Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sol Eisner

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) Ashley yoursmile! 07:18, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sol Eisner

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Footballer who fails GNG and NFOOTY. No detailed media coverage. Club career spent in non-FPL league. Matches for national team are unofficial friendlies per [1] and [2]. BlameRuiner (talk) 05:59, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 07:15, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Football-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 07:15, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 07:15, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 07:15, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 07:17, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - fails GNG and NFOOTBALL. Giant Snowman 07:41, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep He's not an insignificant early American football player, as seen in his participation in this match before 40,000 people at Yankee Stadium: [3], his enlisting in the Army for World War II was picked up as far away as Tennessee: [4], and the ASL was significantly covered in St Louis. I can't point to a dedicated article specifically on him, but coverage was different in those days, so there's a hint of WP:IAR here, but I don't think there's all that much of it. There's over 200 hits from his soccer career, mostly in New York papers, and mostly the normal match report coverage, but also some news of his enlisting and his organising a tour to play football in Israel. SportingFlyer T·C 10:03, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comments There is only one official Israeli game in 1948 which is against USA Olympics team and that's a different date to the one on 11v11 according to rsssf.com So was his international cap official? There is some good parts of the article, but the sources all feel very weak. Something else would need to be added to convince me to support the article. It's all very borderline to me. Govvy (talk) 10:23, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep seems to pass GNG, and NFOOTY if he was actually capped internationally.--Ortizesp (talk) 16:24, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 22:18, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep As per SportingFlyer explainations and per all. Frigidpolarbear (talk) 14:41, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Fenix down (talk) 23:22, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

*Keep: As per sportingflyers' explanation. I am leaning towards WP:IAR. Kichu🐘 ^{Need any help?} 07:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Striked edit; due to being blocked as a sock per Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sulshanamoodhi. Govvy (talk) 14:16, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I'm not sure why this keeps being relisted with the clear evidence provided above of at least one 1948 cap for the United States men's national soccer team, easily meeting NFootball. Has User:GiantSnowman seen that, as he's provided the sole delete vote. I'm finding hundreds of articles in newspapers.com reporting appearances for the New York Americans of the American Soccer League, which wasn't quite fully-professional. I'm also seeing mentions in published books such as this. Nfitz (talk) 21:00, 8 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Nfitz: thank you for pinging me - nobody else bothered to despite the situation potentially changing. Regarding his international cap, the US Soccer History website you link to clearly says that the match he played in was "International Friendly (Not Official)", so he has 0 international caps as far as we are concerned. He therefore fails NFOOTBALL. The questions therefore is GNG - and I have yet to be convinced that the coverage is significant. Lots of match reports doesn't count - where is the significant coverage about him as an individual? If you link me here (and ping me again) I'll be happy to reconsider my !vote. Giant Snowman 21:06, 8 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, an unofficial friendly. During that era of soccer, there was only a single official match (friendly or not) in the USA between 1935 and 1953, and at the time of that match against Isreal there hadn't been an official match of any kind in a decade. This period of American soccer is woefully underrepresented in Wikipedia. The New York Americans article itself is very poor, with but a single reference (that I just added), despite winning the national cup (the National Challenge Cup, now known as the U.S. Open Cup) twice in that period. Sol Eisner was reportedly a star on that team, and played for them for many years. While I can't find User:GiantSnowman an extensive reference about Eisner, there's no end of coverage of him over the years - I'm surprised I can't find more, given his unique situation, playing with only one eye for much of his career. I've added some short references to the article, including a book by Harold U. Ribalow, but I haven't found a definitive all-encompassing source. Though perhaps that's not a surprise, given that he played on a Jewish team, and there doesn't seem to be many east-coast Jewish newspapers that are available online from that period. Perhaps there are systemic bias issues here too, and better references could be found in newspapers only available on microfilm. Nfitz (talk) 03:03, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I will note that me saying "there must be coverage in newspapers from that time that aren't online!" at previous AFDs was laughed away/ignored (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thomas Martin (footballer) for one example where that argument failed) - but I'd be a hypocrite if I ignored that point being raised here, so I have struck my delete !vote. Giant Snowman 08:07, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's a big difference between Sol Eisner and Thomas Martin. It was hard to actually find any sources at all for Thomas Martin for his single match, despite good archives of local papers from that period, let alone in-depth sources, with some questioning his very existence. In the case of Eisner, we literally have hundreds of references from his matches in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, including international matches, tours, and US Open Cup matches.Nfitz (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - on this occasion, I do agree with the points raised by Nfitz and the article should be kept Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 09:35, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment as an aside, I found genealogical records relating to Eisner, but can't really use, as they are entirely primary sources, and we aren't here to do original research. He only emigrated from Germany (Posen!) in 1937, along with his siblings, leaving his mother in Germany; one can only imagine what became of her, and the rest of his relatives. He went on to serve in the US Army during the war, losing the sight in his eye a training accident, yet continued his soccer career, toured Israel (and there's a story there, given the allusions made in one article about his being left behind there), and eventually dying in Florida at the age of 90. This is only the second time, I've really felt that I should be writing a movie script, not a Wikipedia article. Nfitz (talk) 18:41, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.