Talk:Association football/Archive 1

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Contents

Canadian football

Unsure how to classify Canadian Football. It is similar to the version played in the United States, but there are some rules differences -- 12 men instead of 11, different field dimensions. Would it go under "American Football" anyway, with the differences noted (as was done with College Football)?

I would put Canadian football in its own category. The rules differences between college football and the NFL are minor, but the differences with Canadian football are signficant enough that, while it clearly belongs in the same family as American football, the play of the game is really quite different (three downs versus four on the one hand, and lack of motion penalties and other offensive benefits on the other, create a game where posession changes hands rapidly, teams score rapidly, and overall the flow of the game is just different). One way to approach this would be to put Canadian and American football under the same family of "Gridiron" football.

Arena football

Where does arena football go? Also it is most similar to American football.

Soccer?

Why does the article 'football' have to be about soccer, with a small list at the top to go to other forms of football?? Soccer isn't the only form of football, so why doesn't all this information go in 'soccer' and this article only be a list of different forms of soccer? If nobody else does, I will soon fiddle around with the football articles, so that the article for soccer is at soccer, not football. - Mark Ryan

The reason is that the game called "soccer" in the US and Canada is called "football" in almost every other country in the world. It's important to remember that Wikipedia is aiming to be an international encyclopedia, and as such, it won't always follow American conventions. --Stephen Gilbert

Disambiguation

If ever there was a case for a disambiguation page, this is it. This article starts with a coy list of many many kinds of football before going off into a detailed description of one of them. Ortolan88

I suggest putting the first few paragraphs of this on a page called Games called football and starting this article off by saying something like.
There are many games called football played throughout the world. For the vast majority of the world, football refers to the sport originally codified in England as association football and known in the USA as soccer ...... and then concentrate on this game.
Mintguy 15:11 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)
BUMP
I think the football article should only be a disambiguation page, the "rest of the article" should go into what most English speakers would call "soccer". We can have a note in both places emphasizing that most of the world uses the terms football or fútbol for soccer, while only the American or Canadian minority thinks non-spherical balls should be involved. And remember, "it takes leather balls to play rugby!" :-) --Uncle Ed 19:40 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

So I created a football games article listing all the different games I could find which SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE ever called "football".

If the football article is going to be primarily about soccer -- or what the British call "Association football" -- then we need a disambiguation page.

Still, it's jarring for Americans at least to look up "football" and find "soccer" has taken over the spot. Can't Brazilians and the various Spanish speakers accept the English term for their beloved game, when reading an English-language encyclopedia? --Uncle Ed 20:10 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)


I would agree, Ed, it is jarring for people in Canada, Ireland and elsewhere that other sports exist that are also called football. (In fact jarring is a polite term. Many would find the assumption that football must of course mean soccer both arrogant and presumptious.) The fact is many many people use or would understand soccer as refer to association football.

Re your earlier comments, I would agree with one minor change. I generally used to think that most of the world calls soccer 'football' but the more I research it, the more I find soccer used. (Contrary to Mintguy's claim, it isn't a word just used in America. It is used also in Canada, in parts of South America, in Britain, in Ireland, by many Europeans (especially when the speak in english) ) So instead of saying most of the world, a more accurate term would be much of the world. But there is no earthly way we can allow 'football' to be 'used' exclusively to refer to soccer. Millions and millions and millions of people use it to refer to other sports (Gaelic football, American football, Canadian football, Australian Rules football, Rugby football). When I hear the word 'football', I think of gaelic football, a sport I used to play. My American partner thinks of American football when I say football. My father, a rugby fan, used to think of rugby if you said football. An Aussie friend of mine would think of Australian Rules, etc. That is why the best solution is to use the title Football (soccer) so that the f-word is used for those who presume it means association football, while 'soccer' clarifies what form of football the article is about. But logic suggests simply 'football' is a non-starter. JTD 20:38 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

