Template talk:Infobox Football club

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Contents 1 Syntax 2 Design 3 Goalie outfit 4 Position 5 European cups 6 Optional entries / Template in German 7 Link to BBC football club information 8 Manager or Head Coach 9 Club addresses 10 Captain 11 Question 12 Website addresses? 13 Position of box 14 Record Attendance Section 15 Shirt sponser

[edit] Syntax

{{Infobox Football club
  | clubname   = Arsenal
  | image      = <!-- an image is optional -->
  | fullname   = Arsenal Football Club
  | nickname   = The Gunners
  | shortname  = 
  | founded    = 1886 as ''Dial Square''
  | ground     = [[Emirates Stadium]]<br/>[[Holloway, London|Holloway]], [[London]]
  | capacity   = 60,432
  | chairman   = {{flagicon|England}} [[Peter Hill-Wood]]
  | mgrtitle   = Head Coach
  | manager    = {{flagicon|France}} [[Arsène Wenger]]
  | league     = [[FA Premier League]]
  | season     = [[FA Premier League 2005-06|2005–06]]
  | position   = Premier League, 4th
  | pattern_la1=|pattern_b1=|pattern_ra1=|leftarm1=FFFFFF|body1=DD0000|rightarm1=FFFFFF|shorts1=FFFFFF|socks1=FFFFFF|
  | pattern_la2=|pattern_b2=|pattern_ra2=|leftarm2=FFDE00|body2=FFDE00|rightarm2=FFDE00|shorts2=565656|socks2=565656|
}}

Arsenal
Full name	Arsenal Football Club
Nickname(s)	The Gunners
Founded	1886 as Dial Square
Ground	Emirates Stadium Holloway, London
Capacity	60,432
Chairman	Peter Hill-Wood
Head Coach	Arsène Wenger
League	FA Premier League
2005–06	Premier League, 4th
Home colours 　 Away colours

For details on the football kit template syntax used in this template see Template_talk:Football kit. ed g2s • talk 19:28, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Design

This infobox has a particularly boring and undistinguished (in every sense of the word) first line for the club title. Compare with, for example Bristol (city). ed g2s promptly reverted my lightweight change (to a grey background) without explanation. Is it his personal property? --Concrete Cowboy 10:24, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

The first line is a <caption> tag which places it outside the table. The table is skinned by the Wikipedia stylesheet, if you think that it is "boring and unidistinguished" then use a different skin. A decision was made with the UK city infoboxes to have a pink backgroud on the section headings (which are <th>s, not <caption>s). I can't see why forcing a coloured background in here helps anything. ed g2s • talk 11:16, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Is there a way to include styling with an argument? (in the example case cited, "clubname=Arsenal" - specifically, say, a black background with white font?) --Concrete Cowboy 13:12, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't quite understand, do you mean specifying font colour for each club? If so, I don't really see the point, we already have a team colours template. I don't see how making the text white on black would add anything to the article. ed g2s • talk 14:58, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

No, not in team colours - as you say, that's already in content.

I believe that the box title needs to be distinguished on some way. As it is, the club name just vaguely floats above the table, with minimal emphasising and no evident framing. As I said, compare that to the city/town infobox (eg Dublin) where it is clearly a title for the box. My white on black suggestion was because I (probably mistakenly) guessed that you challenged the grey backgound as disabling. Secondly, I was responding you your "forcing a coloured background in here" - I read an inference that an editor could 'force' it in the article. --Concrete Cowboy 15:44, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Goalie outfit

User 82.156.71.55 (talk • contribs) asked a question in Talk:Feyenoord Rotterdam, and I don't know the answer to his question. Perhaps someone in here could help me. The question was: "Can't the keepers kit ... appear in the infobox?" Thanks in advance. Aecis 22:20, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Its an interesting question but could be a hard one to include. For example last year Arsenal sold one keepers shirt, yet four different ones were worn during the season. Do we include the "for sale" keepers shirt, or try and list all the different colours worn each season? --Tancred 01:12, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

I'm kinda against. Specially because they change it all the time, and have more than one every season. It's already problematic that players have more than 2 outfits. I think the point is to give a solid idea about the colours of the club, not to give an extensive and detailed list of all the possible outfits a club might use in each season. Nevertheless, we could make a hidden others section at the bottom of the Infobox to add whatever you want including Goalkeeper's outfits. -Mariano 07:22, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Totally against. The kits in the infobox is, as Mariano says, meant to give an idea about the look of the outfit of the club, and the colours of the club. Not a complete listing of all kits used by the club, not tracksuits, not the managers clothes, not the clothes of the cheerleaders, and, IMO, not the keepers kit. Not any of my football interrested friends (including myself) really cares about what the goalie kit looks like. I don't even know how my favourite team's goalie kit looks like. And as said, the keepers kit changes very much during a season. -- Elisson • Talk 16:04, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Position

