Talk:Unofficial Football World Championships

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Contents

[edit] Nassazi and Virtual World Championship

I'm happy enough for NB to have been moved to being a section rather than a criticism, but I wonder whether, for the sake of consistency, the same should be done with the VWC: I have a notion that one day, when I have more time, I'll make an article for each of them. Kevin McE 11:03, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Articles for NB and VWC would be fine, though they should still be mentioned on UFWC page as they are close relatives. VWC can stay in the criticisms, as it is an example of something similar to UFWC that lacks the attribute being criticised. By contrast, all the criticisms of UFWC apply equally to NB (I don't see that UFWC taking extra time and penalties into account is something to criticise it for). Jess Cully 00:57, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
I see that you have had a change of mind re VWC. I hope you don't mind if I revert to my original intro to it; phrases like "some people don't like" are not very encyclopedic. Kevin McE 12:24, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] List of Title Changes

Would such a list be unwieldly or could it work? Please tell me if it could.Toonmon2005 02:13, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

  • You can find a full list of title matches on the UFWC promoters' site, which is linked at the bottom of the article. [1] Jess Cully 02:35, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
  • I know that. I meant a list of title-holders during the history of the Unofficial Championship because the full list of title matches could bore somebody looking for a list of champions.Toonmon2005 04:00, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Consider it done:List of winners of Unofficial Football World Championships Kevin McE 10:51, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ireland

The all Ireland team that took the title in 1903 is now the Northern Ireland national football team - see that page for details. Does anyone know when the team now called Republic of Ireland first took the title? Timrollpickering 09:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

30/03/77, beating France 1-0 in Dublin. They held the title for 2 months, with a home draw against Finland before losing it to Bulgaria in Sofia. Their only other reign was Mar-May 2004, gaining it from Czech republic and surviving 2 challenges before losing it to Nigeria. Kevin McE 16:51, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Website

ufwc.co.uk is no more. I seem to recall Uruguay being on the verge of entering the top 10, but I'm not sure. Does anyone have the full rankings saved anywhere?  sʟυмɢυм • т • c  19:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The data from the previous matches is on the two other sites linked from the article page, but their tables are calculated on different formulae: RSSSF has a table of how many days the title has been held for, and WPFC (not updated since November last year) has a rather complicated set of weighted average points in championship matches. The number of championship match victories (which is what UFWC's table recorded) could be reconstructed fairly easily from that info. But does anyone know why UFWC.co.uk dissappeared so suddenly? Kevin McE 23:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Glad to report that www.ufwc.co.uk is back Kevin McE 10:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Awesome.  sʟυмɢυм • т • c  21:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rankings

There is no one method of ranking the holders of this title: RSSSF uses number of days as title holders, WPFC uses a variant on 3 points for a win, one for a draw, UFWC uses victories in title matches. I think that if the infobox on this article shows one of those, then it is almost tantamount to promoting one source over another, and therefore promotional. All respect to those who have done so much work at UFWC, but I do not think that a Wiki article should present it as superior.

I would propose, therefore, a table similar to the one I have made at List of winners of Unofficial Football World Championships which could list all the credible ranking criteria, possibly with the position a country wouldhold in brackets in each column, thus indicating that Scotland would be (1) for No of days, wins, and matches as champion, but (2) for number of spells as champion, and about (40) for time since title last held. The corrolary to this acknowledgement of multiple criteria would be removal of the rankings field in the infobox. Thoughts? Kevin McE 11:08, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Some elements under "Rules" would also need changing. The rankings are now included in the table in the list of winners article, although I acknowledge that it is not appropriate to that title.Kevin McE 02:52, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

No comment has been passed on my suggestion in more than a week, and so I have been bold and made the changes I proposed above. Kevin McE 21:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AfD prod

I am dissappointed that someone took it upon themselves to post a prod without discussion of the issues here first. The opening statements in the article draw on a near 40 year history of discussion, and the fact that this article cites, and draws upon data from, 3 independent websites, which have been referenced in Four Four Two and the Guardian, among others, proves that it is not original research. Kevin McE 21:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I listed the Rugby one for deletion - and it was deleted - which I think was the logic behind prodding this; but its fairly obvious that this has had a number of published sources, books, articles etc. discussing it outside of Wikipedia. --Robdurbar 08:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sortable table

I came across the very nifty sortable table function while looking at other Wiki pages, and thought it would be good here, but although the function works accurately for the first 4 headings, it will not do so for the final three. Any ideas as to why? Kevin McE 09:55, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm in favour of the sortable table, the rankings table on this page just seems to fit perfectly. I don't know why it wouldn't work, maybe the dates of when the country last won the title needed to be wiki-linked. I would remove all the ranks by each criteria, just leaving each country's record. Ross1 10:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Done it now: the problem was two columns of data under one heading, but it was able to overcome that for "Days as champion": I know not why. I can only get dates to sort by using the rather ugly YYYY-MM-DD format. I had to take out all the ranking scores, which was a nuisance as they has taken me ages to put in, but if sortable tables had existed/I had discovered them at the time, I would have used them when I made the table. Kevin McE 12:45, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Good work. --Guinnog 12:46, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I see that somebody has wikilinked all the dates. I acknowledge (and had already done so: see above) that the YYYY-MM--DD format is ugly, but the wikified alternative means that no meaningful sorting by dates can be done: I consider that a lessening of the utility of the article.
So: sortability, or ability to choose how it appears: which is preferable? Kevin McE 19:30, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Unless, of course, one can use <span style="display:none">YYYY-MM-DD</span> [[DD Month]] [[YYYY]] to get around the impasse, and have both. Kevin McE 21:26, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox

