Football. (gaelic football was 'organised' in the late 19th century but originated under that name centuries earlier.) And Aussie friends of mine 'do their nut' when they hear British people 'claim' to be the originators of 'football' by which they mean Association Football/Soccer JTD 07:15 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Maybe I'm being simplistic, but I really don't see why this is controversial. The naming conventions state that we use the most common name, unless there is significant ambiguity. In this case, there is significant ambiguity because the word means so many different things to so many different people. The only question in my mind is Association football versus soccer. I'm no expert, but I would vote for soccer as many Americans would have no idea what Association football is but soccer is well-known and apparently used throughout the world. Tuf-Kat 07:27 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Hold on a minute, Mintguy. Maverick say this page should not be at list of footballers. TUF KAT says the same. Camembert sees problems. I've pointed out problems. Zoe sees problems. And yet even though you are in a minority of one you claim the right to ignore everyone else and do what you want. I've moved the page to a compromise location. [List of (soccer) footballers. This way, your beloved sport is not called Association football but football, but it is clarified by including soccer, a common word used in many locations to describe the sport, when as is the case in many many states, football means a different sport to the one you think. Please listen to everyone else. This isn't your page, it belongs to all the users of Wikipedia, and must understand the different definitions of football used around the world. JTD 21:25 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

I didn't start moving it. It was at list of famous football players for over 1 year and was quite happy there. Please leave STOP moving it. I am in the middle of writing the the History of sports which share the name football. Mintguy
Things change and articles get improved. The new consensus is that "football" and "footballers" are ambiguous terms. I suggest the unambiguous List of soccer players. --mav 21:32 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

It is a fair suggestion, with a disam . . . page to 'football' so people who use that term can be directed to the soccer page. JTD 21:35 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Please. Please leave this page at footballers for the moment. At least until I've finished writing the history of the various games. Please. Mintguy

OK - then we can move it to List of soccer players and have the detail about soccer at soccer. That works for me. --mav
Please just don't arbitarily move the pages. I am not the only one as passionate about this, but I am the only one who's on at the moment, and DAFT enough to stay up til 4am. If I didn't think it was so important I wouldn't be making a fuss would I? Please. ~~
Nothing arbitrary about it - "football" is too ambiguous for us to use for any one sport known by that name. --mav 21:52 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)
It is not. Football means one thing to the majority of the world's population and soccer and association football are not the correct name of the sport. Mintguy 21:54 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)
Not in cases where the term needs to be disambiguated from other things called "football". Then it is very widely known as soccer. See above google search where "soccer" has over a half million more hits that "football". --mav
eh? I get
  • football 19,000,000
  • soccer 10,400,000

Anyway how often is the term footballer used to mean a player of American football? Mintguy

Anyway. Look can we please leave this issue for 24/48 hours. I need to get some sleep and finish the stuff on the history of games which share a common root as football. Goodnight. Mintguy

You have to limit your search to pages in English. You can do this by setting Google preferences. --mav
That just proves there are more US websites in English than anywhere else. So what? We know that. Anyway as I keep trying to tell you football is the world's game and a player of the game is described as a footballer. Is a player of American football described as a footballer? Also, you might be interested to know that the union of football players in Australia is Australian Professional Footballers Association and in Ireland it is the Professional Footballers Association of Ireland. The word footballer applies to this game. So this page should be at footballer. Mintguy 22:37 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)
Footballer isn't used to describe American football players so that isn't an issue. But I suspect that other sports called "football" do call their players "footballers". Thus the term is probably still too ambiguous to use. And as already shown above football is way too vague for the home of the article on soccer. Soccer means one and only one thing as far an encyclopedia is concerned but "football" is the name of several different sports. And you were the one who first mentioned Google as part of your argument. --mav
Look I'm going to bed now. Please just try to understand this. The word football is understood world-wide to mean one thing. Every nation in the world that has a governing body of the game bar the US and Australia uses the word football. In Ireland the governing body of the sport uses the word 'football', the professional body of the players in Ireland uses 'footballer' In Australia the professional body for the players uses the word footballer. In Australia Australian rules football is often known as "Aussie Rules" why? To distinguish it from the the game known world-wide as football. In Ireland Gaelic football is often called [[Gaelic football] it is run by the Gaelic Athletic Association on their website on the page about Gaelic football thay say "Welcome to the Gaelic Football section of the site.". They don't say "Welcome to the football section of the site". Why? Because the other game is known as football WORLD-WIDE. Almost everywhere in the entire world football means football. The ONLY major exception is the USA and Canada. OK Mintguy
OIC the usage and opinions of Americans and Canadians don't matter at all. --mav 23:23 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

A very quick google search on football produced -

(American football) Irish QB Holiday separates shoulder January 1, 2003 Print it

  • Gator Bowl recap | Luck runs out for Irish offense

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Notre Dame quarterback Carlyle Holiday separated his left shoulder trying to run for a touchdown in the first quarter of Wednesday's Gator Bowl against North Carolina State.