JTD, I like the idea of putting soccer into football (soccer) rather than football. I am giving my 'team' a 'time-out' so go ahead and 'score' all you want with name changes and redirects. I'll look in again tomorrow or the next day. (All I want is peace.) --Uncle Ed 20:51 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

This is such a major debate that I hope you will be able to find room in the article for the famous Bill Shankly quote! Deb 22:17 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)
Can't we put it under Association football? Please? It just sounds wrong at the moment. Bagpuss 00:40 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)


Excuse me these seems to be something happening here. Mav specifically said on the talk:list of footballers page

would like to see what Mintguy has for the history he is working on first. Until then we can turn Football (soccer) into a redirect to Football and change all the links meaning to go to soccer into . --mav
It was just a suggestion and lord knows that what I say is not looked-upon as gospel around here. So just because I said it doesn't mean it has to be followed. --mav 00:49 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)


  • As soccer is a widely recognised term, it was the most obvious way of clarifying what sport this page referred to.
    • Using 'football' in the title enabled people who referred to the sport by that name to recognise it;
    • Using soccer enabled people who knew it by that name to recognise it;
    • Using both together ensured that people who understood 'football' to refer to another sport were not misled or confused by simply using 'football' on its own. Football (soccer) is the clearest most unambiguous way of clarifying what this page is about. After a discussion that ran over a couple of days (and late late nights/early mornings) all but one person agreed with this approach, hence the name. JTD

I specifically asked should I rename and was told to go ahead to. I have adapted the text on the article page and a related page to explain the structure. Mintguy's contribution can easily be added in and further adjustments made. JTD 00:52 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

It sounds so crap, though. Can I be a late vote for association football (where I nearly moved it anyway before discovering the big discussion)? I don't care what Mintguy found on Google, it's a perfectly understandable term (though personally when asked to specify I like to say "the game where the foot comes into contact with the ball") - the reason it doesn't pop up much is that when you're writing about the game you don't feel the need to give it a two-word term. Anyhow, we can redirect from soccer, so what's the problem?
I do agree, by the way, with those who say we need a disambiguation page, and it should probably take the main football page. Bagpuss 01:01 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
So you want the page under the least known name? In the earlier discussion on this and the archived page, [Association football] was almost immediately dropped as too obsure for international readers. Football was to ambiguous. Soccer was only used in some places and so not everyone would recognise it, according to Mintguy, and it is a good point to be taken on board. Combining them both is the only way to produce a workable page on this sport that could be recognised, without sending the two fingers to all other 'footballs' by saying 'its our name. You can shag off and call your sport something else. JTD
Least known? It'd surprise me if that's true. Okay, I saw your mini-survey below and being in Canada at the moment I can't try a British survey.
Hmm, just had a short check and the Australian national site calls it soccer and the Irish one calls it football. My natural reaction is still that association football is "what it's called". I can't really see the problem with putting the sport under a lesser known, but correct name and redirecting other stuff there, but I think I may have to admit association football isn't as widely known as I thought and that "soccer" isn't just American.

(continued below)

Just to confuse matters, the Australian players union is the Australian Professional Footballers Association. One of my arugments for keeping the page where it was. Mintguy
I had expected places with more than one football to use "association", but it seems not, they just say "football" and somehow avoid getting too confused. A large number of articles linked to association football, though. Oh, I'm continuing my argument aren't I. I said I wasn't going to do that. I'd best go home or I'll be here all night.
Final note - naming conventions say use the most common names in preference to being technically correct, so association football is kind of hit for six there. Football (soccer) is, I suppose, a natural result of the Wikipedia rules. Bagpuss
It's kind of growing on me. LOL. There is an advantage in that you can use the pipe trick to link it, as in [[football (soccer)|]] will come out as football. Mintguy
I don't know how many times to indent this now. You've got a point there. The pedant in me is now crying out for football (association), but I let him celebrate the millennium in the right year, so perhaps he'll be nice to me now. Heck, leave it where it is. Now I really am going. I'll see where we stand tomorrow. Bagpuss
(continued) Darn it, I still want it under the right title and football (soccer) is a really awkward way of putting it. We have an article called rugby football after all.
By the way, could you say where your last inverted comma is meant to be. I'm trying to figure out whether or not you told me to "shag off". Bagpuss