A recommendation - when using the position parameter, people should use the final position from the last full season played, not the team's current position. Otherwise, it will need to be updated every time the team changes position, and there is no 'as of' date to show how up-to-date it is. Qwghlm 09:07, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] European cups

I think it would be nice to add a line for European (or international) cups played by the team. For example, Liverpool would sport a "UEFA Champions League winner" tag.--Panairjdde 09:34, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

It would be a great idea. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 19:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Optional entries / Template in German

I transferred this template to the german wikipedia: de:Vorlage:Fußballklub_Infobox My questions: Is there a way to make entries optional? E. g. if there are no graphics for the outfit yet, the box for the jersey shouldn't appear at all. Also some want to have different information for different clubs, so optional rows would be great --Schandi 17:33, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at the If-Templates. --Nanouk 10:20, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't use if templates - use the hiddenStructure class instead (see next section) ChrisUK 22:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link to BBC football club information

How about adding some links info about club news, recent results and fixtures from the BBC website? I have created a template that easily allows this to be inserted:

{{BBC Football Info|BBClinkname=b/bristol_rovers}}

which renders as:

• Infobox Football club on BBC Sport: Club News - Recent results - Upcoming fixtures - Club stats

Note that you have to specify the first letter of the team name, followed by a / followed by the full name with _ instead of spaces in order to make the link work.

I suggest that this is used in the table between the info and the shirts (ccolspan 2 and centered). In order to make it optional, we should use the hiddenStructure class so that it can be introduced without wrecking all the info boxes who don't have the parameters added in yet. For example, typing in:

<span class="hiddenStructure{{{BBClinkname|}}}">{{BBC Football Info|BBClinkname=b/bristol_rovers}}</span>

which renders as:

• Infobox Football club on BBC Sport: Club News - Recent results - Upcoming fixtures - Club stats

i.e. it doesn't appear because the BBClinkname is not defined in this page.

Any comments anyone? If there's interest I'll knock up a prototype. ChrisUK 22:05, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather not add that row. The infobox isn't primarily for use on UK club articles (and that template is only useful for those clubs), and the infobox should not be filled with more than the absolutely most necessary info. And adding a lot of optional rows to be filled in is not a good idea. See for example this discussion. It is a good template for use on UK clubs, but IMHO it fits better in the external links section. -- Elisson • Talk 22:16, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Elisson, becides that fact it gives the template a decided UK bias considering that for the most part the link up would only give coverage to club in the BCC sphere of influance, the meta-templates police would bash it out anyway. If any external links sholud be added to the infobox, and i am not say that i would add this to the infobox anyway, it should be the official club website, and any other links should be placed in the external links section. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 04:11, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Manager or Head Coach

Manager mainly use in Premier League only, because the have rights to dicide which player buy and sell for example.

In other countries like Spain, they use head coach, because they are less invloved in management.

so i suggest change to this

|Head Coach||{{{manager}}}

and state the manager in (as Manager) behind their name

It's an interesting point, but there are simpler solutions. We could just add a {{{mgrtitle}}} or similar parameter and set the default to "Manager" in place of the hard–coded text. That would allow it to be customised when need be and not disrupt current instances of the infobox. (By the way, Matthew_hk, please sign your comments on talk pages with ~~~~ (four tildes). Veila 12:02, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Go for it! Julien Tuerlinckx 18:57, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Guys, could you go one step further and implement Manager and Head Coach with the help of class="hiddenStructure" (see Template:Airport infobox for example)? As an advantage, if {{{manager}}} is not set, then the Manager row will not appear in the page, but if it's needed both Manager and Head Coach rows can be presented. In Ukraine we have (1) Club president (aka Chairman), (2) Executive director (aka Manager), and (3) Head Coach, therefore for them we need 3 rows in the infobox. Uapatriot 20:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd be reluctant to endorse hiding the manager row, it's a rather important piece of information and my work on the football player infobox has taught me that people are lazy; if they can skip a field, they'll do so. A {{{mgrtitle}}} permits a lot of flexibility but requires the editor to actually do some leg–work and add information. veila# 23:23, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, the infobox should be a useful tool rather than an enforsement device against laziness.