I just integrated the 'next match' infobox into the top infobox. If anyone thinks the old format was better, I'm open to their opinion.  Sʟυмgυм • т • c  20:51, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticisms and right to reply

The criticisms in the section thus named are unsourced, and if they are no more than queries/observations thrown up by editors here, they are WP:OR. Addition of the rebuttal of these is to make the article page itself a place of debate, which does not seem to be appropriate for an encyclopaedic piece. I would propose that we take the sort of action proposed for trivia sections: that which can be verified and cited should be placed in more appropriate sections: that which cannot should be deleted as OR. Thoughts? Kevin McE 09:22, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd be fine with deleting the whole Criticisms section as it really is no more than a discussion about the merits or flaws of the UFWC. Someone else posted the criticisms, I posted the replies in response to a general request by the UFWC webmaster. The lack of official status is already mentioned at the top of the article; the reference to FIFA's response to it could be inserted elsewhere; the rest is just opinion. The section wouldn't be missed. Jess Cully 22:04, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Editing articles to include non-verifiable information requested by the subject of the article would seem to be to be a conflict of interest. --Pak21 07:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
The criticisms are no more verifiable than the rebuttals. If either is removed, the whole section should go. Jess Cully 22:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unlisted match

Greece, while UFWC holders, played a friendly against Czech Republic on 5th Feb 2008 but this match was not listed at FIFA.com, and therefore is not regarded as a title match. Similar matches of disputed status have occued in the past (e.g. Colombia vs South Korea), but since 1980, FIFA have logged all "A" international matches, and inclusion in their listing is the criterion for this title's deciding matches. In the event, Greece won the match, and so any difference would only have been in statistics of number of matches for Greece, and not for tenure of the honour. Kevin McE (talk) 00:48, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I haven't understand why that match against Czech Republic is not listed while that one against Finland is. I'm talking about FIFA not wikipedia. - Sthenel (talk) 07:21, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Greece's next title defence will be against Portugal in March. I advice you to look at FIFA's website. It looks like there ain't problem in counting on the fixtures lists present in it. 82.240.207.81 (talk) 15:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Is the match of Greece against Portugal listed in the official website? - Sthenel (talk) 21:35, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tagged

An editor tagged this article as lacking notability and references in January. I replied on his/her talk page thus "I am surprised at the tags that you have posted on the UFWC article. It has a section that refers to some of the media references, the external links list all matches in which the title has been at stake. If anyone wishes to verify the information on the pages, the resources are there to do it." on 29 January 2008. The tagger, who had made no explanation of his objections at the time, made no response here, on my talk page, or on his/her own, within a week, so I removed the tags, explaining my actions in an editnote. Today, again without explanation, he/she has replaced the tags. I cite the above comments that I made to FN in January as the justification in removing them, and ask that he/she raise what are thought to bethe shortcomings of the article here before placing tags again. Kevin McE (talk) 16:05, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Why not just put references in and demonstrate notability? A single dead link does not constitute references Fasach Nua (talk) 16:16, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
Done. It might have been more constructive if you had politely pointed out that the link was dead first time around, or when an enquiry was made in January. Kevin McE (talk) 20:26, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sweden inconsistancies

It says sweden has been champion 5 times, had 26 matches and won 25 of them. that is impossible, because as 5 times champions they are also 5 times losers, so have lost at least 5 matches as champion. have i missed something? can someone clarify this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.159.2.32 (talk) 04:13, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem.
You are correct in saying that they are 5 times losers, but your misunderstanding is in saying that they won 25 of the 26 games that they played as champions: this is not what the table headings say. Of their 26 games as champions they won 20, drew 1, and lost (as you say) 5. They also won 5 championship matches, which their opponents started as championship holders, in order to start those 5 reigns, giving a total of 25 wins in championship matches. So they have in fact played in at least 31 championship matches, probably more (as unsuccessful challengers).
The table does not include unsuccessful challengers, as it would become unwieldy, and countries that have never held the title would have a null score in every column, but because of that, the unsuccessful challenges by those who are in the table are also unrecorded (in this table: they could be traced at other sites).
If you are comfortable with boxing parlance, the 26 would be title defences (successful or not), and the 25 would be title fights won Kevin McE (talk) 10:16, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] UFWC at the WC

You will see that I have a draft table posted, partly prompted by editors wanting to record the absence of the title from the forthcoming Euro 2008. Is the new addition appropriate/welcome/accurate/adequately formatted? I know that I have taken a short cut in not linking country names to nft articles: I can do that if the table is deemed keep-worthy.

Is it worth making something similar for the European or S American championships? I see strong arguments against doing so (it is a world, not a continental title; there will be far more non-appearances of the title; some might say we should list all Asian/CONCACAF/African/Oceania championships as well to avoid bias) but with Euro 2008 about to start (without the title), some readers might look for it, so I've had a go.

Thoughts? Kevin McE (talk) 09:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)