Shared history

To what article should my contributions to the shared history of the sport called football be added pray tell? Mintguy

Let's see the contributions first then we can figure that out. It may be best to have it under a 'History of' daughter article. --mav
Daughter of which page?

Football could be Mintguy's general discussion of the history of all football-type games, and each modern offshoot of the family could be linked to as and when they crop up in the general history. It can also go into great detail about how the usage of the word "football" has evolved over the years, and how it has ended up being used differently in certain countries. I find disambiguation pages that are just lists of links terribly boring, I must admit. A historical overview gives just as much opportunity to link to related articles, and is a lot more interesting to boot. -- Oliver P. 01:18 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

I agree (I think). Football should be a historical overview of how the various games evolved. There should probably be a disambig block at the top, though, to catch people who don't want to wade through the history to find a link to the kind they want. Tuf-Kat

That's what I favour. Mintguy

If it an article on the shared history of a sport called football it should be in an article called football. But this article isn't about the shared history of football, it is about one branch and that is clarified in the name.

BTW, I did a check around with some friends that were around here visiting my flatmate. OK so it was an Irish sample, but the responses were interesting.

Of 8 people:

  1. Association football - 0 (one response was, 'what the hell is that?' )
  2. Football - 2 (general response: ' which football?')
  3. Soccer - 3 (general response: 'that's what its called, isn't it?')
  4. Football (soccer) - 3 (general response: 'well I suppose people abroad will know what it is that way') JTD 01:24 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
BTW JTD as you were the prime instigator of all this nonsense, I hope you intend to fix all the links. Mintguy

As a note of interest: Ed turned Football games into an article earlier today (it was a redirect). People might want to take a look at that. --Camembert

First of all, I was not the 'prime instigator'. Plenty of people had problems with this page 'claiming' ownership of the word 'football'. As to it being 'nonsense' that is simply a reflection on your inability to accept that there is a problem, that users of this page agreed with the problem, and that they agreed on a solution that involved qualifying the name 'football' to indicate which code of football. Just because your arguments were not accepted, that your 'google' searches backfired, showing how widespread the word 'soccer' is used and that a quick glances through 'football' produced references to various codes (contrary to your assertion, and your insistence that the total number of references to 'football' of course meant soccer) doesn't give you the right to snidely ridicule other people's opinions as nonsense. I expected a serious debate on the issue, not burying your head in the sand, repeating the same mantra, ignoring everyone else's opinion and then dismissing everyone else's view as 'nonsense'. I have agreed with your proposition that not everyone would recognise the term 'soccer' which is why I resisted some people's idea simply to rename the page [list of soccer players]. It would be nice if you showed the same maturity and willingness to work with people. JTD 01:42 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Er.. pardon me for upsetting you. I have not once in this debate lowered myself to personal insults. I didn't call anyone's views nonsense, never, not once. The use of nonsense above was meant as a flippant remark on the moving around of pages. You're the one who's moved the pages all over the place are you not? My google argument has far from backfired. 47 of the top 100 sites listed under football are for 'soccer'(spit). The list of players page had been moved to 'association football' which I demonstrated was a little used term, which is why I moved it. I demonstrated the use of 'football' without any qualifiers to mean 'soccer'(spit) internationally. That was my argument plain and simple, what kind of a bolt from the blue were you expecting me to come up with? Mintguy

Yeah. It an excellent site. That actually would be the logical place to add in Mintguy's history of footballing codes. JTD

It links to association football rather than here, though. Bagpuss (who is going to let this lie in a bit)

Good googily moogily!