Hmm, I just re–read what you wrote and I realise now what you're asking for, you want the "third way", being able to have both a coach and a manager. Now that the {{{mgrtitle}}} is in, what about mgrtitle = Coaching staff and then have a <br /> delimited list? veila# 23:35, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

It's possible, but in Ukraine Executive Director has nothing to do with coaching. This is the guy who is buying/selling players, etc; basically doing all kinds of management except coaching.

If we go this way (which seems to be not the best way) then for Ukraine it's more likely that it should be mgrtitle = Head Coach and chairmantitle = Executive staff with President and Executive Director.

Actually, it's my understanding that many European clubs (not only in Ukraine) have (1) Club owner or President, (2) Executive Director, (3) Head Coach. Of course, we can always try to fit these three categories into two, but the first best would be the other way around. Uapatriot 01:23, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Previously in the disscussion, it has been also asked to add a line for European (or international) cups played by the team. For example, Liverpool would sport a "UEFA Champions League winner" tag. It can be easily done with the help of class="hiddenStructure". If {{{uefacompetition}}} is set to something (ex. "UEFA Cup") then it will show up as a row in the infobox. If it's not set, then the row is not there. Uapatriot 01:37, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The row is still there, it's just not rendered by CSS compliant visual browsers. class="hiddenStructure" is a hack, there needs to be a good reason to use it. You can change {{{mgrtitle}}} to equal Ticket–tout inspection agents of Monaco wearing spandex and list thirty–nine people then follow it up with Subsequent detailers of sporting finery with a list of another sixteen in there now, if that's really what's needed. How much more flexibility do you want? See User:Veila/construction_in_progress for an example (link will likely not work after a few days, get in quick!) veila# 03:17, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Good example. It works with text info, but it doesn't work out-of-the-box with text+image. Check, for example, FC Shakhtar Donetsk.

Still, class="hiddenStructure" may be a next step. It would not hurt anybody, but it adds additional flexibility (even if it's "only" for CSS compliant browsers).

If you don't want to go that far, do you mind changing Chairman to chmtitle | Chairman. This way I can put President for Chairman, and slim Executive director and Head Coach into Manager. Thanks. Uapatriot 06:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Text + image should work. In fact, it looks like you've just added updates to FC Shakhtar Donetsk along those lines. Is that problem solved now, or have I misunderstood what you're asking for? Are the roles of Chairman and President so different that it's important to add {{{chmtitle}}} though? Don't forget that the title is being translated into English so I'd wonder if the distinction between the two is really important. The reason I'd rather not make the change is because consistency is useful. To take the Shakhtar Donetsk example, it's a good thing if people can directly equate Rinat Akhmetov to, say, Doug Ellis of Aston Villa. It just gets confusing if every club has a custom name for the same job. veila# 06:56, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The row with Executive director and Head Coach doesn't look nice in IE. It does look correctly in Mozilla though.

You have a valid point on usefulness of consistenly. But there is always a trade off between consistency and the need to recognize and respect individual/national differences. Why don't you let people decide whether President is really so different from Chairman so that it should be substituted into {{{chmtitle}}}? Uapatriot 07:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

On a related note, there is apparently some dissatisfaction amongst the people maintaining the pages of MLS clubs about the standard infobox. It mostly boils down to an insistence on using American terms, but there is a point to be made about a "General Manager" as opposed to a Chairman. This is an actual organizational difference, not just a titular one--they are quite different positions and have different powers. I floated the idea that perhaps the infobox could be altered like it was to allow Manager or Head Coach. If it were up to just me I'd definitely stick with the existing format, as I value a standard more than relatively minor issues of American vs British nomenclature. Unfortunately I'm in a very small minority here in the USA that would for once like to just do things the way the rest of the world does them. But our footballing establishment insists on perpetuating the American names of everything, which I think makes us look ridiculous...but I digress. -- JoelCFC25 21:31, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Club addresses

I have noticed that someone has recently been putting the club addresses into the ground, so that Bolton are now in Greater Manchester and Arsenal are in Greater London etc. Is this absolutely necessary as this information is also in the main article and, as far as those in metropolitan districts are concerned, makes them look unwieldy. (Pally01 12:22, 7 June 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Captain

I think adding a captain line (either optional or mandatory but definitely optional in the beginning) is something worth looking into. If no one objects I will add it some time next week. Yonatanh 02:09, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that is necessary as the captain should be mentioned in the squad section of the article. – Elisson • Talk 12:22, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

