Talk:Lists of association football players

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 25 May 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

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[edit] Initial discussion

(1) Soccer is used in the US, Canada and Australia - i.e., most of the English-speaking world. (2) Who said anything about "association soccer" anyway? (3) "Others are either given qualifiers or other names" Sez who? Everybody around the world says "football", the majority mean American football by the term, but that doesn't mean that we should exclude all other groups by arrogantly appropriating the term "football" to American football either. Tannin

1. You mean most of the native English-speaking world. Wikipedia is for everyone who speaks English, not just native speakers.

2. No one said anything about "associatation soccer" other than me, and it was an error. Replace "soccer" with "football" in that sentence.

3. Simply not true. Americans mean American football, Canadians mean Canadian football, Australians mean Australian football, and everyone else means "association football".

I think this can be brought down to one central problem: the sport in question has two commonly-used names: football and soccer. "Football" is a problem because there are a variety of other sports that use that name. Normally, we would create a disambiguation page. However, the other name, "soccer" is only commonly used in a couple countries. So, what are some proposals? -- Stephen Gilbert

Mintguy still hasn't answered any of the problems many users have thrown up, just ignored them and kept on repeating his own argument over and over and . . . .

They are:

  • 'football' is a term used by many sports in many counties. For example, a google search produced vast numbers of references to football, as he constantly keeps mentioning, But if you look a little closer, you find they aren't all references to 'association football but also tons of pages about American football, endless lists of references to rugby clubs, pages and pages about gaelic football, numerous references to Australian Rules football. In other word there is no such thing as football. There are different codes of football, meaning that what Mintguy automatically thinks of as football is not what Mav automatically thinks when he hears the word. And what Mav thinks of as the sport it is referring to is not what I automatically think of a football, and what I mean by football isn't what someone from Australia thinks of when the hear the word 'football.' etc etc. Yet Mintguy still seems insistent that what he thinks of as football is football. The google search shows he is wrong. Many millions would agree with him. Equally many millions wouldn't. Which means, by definition, you cannot then use football as referring to one sport when it actually can mean any one of a number;
  • Most of the people who have contributed here agree that giving ownership of the disputed term 'football' to association football is not on. What we have to find is an alternative description. Personally, though 'Association football' is the technically correct term it is rarely used so unless we cannot find something better, I'd leave it to one side. One of the most common terms used is soccer. Claims by Mintguy that it is slang is wrong. According to the Oxford english dictionary, (and I quote again, as Mintguy ignored it the first time) soccer / noun Association Football. That is from a British dictionary that does not include slang. So what word does it use: soccer. Pure and simple. A word used in the US. In Ireland. In Britain (yes it does, Mintguy - I went through the weekend British tabloids last night. It featured in all but one.) Contrary to what has been said, it is sometimes used in Europe. It has been used to me by Belgian and German friends (we were speaking english at the time, so many they don't use it speaking in their native language, but they sure as hell used it speaking english. - actually, just remembered, Klaus began discussing 'soccer' with another guy at the bar in german, so it obviously is used there too. Many not as widespread as in the US, Ireland (+ UK) but it is used. JTD
Hold your horses there. As the name of the Irish game is Gaelic football, you are bound to find references to it when you search for football Similarly for the other sports. So I really don't get your pint here. But if you insist we'll look it at the first 10 hits for football on google.
  1. NFL.com - American football (not surprising seeing at most of the web is US)
  2. FIFA - Ok 1 for me.
  3. football.com - American football again
  4. football365.com all the latest Premiership, Champions League and Uefa Cup news - 2 for me
  5. The Football Association = 3 for me
  6. www.ncaafootball.net American football again
  7. Guardian Unlimited Football - 4 for me
  8. Canadian Football League
  9. footballasia.com - All Football All Asia - 5 for me
  10. Australian Football League - Aussie rules

So that's 5 out of 10 of the top 10 hits for what you like to call soccer.