Any discussion or history common to all forms of football belong on the page entitled, simply, football. Currently, that page seems to be entitled football games. There's no need for a page by entitled football games.

Football should not redirect to this page. A page entitled simply football, should be a general page, not a page devoted only to one specific form of football, as it seems to be now. The word "football" does not mean only the sport sanctioned by FIFA. Nor does it mean only the sport sanctioned by the NFL. It means both, and it means a number of other poplular sports, too.

As an American whose favorite sport is that form of football that is sanctioned by FIFA, I've been involved in more "Is it 'football' or is it 'soccer'" discussions than I care to remember. The expression "been there, done that" comes to mind for some reason. I decided many years ago that such discussions are pointless. My real concern is whether it's "pointy-ball" or "the beautiful game".

The only reason I'm commenting here is that this is an encyclopedia, and terminology is important. Usage of words in an encyclopedia should not be based on who takes offense to what, or who thinks that a word belongs to them when it doesn't. The page entitled simply football should not be about any specific sport. It should be about those things that all the sports known as football have in common. Cheers Bluelion 04:00 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

I agree, Bluelion. Until a few days ago this football page was all about soccer, with every other football code being told in effect to 'shag off and call yourself {some other name} football', ie, American football, Gaelic football. And it has been the mother of all rows to get Mintguy to accept that soccer cannot claim the word football for itself. That's why this page is now called [Football (soccer)], to make sure that people know that its contents is exclusively concerned with the branch of football often called soccer. But Minyguy ain't happy, as you can see in the above quotes. Even though everyone else could see a problem, and just about everyone else thought [Football (soccer)] was the best way to clarify what the accompanying article is about, Mintguy regards the whole issue as in his words 'nonsense'. In his view, the entire world means soccer when they say 'football' and this page should reflect that. Which I think is, to paraphrase a common expletive, cow manure. JTD 05:34 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

JTD. You are continually misrepresenting my views. Stop it. The only time I used the word 'nonsense' was above and it was a flippant remark about shuffling pages to-and-fro, I could have used the word 'malarky', or 'business', or any number of synonyms, it was not intended to infer that your views or anyone else 's views were nonsense. I am not ignorant to the fact the othe people use the word football for their own local sport. My point which is undeniable is that for the vast majority of the world's population, and for the vast majority of native and non-native English speakers, the word football unqualified means soccer (spit). Just as for the majority of the world Tennis means 'lawn tennis' and not 'Royal tennis' or Table tennis. Furthermore you are again misrepresenting the truth - I was not alone in opposing the word 'soccer' as the name of this sport. TheAnome, Ams80, Pcb21 , Stephen Gilbert, Alan Peakall, WojPob and Dhum Dhum all expressed their view that a move to a page called soccer was unacceptable. A number of people also expressed support on my page but did not wish to get involve in the row. After the fact Bagpuss has come along and expressed his negative views about the word soccer. So don't try to falsify the fact by saying it was me versus the world. I have grudgingly accepted the move to this page as a compromise - now get off my back.

Ohh you still haven't answered my question of whether you are going to fix all the links? Mintguy

Violence

This has a bad side, as groups of fanatics have often caused disturbances and sometimes tragedies (see hooligans and Football War).

Redirect

Hey, when you guys are finished rowing, would it be all right to REDIRECT football to my football games disambiguation page? I'm not going to do it, unless Mintguy agrees -- because if I take a side then I'm not allowed to be a heavy-handed sysop and protect any pages. --Uncle Ed 16:26 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Ed. You have my blessing for anything you want to do as long as football (soccer) doesn't end up at soccer and that the article football isn't just a simple disambiguation block, because I intend to add a long piece about the muddled history of all codes of football. I think it better to have a single article on this rather than having partisan pieces at each sport saying this was the first X, and that was the first Y. I spent a couple of hours at the library today trying to fill in some gaps in what I have already written. Mintguy
I'd say move football games to football.
Since we seem pretty much settled here, I think I'll go and fix some links. Bagpuss

