Talk:List of England international footballers

List of England international footballers (alphabetical) was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 2 November 2017 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into List of England international footballers. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

	List of England international footballers is a former featured list candidate. Please view the link under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. Once the objections have been addressed you may resubmit the article for featured list status.
Article milestones Date Process Result January 20, 2017 Featured list candidate Not promoted

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It has been suggested that

England Caps

be merged into this article or section.

I'm not convinced of a merge. there is no source for the other page, and don't want it clogging this one up until it is sourced. --Robdurbar 18:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't Merge. The merger proposed is between an article concerning players with 25+ caps (113 players) and an article concerning players with one cap (333). According to englandfootballonline.com, England has capped 1143. There's a huge gap consiting of 697 players. If someone wants to put in the hours...  SLUMGUM  yap  stalk  18:53, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the article should be expanded to include every player who has represented England. Any thoughts? GiantSnowman 20:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment As this would entail over 1000 players it would be a rather long list! 80.9.112.249 06:18, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Very true! But surely point of an encyclopaedia is to provide as much information as possible...GiantSnowman 18:10, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've just edited it for the first time, and I won't be editing it again. This page is too complicated, confusing and drawn out. The previous page which listed those with 25 caps or more was much more manageable and I was happy editing it each time. Bentley Banana (talk) 13:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At long last I have completed the task of turning this list into a (rather large) table. Subject to a bit of checking & cross-checking (any help will be gratefully received), I plan to merge this with the main List of England international footballers. --Daemonic Kangaroo 04:52, 15 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This table has all the dates in American format! They really should be translated into English. Postlebury 11:32, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As the table is too large to use the proper date sorting format, there has to be a compromise. To maintain the integrity of the date sorting, the only workable format is yyyy mm dd. --Daemonic Kangaroo 12:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A pedant writes... the date format is ISO, not American. Does the auto date formatting get affected by the transclusion limit? I thought it was only templates. Oldelpaso 20:52, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When I was creating the table, using the {{dts|3|November|1933}} template I found that there is a practical limit in WP as to how many templates can be used on a page, and this was reached after only about 95 entries (out of 1150); I put the problem up to an admin for help and he suggested using a substitution after the templates were used. This resulted in a page over 700k in size; again for less than 10% of the total entries. Goodness knows what size we would have ended up with, even if would have been possible to edit this, so I had to arrive at a compromise. If anyone can make the date-sort template work I'd be eternally grateful. --Daemonic Kangaroo 05:40, 8 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The sorting doesn't work properly anyway so we may as well use readable dates.

talk) 22:53, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

It takes me a few minutes each time I have to add a date to realise what order the figures go in! Won't be back. Bentley Banana (talk) 13:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should change the 'Opponent' column from [[Austria national football team|Austria]] to {{fb|AUT}}; this would be both easier to update and more aesthetically pleasing. Any thoughts? GiantSnowman (talk) 14:07, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I note that users

I agree with you that they should be merged. GiantSnowman (talk) 13:09, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they should definitely be merged. Revert their edits with extreme prejudice please. –

Jay 17:35, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

I have been asked to expand on my reasoning. The

talk) 18:05, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

Was there no way you could have modified the single article to make it properly sortable? You know, do something constructive instead of destructive. –

Jay 18:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

I've just gone to the previous version of the list, clicked on the caps sort button, and it sorts into ascending order of caps, click again and it sorts into descending. Unless there's some browser-dependent problem, or I'm being really stupid, I don't know what you mean by not possible to order by number of caps. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 18:35, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think my changes were constructive, they made the articles more useful to me. I'll admit to not being an expert on sortable tables, but when I try to repeat Struway's experiment, I get Safari popping up with an unresponsive script warning. I get the same issue when I try it on

talk) 18:53, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

Oh, so it's cos you're on a Mac! I mean, why else would you be using Safari when you could be using Firefox? Well, the vast majority of us don't use Macs, so I suggest that your edits be reverted, to benefit the majority. –

