Talk:List of one-club men in association football

Article clean-up and qualification justification

This article needs quite a heavy clean-up. Suggestions:

• There needs to be some kind of referenced subjective reason for setting a ten-year cut-off for qualification, otherwise it is simply an editorial decision made by an editor of Wikipedia at some point in the history of creating this page. I understand that traditionally clubs in the UK had a testimonial match at ten years, this could be referenced and used as an objective reason to include that criterion?

• Personally, I think that being registered professionally to a single club for your entire professional career, as well as the ten-year marker, should qualify you for inclusion, in fact there are a number of sources that back this up and list players such as Gabriel Agbonlahor, who had two teenage loan spells while registered at Aston Villa, as a 'one-club man' [1],Danny Rose is also listed as a 'one club man' here despite loan spells as he has only played professionally while registered to Tottenham: [2]. [Without the ten-year marker you would be opening the floodgates to professionals who retired after a few seasons at one club etc.]. This would mean that a player who went on loan as a youth player could qualify for inclusion as long as they never played a full professional game while registered at another club for the entire length of their career.

• Every single player needs a citation for their appearances and ideally a mention of them being a 'one-club man' or similar. This is crucial for the strength of the page.

Please chime in with comments below so that we can build a consensus for improving the page? Mountain^cirque 09:04, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for this. My personal view is that Agbonlahor should qualify as the loans were before he played for the main club, in contrast to Rose who was an established player when he went on the later loans. The source for that is also misleading as the title talks about one club men but the content actually only lists the longest serving player (eg Carrick is listed). Refs for the appearances should also be a must. The 10 year rule makes sense to me from a practical sense but I agree its a pretty arbitrary one without refs indicating that is a significant number. CN tags everywhere as far as I'm concerned haha. Crowsus (talk) 18:22, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, the amount of work the page needs is quite daunting to be honest but it can be done gradually. It also needs very regular updates to active player appearances, maybe annually. I can see your point on the loans and would tend to agree, having a criterion of 'no players that were loaned following their pro debut' could work but may lead to some disgruntlement among editors wanting to include players such as Rose who have been registered at a club since they were a child. Mountain^cirque 08:04, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Having given this a bit more thought this morning my suggestion on inclusion criteria would be:

• Ten years at a club minimum, justified by referencing the tradition of testimonial matches to honour long service in football.
• Contracted to only a single club for their entire professional career (one club) e.g. John Terry and Steven Gerrard would be ruled out as they had full non-loan professional contracts at the end of their careers, this should only apply to professional contracts, for example Matt Le Tissier was registered to two non-league sides after leaving Southampton, neither were professional clubs, so I would suggest he could be included validly.
• Any loans added as a note in an additional column e.g. Harry Kane played for X,Y, Z as a youth player while contracted to Tottenham Hotspur. You could even add a * or ‡ to note that some players had loans to allow people to see the 'pure one club' players.

Is there any consensus for the above ideas or tweaks/alternatives? Mountain^cirque 09:46, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Apologies for mistakes made and especially if I put anyone's nose out of joint in recent edits! I tidied the lists up sorting the retired section alphbetically (even with the various countries naming systems where I could), and deleted a lot where other clubs were played for, possibly too vigorously in some cases - eg I booted Matt Le Tissier as referred to above. I listed the current section ordered by length of service - seems to make sense?

My basic feeling is this list is very long. Many are clear contenders, some marginal. 10 years is the minimum cut off for me, and I see that means 10 full seasons of professional employment even if they didn't play for all of it. Eg a retirement before the end of the 10th season is a disqualification.

I agree with subsequent play with non professional clubs as being irrelevant, though this is difficult to determine in most cases, especially historic ones. Many players here probably played for other clubs, not listed in their artcles, at the end of their careers. On the other hand, particularly in the case of UK players, the listing can be extensive, right down to tiny clubs. Were they professional? I know for example that many Midland League clubs were at least semi professional in pre WW2 years. Currently, many National League sides are professional, and below that many clubs are semi professional. ::::::Where do we draw the line to keep this page manageable and simple? For the UK, I'd suggest keeping it to Football League clubs post WW2, probably even post WW2, and before that?? By Football League, we can define that as the top four leagues, or also add the top National League following the intro of auto promotion in 1987.

And then, strictly speaking, we have to do the same defining with every football nation! I'm suggesting this is impossible. So, how to progress without having to delve into the degree of professional/semi-professional contract of each individual?

There's also the issue of feeder clubs being considered, particularly in Spain. In other countries that early career situation is dealt with by loans, or simply playing for lower level clubs. For me, if they are at a feeder club, or second team, that shouldn't discount inclusion here, but the years served must be with the main club only. I expect others here will disagree!

By being tighter on definitions, the list becomes better, IMHO :) Cjwilky (talk) 14:38, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Why is Ceni in the first picture you see on the page and then he doesn't appear in the list? it also says he holds the Guinness world record for one club appearances in football history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.250.114.50 (talk) 09:45, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

I need some informtion to complete this article. For players who began their career with amateur sides and then with professionnal teams, can they be added to the list ? 2A01:E0A:44C:37A0:B29B:4559:2D84:3060 (talk) 14:36, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Alan knight

Where is he? 684 appearances for Portsmouth 77.103.4.188 (talk) 15:14, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Craig Brittain of Dumbarton

He should be on here. 295 appearances between 1997-2009 2A00:23C8:C601:4301:A80B:6918:198B:D84A (talk) 23:33, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Rogério Ceni

How come Rogério Ceni is included in the list if his own page contradicts this? It says he played for Sinop in the beggining of his career. 2804:1B3:6B03:71F1:E457:1B48:D8AF:9F30 (talk) 00:20, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Removed for now. I can't tell if his other club was non-league or not. Seasider53 (talk) 00:33, 17 April 2024 (UTC)