All other things in the infobox are mentioned in different sections of the article as well but I think somebody didn't wait for the verdict here and already added captain to the template and it's already been added to some team's pages. Yonatanh 14:40, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Never mind it seems it was just some unregistered user who thought it was part of the template or something. Still, I think it should be added. Yonatanh 14:46, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Why? We (WikiProject Football) have had several discussions on what to be included in the infobox and what to not include, and the current look has been decided to be the best. If captain would be included, why should we not include the achievements of the club, any supporter's associations, the top scorer, the player with most caps, attendance records, and whatnot? This is a question of only including a short summary of the club, and IMO, the current captain is not one of those things. – Elisson • Talk 14:55, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Is there where to make a custom pattern for the shorts and socks? -- Earl Andrew - talk 23:38, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

If I am not wrong you could edit the parameters of pattern la1. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 05:04, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

See also Template talk:Football kit --Concrete Cowboy 23:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Website addresses?

I think that the address of the official site should be included in the infobox as a very relevant info about the club. That is, of course, unless Wikipedia has some strict policy against it (and it appears as if it doesn't, since there are infoboxes that include this information).—Vitriden 03:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the importance in including the wedsite address in the infobox, as almost all articles have it in the external links section. – Elisson • Talk 14:58, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Isn't it more important than just to be listed as an external link? Then I suppose that, for example, infobox about music performer and many others are made the wrong way. I really think this information is essential and would make the search much easier for someone looking for information on the clubs on the internet (and I think that is what Wikipedia is actually for). External links section is hidden far on the bottom of the article, and this is usually just one of the links. Really, there is a reason why I'm asking this to be emphasized in some way.--Vitriden 21:05, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's of enough importance to be included in the infobox on football articles. Having the link in the external links section is sufficient. That doesn't in any way suggest that other infoboxes are wrong. - Pal 20:12, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

That's the way I feel too. Either way, there have been past discussions about what should be and what should not be included in the infobox, and generally, people have been opposing additions of more information to it. – Elisson • Talk 20:38, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Position of box

I am currently trying to adapt this box for scn.wiki, but it is aligning left, and the borders appear to be missing - I copied whole from here, so I don't quite understand what is going on. Can anyone help me at all? Thanks in anticipation. πίππύ δ'Ω∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 01:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Record Attendance Section

I think a section on the infobox that lets people know each club's record attendance would be useful. Any thoughts?

Big Jim Fae Scotland, 05 October 2006, 14:18

There have been several previous discussions on adding different types of information to the infobox, including but not limited to sponsors, kit supplier, captain, national league titles, club website and BBC links. None of these have been added as most editors have disliked moving more and more info to the infobox. Put it this way: If including such a trivial piece of information as the club's record attendance, there are tons of more relevant facts to add there. Which is not what I want to see. And as a side note, another reason for discussing changes here first, is that you break thousands of pages (showing an ugly Record Attendance {{{record attendance}}} line in the infobox) when including a parameter that is not yet included in any articles. – Elisson • Talk 13:49, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough...that is your viewpoint. I don't think it is trivial though, and would be quite interested as a football fan to know what the record attendance is at each club. What defines it as trivia though but the ground capacity as useful information? What are the tons of other relevant facts to add ahead of this? You suggest they exist but offer no examples. I still think each clubs record attendance would be interesting. Would be good to know what others feel.

Big Jim Fae Scotland, 05 October 2006; 16:48

Oh, and meant to say...I am far more interested in the record attendance info than I am in each club's chairman which is included in the infobox. ;o)

Big Jim Fae Scotland, 05 October 2006; 16:50

Things I would consider to be of equal importance or more important than a record attendance would be, in no special order; city (yes it is sometimes included with the ground, but it does merit its own parameter if record attendance does), traditional colours, popular supporters' associations, national league titles, national cup titles, European cup titles, international cup titles, highest average attendance, player with most appearances, player with most goals scored, official website address, rivalries (if any), and so on. Others think that kit suppliers, sponsors, captains, and other facts have been worthy of inclusion. Either way, record attendance can be a very ambiguous fact, consider questions like: Attendance on the current stadium? Or any former 'home' stadium? What if an away match was played on the 'home' stadium? Does it even have to be a 'home' match? Does it have to be in the league or cup, or is an attendance from a friendly match considered a record? All this counted together makes this fact better suited for the records section in the article, available at all five featured football club articles on Wikipedia. – Elisson • Talk 17:40, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shirt sponser

I think it would be a good idea to add the shirt sponsor to the infobox. Anyone object? jaco♫plane 10:08, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

This has already been proposed once here, and was "voted" down. – Elisson • T • C • 12:44, 11 October 2006 (UTC)