Mintguy 21:20 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)
  • Most of the people who have contributed here agree that giving ownership of the disputed term 'football' to association football is not on. What we have to find is an alternative description. Personally, though 'Association football' is the technically correct term it is rarely used so unless we cannot find something better, I'd leave it to one side. One of the most common terms used is soccer. Claims by Mintguy that it is slang is wrong. According to the Oxford english dictionary, (and I quote again, as Mintguy ignored it the first time) soccer / noun Association Football. That is from a British dictionary that does not include slang. So what word does it use: soccer. Pure and simple. A word used in the US. In Ireland. In Britain (yes it does, Mintguy - I went through the weekend British tabloids last night. It featured in all but one.) Contrary to what has been said, it is sometimes used in Europe. It has been used to me by Belgian and German friends (we were speaking english at the time, so many they don't use it speaking in their native language, but they sure as hell used it speaking english. - actually, just remembered, Klaus began discussing 'soccer' with another guy at the bar in german, so it obviously is used there too. Many not as widespread as in the US, Ireland (+ UK) but it is used.
For Soccer - You and Mav and Tokerboy and Tannin. Against the word Soccer we've got Me, Stephen Gilbert, Dhum Dhum, WojPob. That looks like a draw to me. How is that bost people are against? -- later edit.... I forgot about the Anome. So it's 5 vs 4 for for not using the word soccer.
As someone who has contributed to the OED I'd just like to point out that the OED covers all forms of English, not just British English, and it also includes slang terms. See http://www.oed.com/public/readers/research.htm for details. --Imran 18:14 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
Slight misrepresentation here. I'm not for "soccer". I guess if I was naming the page myself I'd probably use "soccer" because a lot of people don't know what "association football" is, or maybe use I'd "association football" with a redir from "soccer" because it's the formally correct name. Or "footcall (association)" - whatever. But I don't care what it gets called, so long as it's not "football" Tannin
Claims that the word is slang - It is slang. I've got the Cassell encyclopaedia/dictionary open before me and it lists soccer as a colloquilism.
Tabloids - You looked at the Irish edition of these tabloids I take it?
Europeans - Dhum Dhum, WojPob both say they never use the word soccer, only to accomodate American guest someone said (apologies to whoever it was).
Mintguy 21:20 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

PS: I've just gone through some official 'football (ie association football' websites. And yes, they interchangably call it soccer. The FAI website mentions soccer. Oh, and in 1978 when Pope John Paul I was being inaugurated, his inauguration was held on the morning because, according to an official press release, he didn't want an afternoon ceremony to 'interrupt Italian soccer coverage'. (The Vatican's words, not mine!) JTD 19:28 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

Who was the Vatican addressing? The vast US Catholic audience perhaps?
Final point. How come if it's ok for the Encylopaedia Britannica (An American publication) to list the game under football [1] and not soccer, it isn't for us eh? Mintguy
British and Irish newspapers. JTD 22:21 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)
Football (soccer) seems like a good choice to me. It neatly sidesteps the appearance of American bias, allows the use of "football" in the title without having to resort to "association football" (which is confusing to people like me who have never heard the term before), and lets us put a disambiguation page to take care of the mess that is currently at football. -- Stephen Gilbert
Even if I don't like the word "soccer", I think Football (soccer) is probably the best solution. It suits me because of the reasons mentioned above and it should be clear for everyone what the article is about. D.D. 20:43 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)
Folks, it looks like we have reached a workable compromise -- and without a single name being thrown! Maybe this is because football involves less throwing than, say, basketball? --Uncle Ed

I know when I've lost an argument. All I can say is that I'm bitterly disappointed. Mintguy

I think it is the best solution is to use [Football (soccer)]. It means that the majority of people who, as Mintguy states, take football to to mean 'association football', will immediately recognise the site. The many others who know it as 'soccer' with recognise it too. It struct me, thinking about it, that soccer seems to be prevalent in those states where 'football' means something else Ireland where it means gaelic football; Australia where it means Australian Rules football, the US, where it means American football. Add to that Britain, where while the word soccer may originally have been a nickname like 'rugger' as the OED shows it is now an accepted noun, and it appears in Europe where people perhaps when using english use the word. And those who use 'football' to mean another sport will recognise the page So a combination of both seems the best solution. So can I take it that we have clear agreement on the move? Does anyone have any problem with the move? JTD

I 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 [[Football (soccer) | ]]. --mav

Hm. Football (soccer) looks good to me. It is unambiguous, you can use the pipe trick and it is short. --mav 22:23 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not trying to reopen this argument, you've made up your mind to move it, and I know that no more argument is going to change your mind. If there has to be a compromise (and I still can't see why there should be if it's good enough for the Encyclopaedia Britannica) then 'football (soccer)' may be (extremely grudgingly) the 'least worst' option. I just want to clarify some misrepresentations made by other parties who shall remain nameless.

