Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of football players with domestic, continental and world titles

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Arbitrarily0 (talk) 20:51, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of football players with domestic, continental and world titles[edit]

List of football players with domestic, continental and world titles (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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This list seems like a totally arbitrary list. I don't think I've ever seen a source take notice of a player collecting all these honours as a particularly notable feat in of itself, (although rather obviously, in articles about the individual players, these feats will of course be noted), and the article certainly doesn't present any evidence they do either.

It seems wholly biased towards the feat of winning the World Cup, being the most dificult honour here to attain, which will eliminate hundreds if not thousands of equally fine players who have in their careers never won the World Cup, but have won their domestic league, continental club and continental internationl championship.

The focus of the list could probably be changed to be 'List of other honours held by World Cup winners', and just list the other top honours held by World Cup winners, that would make it aleast a little less arbitrary, albeit still of questionable notability or use.

I hesitate to use the rather derogatory term 'fancruft', but it really does look like this list has been compiled just because it can be, and not because anyone else in the world does. But lists, just like anything else, need to have a notable topic.

Note that just before I Afd's this list, it was just called List of football players with top tier honours, but I renamed it for accuracy, having had no clue what it eve was when I stumbled on it today. MickMacNee (talk) 12:50, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ChaChaFut wrote: "Please do not delete. If anything, rename. Very nice list which took a long time to compose. Thanks."Ben MacDui 17:39, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment It took me awhile to get the list and to understand the complaint, but it appears to be that to get on here, one has to have played for a national team that has won the World Cup and an international tournament (such as European Championship), as well as having played for a club that has won a league championship and a club tournament (such as the UEFA Cup). Forty (40) sources, definitely more than a jock article is given. It appears to be original synthesis, but in the world of statistics, surely someone tracks stuff like this. Until that's located, I can't say keep just yet. Mandsford 17:03, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 17:34, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The list is well sourced and informative.