(More American football)

FOOTBALL: Irish ready to sink Midshipmen By MIKE CONNOLLY Sports Writer 

  The Irish are bigger than Navy. They are stronger and they are faster.

But that doesn't mean they will win.

"Athlet-ically we are going to be more talented than they are but they have a great scheme and they play hard," Irish linebacker Rocky Boiman said.

Although the Irish currently have a 37-game winning streak against the Midshipmen, the last two games in Notre Dame Stadium have been very close. In 1999, Jarious Jackson completed a pass to Jay Johnson with just 40 seconds remaining to win the game 28-24. The 1997 game was also close as the Midshipmen out-rushed the Irish 399 yards to 283 yards. But three Navy turnovers kept the Irish in the game as they went on to win 21-17.

(Irish Rugby Football)

The Ireland A Squad from which the team to play Italy (Friday, February 21st, Rovigo) has also been announced and it includes Jeremy Davidson who was forced to miss the Scotland game

So it is patently obvious football DOES NOT JUST MEAN soccer on google. It includes many codes called football of which soccer is JUST ONE. So Mintguy's argument is disproved simply by looking at google sites.

It also produced websites called 'Irish rugby', 'football' meaning Gaelic football, the 'Ladies Gaelic Football Association of Ireland'. 'GAA football' 'Shamrocks Hurling & Football club' '(ie, gaelic) Cork Constitution Football Club' (ie rugby) , a website ca;;ed 'Soccer Central', 'Skerries Rugby Football club' 'Belvedere FC' (ie rugby) 'Home of Irish sport - GAA, hurling, rugby, soccer' 'senior football championships (ie gaelic), Wicklow football championship (ie gaelic), 'Coolmines Rugby Football club'. 'Spa Gaelic Football club' 'Football' (which reads Gaelic football can be described as a mixture of soccer and rugby, although it predates both those games', another site which states 'Brian McEniff has returned to the role of Donegal's senior football manager only a month after being named as the county chairman.' (McEniff is a the gaelic football manager), Tralee Rugby football club.

Do I have to finish the list before Mintguy gets the message... JTD 23:25 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Another bit of info just to hand - front page story of the (British newspaper) the Sunday People (Irish edition: Feb 16) headline - 'DUPED & DUMPED BY DUFF 'Irish soccer star used me for sex' Page 3: Opening paragraph - England soccer star David James is battling to save his marriage after being caught playing away with a Friends United sweetheart, The People can reveal.' So much for the word 'soccer' being a word exclusively used in the US. Oh dear! JTD 00:11 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

I think it's called alliteration... I don't think anyone was ever trying to claim that the word soccer isn't used outside the US, I think the point that was being made was that the term Football means only one thing to many, many people all over the world. - Ams80
The problem is while football many mean one thing to some people in some countries, it means a different thing to different people in other countries. Wiki has got to guard against this. It is irrelevant whether right now other pages to other sports calling football. If at the start of a page, we start a page using a word implying it has only one meaning when it in fact has many, we create the impression that Wiki is only of use to people from those countries. If for example, this page had been started presuming football = American football, we would have given the impression to people coming onto Wiki that Wiki is basically an American sourcebook, not a world one. Similarly if we had used the word queen to refer to the British queen, and monarchy to refer to the British monarchy, we would give the impression that WIki is anglo-centric.
It is in Wiki's interests to avoid creating such impressions, because such impressions may undermine Wiki's aim of being a worldwide sourcebook, capable of being trusted by people worldwide. By doing that, you risk losing people (or not having them join) on the presumption of 'oh this is only for Americans' etc. Even though most people around the world associate the word queen with Queen Elizabeth and monarchy with the British monarchy, we still talk about 'Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom' and 'British monarchy' for that very reason. Football is the same. We have to use language that is neutral and universally applicable, not simply language that suits a lot of people but doesn't suit millions of others, even if the people it suited were a majority. JTD 02:13 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

I've just expanded the introduction to the article a bit. I don't think the article can now be considered ambiguous. Also, at this point, I can't find any other lists of football players. If in the future Wikipedia becomes very popular and people make lists of famous Gaelic, American, Australian or any other type of footballers then couldn't a decision be made then? What is perhaps more urgent is restructuring this page. There are well over 100 serious footballing nations who could name ten famous players from their country, having 1000 players listed would leave this list as being pretty useless in its current form. Ams80 01:01 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

Obvious ideas - we could sort by nationality, or we could sort by birth date - either would be more useful than sorting by surname. Martin
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