Talk:List of footballers (soccer) (archive 2)

While I have some sympathy for the arguments here on both sides, isn't List of footballers (Association football) a perfect example of when "natural disambiguation" is called for? Martin

No. Because if you do a google search for Association football you only come up with 18,800 hits it is not in common usage. Mintguy

Also 'footballers' is unambiguous because you don't use the term 'footballers' for players of American football, the major dissenter on the use of the word 'football'.

You misinterpret me - I mean that the title List of footballers (Association football) uses "bracketed disambiguation" in an awkward manner, when, AFAICT, wikipedia prefers so-called "natural disambiguation" like Java programming language or Titan rocket. Still, it could be worse - nobody's tried list of sports people (Association football) yet... ;-)

I've no idea whether we should disambiguate or not, but if we decide to disambiguate then we should do it properly, right? Martin

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Just to confirm, Mintguy is not alone in his opinion that what is currently at football should not be moved to soccer. Many non-North Americans would, I think, jump to the conclusion that the 'pedia is too US-centric if that were the case - they would never dream of saying the "right" name for football is soccer unless they were bending over backwards to be accommodating to an American guest! Pcb21

I agree. Association football is what most of the world calls "football". "Soccer" is a slang term, and not its proper name, and should not be used as an article title. However, we've got to be aware that for hundreds of millions of English-speaking people "football" means some other local variant (although they are usually also aware of the usage for Association football). Disambiguation is the only answer. I propose the following:

1. We should use the full name everywhere for Association Football, except where obvious from context.
2. The same for other forms of football.
3. Where the term 'football' is used without regional context, it should be redirected to the relevant 'association football' page, and that page should have a disambiguation header pointing to the local variant articles

The Anome 10:59 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

But football is not gerally known as associated football in modern times as a google hunt confirms Mintguy

Google really likes soccer - as already proven it is more popular than football on English language pages. --mav

It also proves that the game of football is more popular than American football..... Google likes Aluminum over Aluminium. That just proves that there are more US pages than than anything else. Mintguy 11:21 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

It still is too ambiguous for us to use. A great many Americans and other people who also use the word "football" will be looking for their sport called football at football. Thus an obvious disambiguation page with a list of links to all the sports called "football" is needed in order to quickly direct them to where they need to go.

Football is a horrid mess with the first several paras trying to do an encyclopedic discussion on the different things called football - which is real dumb since these sports have little to do with each other and are really separate subjects (and Wikipedia is not a dictionary so we don't have articles on words but subjects). It has also been proved by JTD that the word "soccer" is very often used when that sport needs to be disambiguated from other sports called "football". We also have a very clear naming convention to deal with these cases at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision). --mav

I'm in the middle of writing up football offline, so please don't change anything there. It will describe the common history of the modern games. Mintguy

IMO whatever you write should be broken-up and placed on their respective pages. Having an article about "things that people call football" would not be very useful. A disambiguation list with the content under specific titles is really the only thing football should be. --mav

But all the games share a common history. Don't you know that?! Mintguy

Yeah I remember that - but I thought you were going to summarize each one of the sports at football (which would be an expansion of the first four paragraphs). Hm. Come to think of it what you propose may be interesting - if done right. It would also reduce redundancy since each particular sport would simply link to football instead of repeating similar information. ---mav

When you say "except where obvious from context" - does that mean that in an article on the United Kingdom one would link [[Association football|football]] and in an article on the United States one would link [[American football|football]] ? Martin

That looks like a reasonable way to do it for me. The same thing already is done with US cities where the state and comma are usually hidden from display via a pipe. --mav

It is disingenuous to claim that "most of the world plays (association) football, therefor the main football page should be about soccer". Soccer is the most popular style of football, but mainly in non-English speaking areas. Most of the world's English speakers probably use the word "football" to mean gridiron. (Assuming, of course, that we regard the US dialect as a form of English.) The two forms of rugby have huge followings as well. Anyway, there is only one real sort of football, and that's Australian Rules. Come to that, there is only one football club, Collingwood, and all the others are pale imitations. Errr ... did somebody say "NPOV"?