Jay 18:57, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

I have tried it on IE7 and Firefox and it works. It is a "very" large article though. I think dial-up will groan under the strain. I agree completely with the old version (ie before catchpole reverts), yet I think the size might be an issue. Splitting it in half is not an option though as it will break the sortable table.

talk) 19:02, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

The pre-catchpole article is a far better navigational tool because sortable tables are ace. It should be reverted to the way it was. King of the NorthEast 22:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't really see why we have to have one or the other. There's no point removing the excellent list as set up by Daemonic Kangaroo purely because some people's configuration makes one of the features unusable, while as demand exists for a more restricted set of information why not have that as well? I'd propose (1) that the main list be reverted to the sortable version, as it is complete and useful for a significant number of users, although the size is clearly a problem for some. And (2) as a separate article, a List of England international footballers with 25 caps, as per the current Catchpole version. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:06, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I was thinking about that, but what title? top capped players? Notable players?

talk) 15:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

Hadn't thought about it :-) There was consensus on the merger to List of England international footballers, and there appears to be consensus that the complete sortable list should be at that name. You could call the other one List of most-capped England international footballers, or List of notable England international footballers, or if all else fails, List of England international footballers with 25 caps. Each to have a hatnote pointing to the other. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 16:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When I merged the three articles I thought that there was a consensus that this was the right thing to do. Consequently I found Bentley Banana's comment on Catchpole's talk page describing it as a "rotten merger" and an "abomination" rather offensive and arrogant. I'm therefore grateful that the consensus here is in favour of the merge. Moving forward, it seems to me that we still only need one list covering all England players (good and bad, major or minor). In view of the size of the list this will always cause problems for those on a dial-up connection - as for Apple Mac users, I'm afraid that I have no knowledge. Perhaps this particular problem as pointed out by Catchpole should be put to a techie for advice. WP must be all-embracing and be equally functional whatever platform is used, although good features should not be thrown away to accommodate lesser used platforms.

At present we have four, possibly five, different articles covering the same ground:

• List of England international footballers
• List of England international footballers (alphabetical)
• List of England players with only one cap
• England national football team#Most capped players & England national football team#Top England goalscorers
• England national football team records

All of these will need updating after every England match. The (post-Catchpole) List of England international footballers includes players who have 25 or more caps. Why this particular bar? If the bar was raised to, say, 50 caps this would reduce this particular list to 47 players. This list could then be merged with that in the England team article. Can we agree a final consensus? I can then go ahead and re-merge the articles. --Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 06:16, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've been asked to contribute - firstly, however I have two apologies to make. Firstly, an apology to Daemonic Kangaroo for my terminology in describing his changes. My wording was rather strong, I accept that and withdraw it wholly. My second apology comes in advance of what I'm about to say, as I'm entirely inept with tables and wikipedia terms and therefore exist here purely as a writer with some reasonable understanding of the England team and what is required on these pages.

I would argue most vociferously for the retention of the List of England international footballers page in its reverted form, containing the players with 25 caps or more. I would argue that there is no other way to measure footballers in the international game other than by dint of caps won; doing so by surname or date of birth turns it into a rollcall rather than a list which is defined by actual achievement and notability. Alan A'Court shouldn't be at the top of any list of England players; Peter Shilton should be. It's all about the caps won. Nobody is going to come on wikipedia looking for the information about who would be top of an England list alphabetically, but a new user might use our reference to find out who has won the most caps. This is where this page is too vital to consider merging into something which will change the entire focus of its existence.

I have never used nor accessed with

List of England players with only one cap

and feel that while it's an interesting list, it's not a be-all and end-all list. There is limited notability about such players; we're dealing with novelty rather than anything else. A page which lists everyone who wasn't goo enough to play for England after one solitary go but not those who were sturdy and steady enough to hang around more than 25 times suggests to me a lack of priorities.

The

England national football team records

page has, I confess, become a labour of love to me. I am fiercely proud of how that page has turned out and I think it is as vital a tool as any researcher on England can find, even from official sources (indeed, I've seen evidence of more official sources using statistics which I myself researched entirely for the benefit of this page). I would ask it remains as it is.