Other pages

I'm just going to air a concern here, in that I hope this isn't the thin edge of the wedge and the we don't start moving Football World Cup, Football War, Total Football, Socrates (football player), Anderlecht (football club), List of football teams, Norwegian Football League teams, German Football League Teams, Italian Football League Teams , Dutch Football League teams, Brazilian national football team, English national football team, English Football League teams, South African Football League teams, Italian Football League Teams/Serie A, Football League Trophy and Paralympic Football etc.. Mintguy

Expected outcome

I'm not sure I understand what, if anything, has been settled, but I know what I as a fascinated reader would like to have:

  • an article distinguishing all the names of the different sports that anyone ever called "football" (currently football games)
  • an article about the history of these various sports
  • an article on what Americans call "soccer" -- currently football (soccer)
  • an article on what Americans call "football" (see American football)
  • a whole bunch of other articles on the various non-soccer, non-American-rules football games
  1. I wrote football games as a neutral disambiguation page.
  2. Mintguy is, I believe, writing material for a history of football article.
  3. We need to settle on a mutually agreeable name for the football (soccer) article.
  4. I guess there's no naming objection to American football

A real big question is what the football article should contain:

  • a redirect to the, ahem "soccer" article at football (soccer)
  • disambiguation info, like what's currently in football games
  • something else (please specify)

--Uncle Ed 17:47 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Disambiguation:
If a disambiguating page is merited, it can be as simple as a bullet list of specific articles with links and perhaps a brief one-line description of each (saving details for the specific articles), or it might have some explanatory text of its own if differences need to be explained, or if there is interesting history of the term itself independent of the specific topics. If each of the topics themselves only has a sentence or two, it may be simpler just to put all of them together in one article.
So it would be entirely reasonable to have Mintguy's stuff under football, which is what I'd favour. Leaving it as a redirect would render the entire exercise of moving it pointless. Bagpuss

Intro

Hey, Mintguy. I like how the intro's going. The previous one was a little dry. Bagpuss

Redirect changed

I changed the redirect from Football, since no one else seems to want to do it. We could write a book about the naming controversy, which is at least a century old. (Actually, I'm working on the book <g>) Cheers Bluelion 23:47 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Edits about the name

News article from Friday December 17, 2004.

Soccer will officially become football in Australia next year after the Australian Soccer Association (ASA) announced on Thursday it will change its name to Football Federation Australia (FFA). The move would bring Australia into line with the majority of other countries which call the sport football. Canada, the United States and New Zealand are among the few countries that call the sport soccer in their organisational name. Robert

I accept that soccer is called "football" by most people in the world. However, it is not usually called that in Australia, and the ordinary usage of people will not be changed by edict from the ASA. It is not true to imply that it is now called football in Australia. Avalon 05:43, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Interestingly a number of media outlets now refer to the sport as "football", however, yes, any change will come gradually, if at all. BTW, it is no longer the ASA, it is now the FFA. Regardless of what the sport is called where, the name is not a big issue. It seems to have taken up an inordinate amount of space on both the page previously and in this talk page. People just need to accept the reality that the sport is known by different names in different places (and sometimes within the same place). --Daveb 06:33, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

JTD - please explain your last edit.

  1. As some people call the sport 'soccer' (even though a minority) I thought it important to put it in the opening line, making it clear that it is the minority name. That way, from the opening everyone (soccerites, footballites) knows from line one what the article is about. It simply a logical change that recognises what you say (and I accept it) is the dominance of the word 'football' while informing others that the other word used is 'soccer'.