Perhaps it would be better to put the main pages for the individual codes under whatever the followers of those codes desire - Association football (or Soccer - I have no opinion on this, except insofar as "soccer" is far better known), Rugby Union, Australian Rules football, Gaelic football and so on. Having done that, then we can make redirects in the form: "Football (soccer)" or "Football (American)" so that to link to (e.g.) American football, you need only type "football (American)|" to get a link that looks like football but goes to the correct page - which might be American football.

Tannin 11:29 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

I've read almost everything above (including the archive) and I wanted to throw in my two (Euro)cents:

• I also think that "football" only means one thing to most people. I've traveled in many countries in different continents and my experience confirms that.
• FIFA, UEFA, and a plethora of other organizations use the word "footbal" to mean only one thing.
• As a Belgian I can say that (contrary to what JTD says) Belgians do not speak of soccer when they mean football (Dutch: voetbal, French: football).

On the other hand:

• I realize there might be a problem with people not familiar with the use of "football" in the sense most of the world uses it. If it should be disambiguated, please keep it as simple as possible, with a clear reference to the term "football". And please, please, please do not use that horrible term "soccer".

D.D. 11:37 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

This is the whole point you don't seem to have grasped Mav. That many, many many people find the use of the word 'soccer' for football objectionable. Mintguy

I have no idea why they would find it objectionable, but if large groups of people do find it to be objectionable then that breaks our common use naming convention. But this sport still needs to be disambiguated. The only question in my mind now is what we should use as a disambiguated title for this sport. --mav

As I suggested ages ago. [football (disambiguation)]] and football. what is wrong with that? Mintguy

What? That solves nothing. --mav

It ignores common usage. Tannin

Where is the problem anyway?, American footbal is at American football, Gaelic football is at Gaelic football, Australian rules football is at Australian rules football. and the game that everybody else on the planet (including New Zealanders, and South Africans) know as football is at football. What's wrong with that?

No. American football is football. See that is the problem - all these sports share the same name. The others are at disambiguated titles and soccer should also be at a disambiguated title. I thought you were working on a common history of all these sports and have that live at football? That I can agree with so long as all the specific information about soccer is on its own separate page. --mav

American football is known throughtout the world as American football and gridiron football in Australia - That's a problem for you. But football is known throughout the world as football.

Please, let's nail this "everyone else on the planet" nonsense. Even a monolinguist like me who must depend on Google for translations knows that "everyone else on the planet" plays Fußball or balompié or le football or gioco del calcio or even sorry, this text cannot be translated. (That's what Google told me the Portugese say!) Insisting that "the whole world" says "football" is just plain foolish. Tannin

It's far from nonsense. Tannin please look at the German, Spanish, and Italian football federation pages, written in English and see what they call the game. They do not call it soccer. The International football FIFA governing body call it football and it is part of their name. The olympic movement call it football. Internationally the game is known as football and not soccer. Mintguy

And 200+ million Americans also call their sport "football". Therefore we need to disambiguate. --mav

Of course the soccer/association team web pages call it "football"! Everybody calls the game they play "football". I played football as a kid. I played on the half-back flank, took marks, kicked drop-punts and tried to rove my ruckman's tap-outs from the ball-ups. Mav probably played football at school too, only he would have played at quarter-back, stood behind the line of scrimmage, and thrown bombs and bullets. If I'd been born a few hundred miles further north ot 2000 miles further east I would have played football, only been a Number Eight or the full back, battered myself silly in the ruck and maul, taken my place in the line-out. And, if I'd been born in a working-class part of England, then I'd have played football at centre-forward or maybe been a goalie. Everybody plays football. Everybody calls the game they play "football". And I havent't even mentioned rugby league or Gaelic football yet. Insisting that the game played by a minority of English-speakers is the one and only "football" is arrogant and silly. Tannin 12:36 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

