Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Fully professional leagues

Argentina Primera B

Isn't Primera B Nacional Argentina (effectively 2nd division), also fully professional and therefore missing from the list, unless I'm mistaken? -- Alexf⁴² 19:38, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Liga Leumit, Liga Artzit

There seems to be a lot of debate going on as to the professionalism of the Israeli second tier and third tier. The leagues are being restructured at the end of this year and the Liga Artzit will no longer be a fully professional league. Let´s stop the edit wars and have a proper discussion. Second, there needs to be corrections made as to the history of Israeli football. The Premier League did not always exist, the Liga Leumit was the top tier before it. As such, players who played then should not be deleted either. SpeechFreedom (talk) 13:44, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

According to this FIFA document (which was published in January), the top two leagues are professional. Bettia (bring on the trumpets!) 14:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, please don't re-add this as a source, because there is nothing on that page about leagues being fully professional. пﮟოьεԻ 57 08:48, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Definition of Fully Pro League

Can anyone confirm where the wording on this article's page for defining a professional league has come from, as it has added detail to the original (master) guidance at WP:ATHLETE. Has there been a past discussion on this point? Else I would suggest the wording on this page is changed to match that at Athlete. Regards. Eldumpo (talk) 20:45, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

It's a pretty standard definition of what the professional level of football is - all the players are full-time footballers, not part-timers with jobs outside football. I don't see why it would be controversial. Since you seem to disagree with it, what would you consider to be the definition of a fully professional league? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 20:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

So if one footballer in a league is not paid then the league is not fully professional, and thus all players in the league would fail ATH? My comment also relates to how some people in AfD's link talk about WP:ATH to this page, whereas I would argue to do that the wording on this page should be as ATH. Also, for how many leagues is there a source that all players are fully paid? Eldumpo (talk) 21:25, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

As the list stands at the moment, we have 24 sources for fully-pro leagues, plus 3 more for semi-pro leagues. Obviously this list is still in progress. Bettia (bring on the trumpets!) 21:31, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

But how many of the sources confirm that 'all first team players, in all teams composing the league, are known to be contracted in a full-time basis.' Eldumpo (talk) 21:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

You're not proposing any other definition. Fully professional is a reasonable shorthand for saying that the league doesn't have jobbing (sh)amateurs. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 21:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The definition at ATH is a slightly separate matter. I'm saying that the Pro Leagues page should have the same guidance/definition, but as it stands I can't see why people say a player fails ATH as based on the current wording at Pro Lges, no one would pass it. Eldumpo (talk) 22:23, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

It's a nonsense. For instance, the Scottish First Division has always been conveniently ignored for the purposes of WP:ATHLETE even though there is no guarantee of teams in it being fully professional. The same obvious applies to historical teams. The fact is that this is an arbitary guideline which isn't recognised outwith this particular WikiProject. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Chris - yes, that was where I was coming from, or at least wanted to understand first if there was a previous discussion. Eldumpo (talk) 22:23, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Eldumpo, what alternative to the current guideline would you propose? From your comments at recent AfDs, you clearly regard anyone playing in the top level of any European league system as sufficiently notable, which is fair enough, but what about lower levels? England's Football League Championship is clearly a much "bigger" league than the top divisions of most other European countries, and even Football League Two is "bigger" than the top flights of countries like Iceland and Latvia...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:58, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I would like to see ATH amended to maybe say something like 'mostly professional' or if 'fully professional' remains it should be more clearly defined - as discussed, I think the requirement for every player to be pro is extreme, why not just apply it to every club? Or there should be a formal link from the main ATH guidance to where there is more detail on what exactly this means for particular sports. However, that is a bigger issue really, for the present I would like to amend the wording on the definition part of this article's page to be the same as the current ATH wording, and not the extra text that has been added. Eldumpo (talk) 08:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

The problem would then be defining "mostly". This season the Conference National will probably have about six teams out of 24 who are not full-time - is 75% full-time pros enough to be considered "mostly professional"? Some would probably say yes but others no...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 12:42, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

• But what does full-time fooballers mean? There are very high level leagues that have the odd player, who also has a part-time job, particularly during the off-season, to make ends meet; or who brings in a part-timer for a game or two occasionally. Yet we've always turned a blind eye to that. Surely fully professional should mean that all players are significantly compensated; not necessarily that none are moonlighting. And even then, if a league is mostly composed of fully-professional teams ...? BTW, where is this 'list' to which people refer? Nfitz (talk) 01:27, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

FAI Premier Division - professional or not!?!

These sources suggest that it is professional. I can vouch for 80% of the clubs but I am sure some of the newly promoted clubs have a mixture of semi pro and pro players. discuss!

• League feels the pinch and The eircom League of Ireland is the professional football league of Ireland.--Vintagekits (talk) 10:05, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

According to this story, Drogheda have gone part-time. As for the other teams, I think most of them are fully-professional. I'll look into it more when I have the time. Bettia (bring on the trumpets!) 12:01, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• Just found this from the BBC - a league that over the past several years transformed itself from a semi-professional league to a fully professional one.--Vintagekits (talk) 12:14, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

This is what I've found so far:

Club	Status
Bohemians	Fully pro [1]
Bray Wanderers	(can't find anything definite, but I suspect they're semi-pro)
Cork City	Fully pro (but for how much longer?)
Derry City	Fully-pro
Drogheda United	Semi-pro (probably temporarily until their finances are back on track)
Dundalk	Semi-pro [2]
Galway United	Semi-pro
Shamrock Rovers	Semi-pro (same situation as Drogheda it seems) [3]
Sligo Rovers	Semi-pro
St. Patrick's Athletic	Semi-pro [4]

Although it is trying, the league is far from being fully professional at the moment. Bettia (bring on the trumpets!) 14:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

So if these teams were fully pro last season and therefore the league was fully pro last season does that mean that players that appeared last season are notable and players that have only played this season arnt?--Vintagekits (talk) 16:23, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Dundalk, Galway, Sligo and St Pat's have been semi-pro for a while, if not always. I've recently noticed that the BBC aren't always accurate in their reporting. Bettia (bring on the trumpets!) 18:34, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thats not true, Sligo Rovers are predominantly pro still and were fully pro last year. St. Pats were fully pro until very recently as were Galway. Dundalk are newly promoted.--Vintagekits (talk) 21:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• So now that we have got proof that the league is indeed fully professional, why are we still tryind to AfD LOI players - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David O'Connor (footballer). Nfitz (talk) 23:36, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Er, there is no proof. Shamrock are semi-pro, and it has been pointed out that two clubs (St Pats and Galway) are also semi-pro (having been fully pro in the past). пﮟოьεԻ 57 13:48, 5 July 2009 (UTC)