  2. The line where you blamed the US for spreading the name soccer (apart from opening the threat of WWIII with irate Americans who might take offence - they might set George W. Bush on you, or even worse force you to listen to one of his meandering speeches!) is quite inaccurate. I was talking to someone in the FAI on Wednesday who is a friend of mine and the issue of why Ireland calls the sport soccer a lot of the time was raised. He said it seems to date back as far as the sport was played in Ireland, which is long long before anyone on this side of the Atlantic was aware of 'americanisms' or had direct access to TV, sports coverage. (Back then even Coca Cola wasn't available in Ireland!) I actually never knew the US called it soccer until you mentioned it. John mentioned how when the Irish soccer team were going to play in the US in 1994, one question the FAI had to find out was 'what do they call the game in the US?' So the name soccer in Ireland owes nothing to the US whatsoever and almost certainly came from the UK. Nor is there any evidence that it came to Australia via the US. Today we have US 'culture' on our TV screens, in our newspapers, etc. But when the name 'soccer' became widespread US culture wasn't as dominant. Jerry Springer was just a nightmare in the future. The parents of the actors in 'Friends' hadn't been born. Until the 1960s if not later, the dominant external cultural influence on states like Ireland and Australia was Britain. By the 1960s, in fact decades earlier, the word 'soccer' was widespread in both Ireland and Britain. My father's generation, who were born in the 1930s, called it that, while the Gaelic Athletic Association's infamous ban on 'foreign games' (already gone generations) banned 'soccer'. And that ban was introduced over one hundred years ago.
So your speculation on the origins of the 'soccer' name in terms of international usage being due to American cultural influences is almost certainly far wide of the mark. It had to have come from Britain, perhaps through the colonial governing class. In any case, you risked cheesing off some readers by appearing to cast their cultural gifts to the world in a disparaging light. You and I on this side of the Atlantic probably share a mutual 'attitude' towards American's cultural 'gifts' to mankind, but in this case (certainly in terms of how the name 'soccer' became common in Ireland & Australia) the evidence suggests America is 'innocent'.

(Question: how did America get the 'soccer' name? Here's a thought. If it passed to two 'Old Commonweath' states (Ireland & Australia), might it have gone, through the same British colonial governing class and their servants to a third, Canada, and from there spread to the US? It is just a thought.)

My only other change was to fill a missing word in the top line. I presumed the missing word was 'popular'. I've been out of Wiki a few minutes so I didn't get a chance to type this explanation before I got your message. I don't think the changes changed the overall meaning; one just put the alternative name where it needed to be, in the first line. The other just removed a rather provocatively worded and on the basis of my own knowledge, inaccurate claim with a simple factual statement. Most people call the sport 'football'. A minority call it 'soccer'. Good text, BTW, and I think calling it [football (soccer)] rather than [football] or [soccer] is the right compromise. At some stage, someone was going to query the use of football. This way, before more information on the game is put on Wiki, we have a set way to refer to it that should make everyone able to follow what it is about. JTD 04:48 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

It's undeniable that the US culture is making the name more widespread. (Google lists football under soccer for example). I wasn't suggesting it invented the word, far from it as the second sentence in the article demonstrates. As the word soccer is in the title of this page and the usage of the term is explained in the second sentence it seemed unnecessary to put a parenthesised comment just after the article definition when it's clear we're talking about the game you call soccer. Re: 'popular' I had the word order wrong when I added the word team to the text I had already written so I'd put "team most popular" instead of "most popular team" so thanks for fixing that. Mintguy .. ohh also I think "(sometimes also called soccer in some nations)" is a bit unweildy. Mintguy

(sometimes called "soocer") would be sufficient. It is sometimes called "soccer" even in England, which is where the word "soccer" came from.

In partial answer to the question of how Americans got the word soccer. The answer is that the word came from England, and many Americans were at first reluctant to use it. It is used out of neccessity. Bluelion 10:04 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Bluelion -I like your edits. I've been unable to find out when the Aussie associations started using the word soccer. I've left a message on an 'Australin soccer' forum but haven't had any answer. Mintguy