Lastly, on the subject of the merged page, I would ask that consideration is given to those who choose to keep these pages topical as soon as matches are completed. I had an awful time trying to suss out the dating system, find the players in question etc when faced with an alphabetical list rather than one which relied entirely on achievement and notability. The list of 25 caps or more needs to remain as an independent page; even if the full list of alphabetical players stays separately. To remove the shorter, more easily maintained and digested page says that accessibility for both readers and editors has become too low a priority, and that's where people like me, who just want to keep pages digestible and accessible, are alienated.

One final comment aside - my main bugbear with the England pages are with editors who go on the main England national football team page after a match and change just *one* fact, rather than the several which always need changing - details of games, caps and goals updates, manager stats etc. This gets right up my nose as you end up doing someone else's tidying up rather than merely a gentle update which should not take up too much time or sweat.

Thanks for reading, apologies for my lack of terminology and my previous comments once more. Bentley Banana (talk) 13:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I still think that the sortable table is a far better navigational tool, does anyone know if there is a way to default set it to show the players by number of caps?King of the NorthEast 03:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

^{The above discussion was copied from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Archive 14#List of England international footballers in order that users may be aware of previous "merge" discussions. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 06:04, 6 February 2008 (UTC)}[reply]

I was just wondering why the cut-off point for this page is 25 caps when the source that is cited gives everyone with 20+ caps.Tomaths (talk) 10:01, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Plus two of England's top ten goalscorers, Viv Woodward and Steve Bloomer, are missing from this list because they have 23 caps. — sjorford++ 13:27, 14 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This seems a bit arbitrary. Some current player have an entry (John Terry, Shaun W-P, Peter Crouch) and some don't. Does someone here know the current selection criteria? 82.26.187.137 (talk) 23:14, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Firstly, the idea that I put forward about listing all players with one hundred caps or more was not intended to be synthesis. In fact, I was trying to remedy what I saw of that problem in this current article. The point that I was making was that The FA awards each of these players with a golden cap. That means that those players have received some official recognition for their number of caps. There is no such case of this for formulating the current list. In theory, I was kind of asking for a 'golden cap' article which included a list of recipients, along the lines of the FIFA Order of Merit article.

However, since I put forward that idea, I have noticed the 'List of footballers with 100 or more caps' article. As this includes tables that can be sorted, it is easy to find anyone from England on that page. This, then, suggests that having an article in the way that I suggested would maybe not be the best idea, as there would be information duplication going on (although players such as David Clarke would still not be included).

By the way, after finding that article, and sorting the players by their country, I realised that it could count as yet another list of England players. How many is too many? I agree with the point that was made about hatnotes on this article.

• I'd also just like to respond to the point about male being the "default" in Wikipedia. I have to say that I completely agree. Every single time that I visit a national football team article it bugs me that it is a men's team, and yet it does not say "men's", whereas over at the articles for the women's teams it does say "women's".

I do understand, to a large extent, why Wikipedia has its articles named as they are. I'd say that the main reason would have to be related to what actual differences there are in the names used within football. For example, there is the FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Women's World Cup, there is the FA Cup and the FA Women's Cup, and there is Liverpool F.C. and Liverpool L.F.C. Of course, I do not think that we should add "men's" to the article names for the men's versions of all of those things. Those are official names, and they should be respected.

Where I think that there could be some improvement on Wikipedia is in its own naming conventions. The clearest example of this would be the 'national football team' articles. Indeed, 'List of England international footballers' would be another example. These are articles which do not use official titles, but which use a name that is consistent throughout the whole of Wikipedia.

Of course, consistency is a good thing. However, this has created the problem where it is difficult to make changes if there does happen to be something that should be changed.

The fact is that "national football team" are words essentially made up by Wikipedia. The FA's England website does not use those words. It says "Men's Senior" and "Women's Senior".

These naming conventions could be amended so that they specify that the content in an article for a men's team is to do with a men's team. It would simply mean using the highly inoffensive measure of adding the word "men's".