The word 'soccer' was coined by a bunch of toffs (to put it bluntly) and has never been used by the man on the street to describe football in Britain, and most definitely not in Scotland where if you went into a Glasgow pub and said - "Did anyone see the soccer game last night?" - you're likely to be punched in the face or worse. The OED lists words in common American usage as well as in Britain so it's no surprise that it lists the word 'soccer' as a noun. The Cassells dictionary is a British dictionary and lists 'soccer' as a colloquialism.

Because Google is a US based organization they use the word 'soccer' for football. In order to get your page on football listed on Google in the right place you have to feature the word 'soccer'. Thus the word is likely to appear dramatically more than you would normally expect. This solves something which I found to be a bit of a mystery before, in that I now understand why the English language hit count for 'soccer' exceeded the hit count for football. This fact only struck me as I was carrying out an investigation of the top 100 sites listed on Google under the word "football". As I already outlined above, 5 out of the top 10 websites listed by Google are about the game you wish to call 'soccer'. Of the rest 3 are US football, 1 is Aussie rules and 1 is Canadian football. Further investigation of the next 90 websites shows that another 42 feature 'Association football' for a total of 47 out of 100 websites devoted to "the beautiful game" (I'd rather is was called that than 'soccer'). The 97th page on that list was the Irish Rugby Football Union's official website. A quick look at this page and a search of the site shows that the only reference to the word "football" outside the name of the body is regarding a request from the Football Association of Ireland (the governing body of Association football in Ireland) to use Landsdowne Road for their bid to host the 2008 European Football Championships.

"illegitimis non carborundum" Mintguy

Not wanting to get too involved and evangelistic, but I do agree with the above posting. "Soccer" is a complete non-word and even the OED seems to think it's a bit of a mystery. Football is football and it is the game you play with your feet. In the UK we have Rugby, and that is quite often referred to as Rugby Football, but on its own, football is not used in the context of rugby. In Brazil it is futebol and in Spain it is futbol, (or balompie, which is just a spanish version of ... football).

Very tricky, really. I work with many people from the US who regularly talk about "football" and they actually mean American Football, which is a game sort of like rugby. I know this can degenerate into meaningless argument, unfortunately.

In summary, there is no way that American Football should have a claim on the word football. If we have to use a different phrase because the majority of queries will expect football to be American Football (unlikely) then I suppose the soccer one will do, but it is pretty awful. I would place my vote for football to mean football and have a synonym leading to it from soccer. I think football in the US is American Football. It's very biased, I suppose, but there is prior art to consider ... MrH

The problem, Mr H, is that not everyone in the english speaking world, means association football when you say 'football'. Most people in the world say 'America' when they mean the United States. But that wouldn't justify Wikipedia using America when referring to the US. Vast numbers equate the 'queen' with the British queen, 'monarchy' with the British monarchy, the church with the Roman Catholic Church, the 'president; with the US president. But Wikipedia can't because millions of others don't. Millions of potential readers and users of Wiki mean other sports when you write 'football'. Are you suggesting that Wiki say to those people - 'shag off and get your own word. Football means association football and nothing else' because that has been what Mintguy has been saying in effect for days. There is no problem using football in languages where there is only one meaning for it. But in english, football means a number of different games. As to Mintguy's snide dislike of the word 'soccer' and insistence that it was the invention of toffs, I suppose that is why it is regularly used by the tabloid press, the broadsheet press, BBC sport, the sports desks of many local newspapers, websites from numerous association football websites, etc. That is why a guy I know who used to work in soccer commentating was accredited on his card by a British TV station as a soccer commentator.