The British, Indians, Scandanavians, New Zealanders, South Africans, half of Ireland call it 'football' The French call it football'. The Portuguese and 200 million Brazilians call it 'futebol', Germans 'Fußball' , Dutch 'voetbal', Spanish fútbol (their federation is 'Real Federación Española de Fútbol') balompiéis used much less frequently. These are all variants on football and no connection with the word soccer. The Italian name comes from an old game played in Florence, that was lost in antiquity till revived by Mussolini, is has no connection with the word 'soccer', and they used to call it football. This is the game that the majority of the world in whatever language know as football (however you spell it), and the majority of English speakers (including non-native speakers) know at football. Mintguy

Everbody calls their sport football and this is the English Wikipedia so usage outside of English isn't relevant. The word isn't owned by any one sport. The consensus is for us to disambiguate soccer. You've already said that "soccer" is offensive so we are just going to use something else. --mav

Nobody is arguing that S/A football fans don't call it "football". No-one is arguing that it has to be called "soccer" or "association football" or "football (soccer)" or anything else. Call it anything you like except "football" - football is already taken. The point you are ignoring is that (a) there are several other meanings to the word "football" (which in itself is sufficient to compel disambiguation), and (b) that these people make up the majority of English-speakers. 250 million in the USA, 30 million in Canada. 20 million in Australia - in those three countries alone we have a clear majority. Tannin

I am working on the common history, and in that common history an important historical point is the split of Rugby football (not because of carrying the ball, but because of hacking (kicking other players in the shins)) from which most (haven't fully researched Gaelic football) of the other sports are derived. Then it will describe the game the game that is now known as football throughout the world. Mintguy

Look when I've finished writing it 'football' will describe the Chinese, Greek and Roman ancestry of the game, the Shrovetide games played throughout Europe, the numerous attempts to ban it,the first use of the word football (it was known as 'playing at the game of ball', incidentally football was originally inferring that it was played on foot and not on horseback, hence the fact that the games involved a lot of carrying of the ball and not much kicking) the first formation of a set of rules (in Italy where the word 'calcio' comes from), its acceptance by the gentry, its adoption by the English public school, the numerous versions of the game where each institution had their own rules, the later attempts to find a unified set of rules (Cambridge rules 1848), the split of the Eton game and the Sheffield game, the mythical William Web Ellis, the final split of the hacking game (Rugby), the transportation of these games to Canada/America and Australia. And when I've researched it the history of Gaelic football too. Mintguy

That's great. I'll read it with interest. It might be wise to be aware, though, that others will read (and edit) it as though it was a history of ecumenical Christianity written by the Pope. :) Tannin

I'm fully aware of that. BTW the Encylopaedia Britannica (An American publication) list the game under football [1] (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=114951&tocid=0&query=football&ct=) and not soccer. Mintguy

In my own, non-NPOV world, football is football because it's played using ones feet. Whilst American football is a much younger sport, spawned miles away from where I live and NOT played using ones feet. Obviously we need a solution here. Calling it soccer is out of the question. We need to disambiguate one way or another. Personally, I would settle for football (american) and football (association football). But that's just my opinion. WojPob

The football article is a mess. So, let's look at at the options:

• Make football a disambiguation page and move the content to soccer.
  • This is unacceptable. Soccer is only used in the US and Canada (and Australia?). Every other country in the world uses the term "football" for this game. As an international encyclopedia, we have to avoid such an obvious American bias.
• Make football a disambiuation page and move the content to association football.
  • Better than the first option, but still problematic, as the term "association soccer (oops, football)", while technically correct, is rarely used.
• Leave the game at football and add a disambiguation block and create a page called football (disambiguation) that lists the other sports.
  • I favour this option. The fact is, the majority of English speakers (native and otherwise) in the world call this particular game "football", unqualified. Others are either given qualifiers or other names. Not anymore; see below.

-- Stephen Gilbert 15:32 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

I second that. The third option looks the best by far. Just as the name football isn't "owned" by any particular form of the game, native English speakers don't "own" English either. English is spoken as a second, third, ... language by far more people than there are native English speakers. It is fine to say that this is the English Wikipedia, if it doesn't mean that non-native speakers of the language can't have their say. D.D. 16:25 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)