The articles for the teams from the United States actually already do this (as well as using the word "soccer"). The argument that is used for that article to be an exception is that the women's team is fairly popular there, so it needs distinguishing.

However, my argument is that these are words that have been created by Wikipedia, and as such, they may as well say the right thing.

Maybe it wouldn't be necessary for all teams. An example could be when there is only one team. For instance, the Saudi Arabia women's national football team doesn't really exist.

The biggest problem with all of this is that it seems impossible for issues about naming conventions to be addressed. I recently tried to suggest something different for the 'Next United Kingdom general election' article. However, that would have required a change to the naming conventions, and so it was a nonstarter. RedvBlue 14:29, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some really good points here. I would recommend everyone look at the FA website http://www.thefa.com/england which has articles about both women's and men's teams under the heading 'England' as well as offering links to all the different teams (men under 21 etc.) where the word men's is used as well as the word women's. Strictly this article should be called List of Football Association England Men's Senior Players with 25 or more appearances (caps). Wikipedia should reflect official sites like the FA but NOT perpetuate an inequality for the sake of it (when even the official sites are moving away from it). Btljs (talk) 21:53, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Come to think about it, if it is possible for there to be an exception for the United States, then that must mean that it will be at least possible for there to be exceptions for other teams as well, including England.

Many of the news articles about the women's team on The FA's England website refer to the team as just "England". As such, it could be argued that it is not true to say that "England national football team" would only ever be said as a reference to the men's team.

Citing the United States as proof that exceptions are allowed, I don't see why someone couldn't go over to the England national football team article and ask for it to be renamed to include "men's". I would support any such action.

If such a change were approved, then it would only be the articles about England that would be affected. This would save any problems with overall naming conventions. However, that may then cause other countries to follow suit, and cause a later discussion about that. RedvBlue 01:28, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Given that I couldn't get a consensus on the fact that a list of players with >=25 caps is not accurately titled, I wouldn't hold out much hope on this. Btljs (talk) 16:54, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't know. I'd be interested to see what kind of arguments those supporting the status quo would produce, and then what the response would be from those arguing differently. RedvBlue 19:23, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In October/November 2017, there was an AfD to decide the future of the full, list of players (see

I have now created a new article, List of England international footballers (2–3 caps) and in due course will add List of England international footballers with one cap and List of England international footballers (4–9 caps). My intention is that all four articles will follow the same format, so that, as players careers progress, they can be moved seamlessly from one list to the next. As it took three weeks of my time to create the first list, it will be a while before the others are added, unless someone else wants to get involved. This approach was discussed at WP;Football.

If anyone has any comments on the first of the three new articles, please let me know. --Daemonickangaroo2018 (talk) 14:19, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be clear on what needs to be done per the consensus at the WikiProject (I haven't looked into it but I think consensus is to split the (alphabetical) article into 3 articles). The (alphabetical) article doesn't need to exist anymore per the AFD closer - "there's clear consensus here that this should not remain as a stand-alone list in its current form." If it is easy as copy-pasting, I can do that. Please let me know if you need any help with creating the other 2 articles. The editor whose username is Z0 15:20, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Daemonickangaroo2018 no content has been lost. The entire article and its history is preserved and can be viewed here. If you want to merge more information into the target article please feel free to do so as long you show due respect for consensus and WP:V and WP:CITE. On which note, I am a bit concerned that you do not seem to grasp that a verdict of merge at AfD means that you are not going to have two stand alone articles when it is over. Further I did in fact read the close at the discussion which states this explicitly. And yet you were edit warring to preserve the article contrary to the clear consensus of the AfD. The manner in which the merge is carried out is beyond the scope of the AfD and is almost always left to the discretion of the editors who work on the two articles. If there is a disagreement about how the merge was handled, or not as the case may be, that needs to be resolved in a talk page discussion. As we currently seem to be moving in a direction that does not contradict the AfD's close I am going to move along. Best regards... -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:31, 10 July 2018 (UTC).[reply]

There are a few players that have not played a match since 2013, and i am wondering why they are classed as active squad members? Is this a mistake? — Preceding