The reality is no one game 'owns' the name. Names like that on Wiki that have multiple meanings are not 'given' to one meaning alone. Some say soccer. A lot say football. A lot of others mean something else when they say football. That is the real world that Wikipedia has to deal with in naming pages. That's why I suggested the use of the name [football (soccer)], to create a terminology that uses both words so that everyone knows what the page is about, while acknowledging that many many many people do not mean association football when they use the word football. And that is why most people felt it was the best compromise. Except Mintguy, who won't accept was most people here as perfectly logical. The name football should be used for his history of the various football codes, which in itself sounds like it will a fasinating article. But when it comes to specific codes of football, we have got to remember Wikipedia isn't just used in the UK where according to Mintguy nobody ever says soccer (which sure as hell ain't my experience!). It is read by millions in the US where football means American football (and Assocation football is called soccer) by millions in Ireland where football means gaelic football or rugby football (and association football is regularly called soccer), or in Australia where football means for most people Australian rules, for some rugby, for some gaelic football (which is played there) and yes, association football. JTD 01:54 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

I raised the white flag on this issue some time ago JTD, there's no need to get snippy. Mintguy

Yep, I know we have to pick something and I would agree that a search for plain "football" should go to a disambiguation/history page (which I don't think anyone's arguing). Your suggestion of football (soccer) seems fair. Rather than an invention of toffs, I think the word soccer might've been coined by the marketeers trying to sell the game in the US. Still doesn't make me like the word, though (and I'd disagree on one of your latter points--I haven't ever heard anyone in the UK use it). MrH.

You might be right MrH: today I listened to the BBC World Service and in connection to Paul Gascoine and Bobby Robson they spoke solely about "football". D.D. 13:25 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Yet the tabloids constantly use the word soccer (eg, page 3 of the Sunday People on Feb 16:

England soccer star David James is battling to save his marriage after being caught playing away with his Friends United sweetheart, the People can reveal.

It may not be the main word used, but it is regularly used, which papers wouldn't do if it was not a regularly used and clearly understood term. JTD 21:05 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

I don't think anyone ever suggested that the word soccer was unknown. But it's rarely used in Britain and certainly not used by fans of the sport. Soccer star is tabloid alliteration. For what it's worth.. I bought the Guardian today, and I read the Sun and the Star in a pub and the word soccer didn't appear any of the three papers once. Mintguy

I've done some statistical calculations, in tabaloid newspapers the ratio between football to soccer is roughly 5:1. In UK newsgroups the ratio is about 54:1. --Imran 00:26 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)


For the amount of debate this page has provoked it might be nice if it was slightly more useful. I think it would be useful to have a short biography of each player, something along the lines of;

  • Bobby Charlton (Born January 1, 1940) - English striker. Played for England between 1958 and 1969. Won 106 caps, 17 as captain, scoring 49 goals. Currently holds the record for the number of goals scored for the English national side.

i.e. (born, died), nationality and position, dates of playing, no. caps, no. caps as captain if relevant, no. of goals (no. of clean sheets for goalkeepers?), one or two major facts.

(The above Bobby Charlton info isn't all correct..)

Also, should we break the list down into sub-categories, i.e. by country or by date of birth/first cap? Obviously my above suggestion could be changed a bit according to what was chosen.

What do people think?

Ams80 18:58 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

This list would be more useful if it also included: dates of birth (or death), country played for, and/or club/s played for. As it stands it's nothing but a long list of names without context. 129.78.228.114 05:42, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)


It has been very nearly 12 months since this page was moved from List of footballers and since then, whilst this page has received an awful lot of attention, the pages List of footballers (Canadian football), List of footballers (Australian Rules football) , List of footballers (Rugby Union), List of footballers (Rugby League), List of footballers (Gaelic football) and List of footballers have received virtually no attention whatsoever. The term "footballer" as opposed to "football player" is almost exclusively used in conjunction with the sport of Association Football (it certainly isn't used in American Football). Isn't it about time that this page was moved back to where I wanted to put it in the first place before all of the brouhaha erupted about the naming of football (soccer)? Mintguy (T) 15:55, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Agree with you Mintguy. Most of the world knows the word football as being of the association football type. United States and Australia does not represent the majority of the world. Soccer is in fact a slang term. And I also repeat that the list would be far better to include information about the players rather than being an endless stream of names. Iam 00:49, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)

