Template:Infobox Football biography/doc

Purpose
Infobox Football biography is intended to provide a quick overview of a football player's or manager's details to enable a reader to extract the most oft-needed information without trawling through the article proper. It is most appropriately used for professional players and managers and should not be leveraged for amateurs, no matter their profile.

Parameters

 * Mandatory
 * &mdash; The commonly used name of the player.
 * &mdash; The player's date of birth, wikilinked.
 * &mdash; The location of the player's birth.
 * &mdash; The country of the player's birth.


 * Optional


 * &mdash; The player's complete name.


 * &mdash; A picture of the player, ideally on the pitch in the strip of his most recent team.


 * &mdash; The player's height in the units most common within the country he plays. (see Units of measurement)


 * &mdash; The player's most common position (as a player). If a player is known for playing in multiple roles then the author should elect which is the most significant and explain the point more fully within the article.


 * &mdash; The club for which the player currently plays. Leave blank if retired.
 * &mdash; The shirt number of the player at his most recent club.


 * &mdash; A &lt;br /&gt; delimited list of years that the player has been contracted at each professional club.
 * &mdash; A &lt;br /&gt; delimited list of professional clubs that the player has been contracted at.
 * &mdash; A &lt;br /&gt; delimited list of appearances and (goals) that the player has been awarded in league competition only for each professional club (note: Playoff matches are not counted as league matches by most statistical sources (e.g. Soccerbase and the Sky Sports (Rothmans) Football Yearbook, so they should not be included in this infobox).


 * &mdash; A &lt;br /&gt; delimited list of youth clubs that the player has been a member of.
 * &mdash; A &lt;br /&gt; delimited list of years that the player has been at each youth club.


 * &mdash; A &lt;br /&gt; delimited list of years that the player has been a participant in each national team.
 * &mdash; A &lt;br /&gt; delimited list of international teams that the player has been a member of, including non-senior teams such as U21.
 * &mdash; A &lt;br /&gt; delimited list of appearances and (goals) that the player has been awarded in all competitions and friendlies for each national team.


 * &mdash; A timestamp of the last time the player's infobox career statistics were updated (not needed if the player has retired).
 * &mdash; A timestamp of the last time the player's infobox national statistics were updated (not needed for former players).

Density of information
Try to always consider that an infobox exists to support an article and provide a quick synopsis of important facts. This becomes vital when considering that the amount of space available within an infobox is significantly less than that available outside of it.

Wikilinking
As per the manual of style entry on linking, years should not be linked as they do not provide much benefit to the user. However, date of birth should be linked to enable date preferences to work. Linking of other entries is to be discouraged as most of these links will present themselves in the article's introduction; linking them in the infobox adds clutter and inhibits the speedy retrieval of facts.

Season year format
In order to keep the infobox from ballooning laterally, it is wise to keep date formats as compact as possible. Highly accurate dates are more useful in the article itself. Typically editors will use the 2005–06 incarnation but when very pressed for space, 05–06 may be useful. Utilising the &amp;ndash; character instead of a hyphen will help prevent line breaks creeping into the season.

Units of measurement
As per the manual of style the player's height should be in the units most common within the country they play. Units should be abbreviated in the info box and spelt out in the article text. Use standard abbreviations when using symbols such as metre is m, centimetre is cm, inch is in (not " or ″), foot is ft (not ' or ′). Put a non-breaking space (&amp;nbsp;) between the value and the unit symbol, for example  not  .  Do not append an s for plurals of unit abbreviations. For example, kg, in, yd, lb not kgs, ins, yds, lbs.

Some examples of correct usage:
 * 2.00 m
 * 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m)
 * 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)

Microformat
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