" It seems wholly biased towards the feat of winning the World Cup" . Not at all - the Main List is composed entirely of players who have won all four competitions. The "World Cup finalists who nearly qualify section does largely restrict itself to those who have played in a final, precisely for the reasons you suggest. It's not clear to me why you think this is a reason to delete the page. If anything it is a reason to delete or modify this section - see the talk page for discussion.
" The focus of the list could probably be changed to be 'List of other honours held by World Cup winners', and just list the other top honours held by World Cup winners, that would make it aleast a little less arbitrary, albeit still of questionable notability or use." is simply an Aunt Sally. It is not such a list.
I note that List of brain tumor patients amongst numerous others similarly "really does look like this list has been compiled just because it can be", yet this list (for example) is featured. As for "fancruft" - well I am not very active on football-related material on Wikipedia, but as with much else I presume people write articles about what interests them. You are quite right that the topic is generally covered in material relating to individual footballers, but there are numerous lists of that kind: List of players who have won multiple FIFA World Cups, List of FIFA World Cup Finals broadcasters, List of football (soccer) club nicknames in the Americas, List of association football families of note etc. etc. Of course, you could argue that these are all just as unworthy, but there isn't much doubt that in this case the achievement is notable. I am not aware of any policy that says the list as such needs to be notable.
Comment re the note that by MickMacNee that you changed the list's name immediately prior to AfD. I don't have strong views on this subject, but perhaps you didn't read the talk page discussion where a variety of options were discussed but no clear consensus emerged? Ben MacDui 17:46, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • This list being informative is not particularly relevant - see WP:INTERESTING. It being well sourced is also not particulalry relevant, especially when as said, none appear to address the actual topic of the list. Where lists are not simply for navigation or organisation, then they must demonstrate that their overall topic is notable - this is both a common Afd outcome for lists, and is represented in the principles that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, and the fact that the potential number of topics that can be created for listification is infinite. Why not for example have a similar list that includes domestic cup competitions, or ignores world cups? Who in the real world decided this combo was notable, rather than just listable? This list does not say at all why this combination is important, nor does it have any use as a navigation tool. This is all described in the relevant guidelines for lists, and is just common sense too. The World Cup bias angle is important because it is, wrongly imho, suggesting that being a Word Cup winner, a relatively hard and uncommon honour, is a definining aspect in whether the rest of these honours are listable as notable achievements as well. This is what makes it arbitrary imho, and the lack of sources seems to back this up. You can disregard the Aunt Sally if you want, it is not what the nomination relies on, it was just an after-thought. And yes, I saw the title discussion, and it seemed to support the idea it needed clarification. The rest of the post seems to be just OTHERSTUFF arguments - they are not terribly weighty in this instance, if even relevant at all. I am not about to investigate the reasons or rationales behind all those lists existing just to be able to nominate this one for deletion. MickMacNee (talk) 18:59, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete violates WP:OR, WP:LISTCRUFT, WP:NOTSTATS...need I go on? GiantSnowman 00:29, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment As you can easily see, I have created a number of other lists, although this is the only football-related article I have ever had any serious involvement in. The issue here is not one of black vs white as your comments suggest. The idea that this is "listcruft" is an opinion and one anyone is entitled to hold. However, I can't see anything on the list of 11 of defining characteristics that apply other than perhaps "Determining membership of the list involves original research or synthesis of ideas.", which you refer to separately in any case. WP:SYNTH is quite explicit. "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources". Which conclusion does the list violate? I don't think there is much doubt that these four titles - 2 at club and 2 at international level are the most prestigious a player can achieve - perhaps the article needs to stress that more, (to me it seemed obvious and hardly worth banging on about) - otherwise they would not be proudly displayed as achievements on every article page relating to the players concerned. (See Association football#International competitions and UEFA & CONMEBOL). NOTSTATS says "Long and sprawling lists of statistics may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of our articles. In addition, articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader." Don't see the problem there. Ben MacDui 09:01, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That is the crux - the original research and brand new conclusion that this list asserts is that achieving this particular combo is notable in of itself, in the same way as for example, being a Treble winner is noted as a feat in of itself. I'd be more than happy to withdraw the nom if you can find external evidence that it is considered notable externally, but as it is, it seems to exist because you personally think it is important - this very much makes it arbitrary in my opinion. I for example would actually dispute your idea that just these four are the pinnacle honours. What about for example domestic cups? Winning the FA Cup was for decades considered more important than winning the English league title, and arguably still is to some. And what about the FIFA Club World Cup? Surely that is the true pinnacle of club competition - to be deemed the world champion of club football. And frankly, there is much about this list that is just pure luck or chance, given the way confederations and nations are organised and their relative weaknesses/strengths, rather than demonstrating the player is the best of the best on these terms. Anyway, that's probably my last word, I'm starting to repeat myself. MickMacNee (talk) 13:12, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think we both know that the FA Cup issue is essentially a British phenomenon. It really is not hard to demonstrate that these are the premier competitions that clubs and nations compete for and I will be happy to provide a reference or two asap. Incidentally, if you are arguing above that the list should become an article along the lines of "Most successful footballers" that incorporated this and other definitions such as "More than 100 international caps", "more than (say) 7 domestic league titles" etc. then I think that's worth considering, provided some suitable limitations could be put on it. As you must surely realise, I am not a supporter of a national team that has a hope of having any of its players appear here, except perhaps as novelty achievement. Ben MacDui 18:28, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - the topic of this list seems to be the arbitrary selection of three criteria that has not been noted outside of Wikipedia. As such, this list represents a synthesis of information. -- Whpq (talk) 17:08, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You folks are hard to please but I'll try. I am not blessed with a library of football compendiums, but from today's news try the print version of The Guardian which lists the small number of occasions on which a national team has held a World Cup & Confederation Cup trophy at the same time and notes that "Iniesta and Xavi have won the World Cup, European Championship, Champions League, La Liga and the Copa del Rey" This coverage suggests that the concept is hardly original. I'll add a note in the lead asap. Ben MacDui 18:28, 13 July 2010 (UTC) PS I am not going to bore you all with a list of lists but there are no few football lists that assume that notability of achievement is a worthy end in itself and proceed from there.[reply]
This title - Lists of Football (Soccer) Players (2010) LLC Books - clearly refers to a very similar list - don't know yet if it is available in the UK. See amazon.ca. Ben MacDui 14:18, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
First off, I can't see where that product description "clearly" has this particular list, and secondly, very bizarrly, the random nature of those chapters reminds me of many lists I've seen on Wikipedia, I cannot for the life of me think why someone would create a book of just those lists, belgium? iran? etc - so either the author is just an odd follower of football, and has been totally plagiarised by this site, or he has ripped off Wikipedia (not illegal as long as attribution is given). What's more bizarre is that that the http://booksllc.net/?id=10953924 link given as 'more' redirects to a Wikipedia list - List of J. League players. Bizarre all round, but not really supporting notability here that I can see. MickMacNee (talk) 18:14, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That book looks similar to the stuff put out by Icon Group International which just autoscrapes stuff from a variety of online sources including Wikipedia and the generates a "book". I've been seeing a lot of hits to books published by "Books LLC" which appear to have nonsensical or odd titles when doing google searches. -- Whpq (talk) 18:23, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) It is available in the UK and I have ordered it. I will look for further information but I'd appreciate it if any closing admin could hold off until it arrives - should be Monday at the latest. There is another option - which is that the author of the book is also a Wikipedian - it's not me at any rate. I agree it's an odd situation, but until it arrives it is hard to know what it proves. If the list were of a very similar nature I believe it would show a significant degree of notability. If it were this list more or less verbatim, the logic is obviously absurdly circumlocutory, but if someone takes what exists on Wikipedia, wraps it up and sells it as a product - does that show notability? Arguably, but this is a conundrum that may not have been been encountered before. Ben MacDui 18:31, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Alert! - Ben. I don't know if you can cancel your order at this point. I'm now positive it is a wikipedia scrape. The product decription at [1] includes "More: http://booksllc.net/?id=10953924" at the end. I clicked on the link and was redirected to List of J. League players. As for this being selected for publication thus making it notable, I'd say no. We look to independent reliable sources to establish notability because these soruces exercise editorial oversight into the selection of their topics. There is no evidence that any sort of editorial oversight is involved in this automatic web scraping. -- Whpq (talk) 18:48, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ouch. I'd never heard of autoscraping, but it looks like a right con, and it looks like that book might only contain the J-League list, based on the cover art, and this 'product description' is not a list of chapters, but a listing of what else you can get for free in their 'book club' (a.k.a. wikipeida). On reflection, I would say the rather bland looking cover art does look a bit odd, and auto-generated. MickMacNee (talk) 19:52, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As an example of the sort of stuff that autoscraping produces, the Icon Group (not Books LLC) can provide you with The 2009-2014 World Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders for $795. But if you are looking specifically at the Chinese market, perhaps The 2009-2014 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in Greater China would be a better deal at a measly $495. -- Whpq (talk) 20:28, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You are probably right, but fortunately the investment in this case is more modest. I await the arrival of Postman Pat with interest. I have also been looking into other language sites. The absence of anyone on the existing list from an anglophone country is a disadvantage reference-wise. I've found a few that link to English language versions and will add them where appropriate. Ben MacDui 17:11, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom; it's an arbitrary synthesis of stats. Karpouzi (talk) 14:57, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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