Doesn't matter since football is ambiguous. Name titles follow common usage by English speakers, and the U.S. makes-up a very substantial part of that crowd. But the word "footballer" is not used in the U.S. for American football players. I can't speak for other football sports. --mav 08:50, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
And despite English not being their first-language there are more English speakers in China and India than the United States. Only 20% of English speakers live in the United States. In China and India, football refers to association football. Iam 04:16, Jan 23, 2004 (UTC)
Only 20%? You are talking about nearly 300 million people - most of whom are native speakers. And in the U.S. football = American Football. Since the usage of football greatly differs between different English language dialects, we cannot have association football at football any more than we could have American football at football. The word football by itself is ambiguous in our context since a very large part of our readers use the term to refer to a different sport. Thus no single sport can lay claim to the simple name football. If you don't like (soccer) as a disambiguator, then use term "association football." See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) and Wikipedia:Disambiguation. But that has little to do with the name of this page since footballer is not a term used in the U.S. (or anywhere I know of) to refer to American football players. --mav 07:49, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)
"Only 20%? You are talking about nearly 300 million people" - There were over 700 million people that speak English (based on 1980s figures). That figure would have substantially increased in line with the world population increase and the spread of English as an international language. The United States does not equal the world population of English speakers. With over 5.5 billion people in the world, English speakers would therefore be less than 10% of global population and most of that percentage would live *outside* the United States. There are according to the last statistics 281,421,906 people living in the United States, and a percentage of that speak Spanish as a first language, particularly in California. See also [2] which has a list of countries which speak English. Iam 00:11, Jan 24, 2004 (UTC)
Mav wasn't trying to prove that a majority of English speakers are in the States. He was saying that even it is only 20%, it is still 250-300m people - that is a very significant number, albeit if not a majority. Thus we cater to both groups and so football is a disambiguation page. Given List of footballers is less used maybe the content of List of footballers (soccer) should be there - I am inclined to say not to bother with that - currently the symmetric set-up between football and list of footballers seems ok. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:27, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)


So does that mean we can move it to footballers or not? I'm not going to do anything myself because the last time I caused themother of all arguments that only led to everyone getting upset. Mintguy (T) 11:19, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Suggestion for page move

I suggest moving this page to "List of football (soccer) players". Rationale is that "footballer" is unheard-of in the US, while "football player" is usual in both the US and elsewhere. Responses? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 02:05, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)


[edit] David Icke

I know David "the lizards are coming to get me!" Icke used to be a Goalie with Coventry City, but he had to retire at just 21 years of age due to a back injury. He then went on to become the crackpot conspiracy theorist he's well known for.

Yes, he's famous. Yes, he used to play football. BUT he isn't famous for playing football. So should he be removed from this list? (cos you can't have EVERYbody who played football on here) or should he stay (cos it's interesting to note he used to play soccer)

[edit] US women players?

Why has someone found it necessary to include every single player from the us women's team? I bet most football fans have never heard of any of them. They may be famous with a fringe group but don't belong in a list of greats like Maradona, Pele, Cruijff etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

Only some of the players from that team have been listed. The readers of sports magazine whose cover featured those players might disagree with you. Please refrain from inflamtory remarks on talk pages. Deebki 01:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of all footballers, renowned footballers, and footballers by position

You may be interested to find discussion on whether and how to keep this and similar lists at WikiProject Football. --Pkchan 03:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Longest Article in Wikipedia

The four longest pages on wikipedia are:

As almost everyting in the 'lists' is also in the template in the bottom, I propose eliminating the duplication by cutting the lists part. If its not in the template I will leave the list where it is. I also propose moving the template up to either the top or primary section of the page. Please discuss before reverting.--mitrebox (talk) 21:38, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I am conducting an analysis before I change anything.

Of all the groups the only thing not in the template (other than the other section) is 'Dual Irish international'

Therefore I am going to:

move Dual Irish to the 'other section'
move the template to the top of the article

--mitrebox (talk) 21:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

i think this page should be move to "lists of association footballers" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.118.242.192 (talk) 22:44, 9 June 2008 (UTC)