Talk:World cup

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I really have to wonder what Wikipedia users would input "world cup", press "go" and expect a page like this. As things stand there's very little content that would be of interest to anyone on here. Why is this page not set up as a disambiguation, surely it's vastly more likely that someone searching for "world cup" is searching for a specific competition, or a list of all competitions using the name, than looking for general, vague information about how the term is used. I don't want to re-open the debate above (though I do think the result was a mistake, even this page admits that the football world cup is the most common use of the term, and Wikipedia:Naming conflict is quite clear that "the most common use of a name takes precedence") but I really fail to see what the justification is for this page existing rather than a disambiguation page. --Daduzi ^talk 19:54, 11 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I think it would be better as a disambig. The above discussion was about turning the page into a redirect, could there be a vote on instead making the page a disambig? --Astrokey44 02:06, 15 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't think anyone entering just 'world cup' would be that put out to have to click once more to get to the Football World Cup, or the current competition. Grant 12:30, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It really doesn't matter how put out they'd be, the point of articles should be to provide what the user wants to read, not what the editors want to write. --Daduzi ^talk 14:24, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

My point is that even if "surely it's vastly more likely that someone searching for "world cup" is searching for a specific competition, or a list of all competitions using the name" (which is debatable, as well as being two or more different things), we shouldn't deprive the minority of users who might actually want some generic information about what the concept of a world cup embodies, simply so we can second guess what the majority might have meant to search for. (On the one hand we have people who refuse to acknowledge that a world cup could be anything other than the current FIFA one; on the other, some people won't acknowldege the fact that for most of the world's population the World Cup is the football one. Wikipedia should cover the full range of meanings of the term, but without trying to pretend it's not the case that most people use it in only one sense.) Grant

I really don't think it is at all debatable that somebody searching for "World Cup" would be much, much more likely to be trying to find a competition with the title "World Cup" in its name than be looking for information about the fact that many tournaments have the title "World Cup" in their name and are organised in various ways. That aside, though, moving the current article to something like World Cup (term) and linking to it in a disambig would solve all the issues you expressed above while serving those searching far better than the current situation. Nobody would be deprived of anything. --Daduzi ^talk 04:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hardly. The disambiguation page serves no purpose. If you think about it, it doesn't save anyone a single click. The question is: should 'world cup' go to this article or to the World Cup. The World Cup will wind most people up. But this article is the best place for a brief pseudo-disambig in a note at the top. Grant 23:43, 16 July 2006 (UTC)Reply

How can the term "usally refer" to the cricket or rugby world cup? Which is it? All we can really say is that in some areas the unqualified term is not as unambiguous as it is in most of the rest of the world. I suspect that for the majority of South Africans, the World Cup is the football one. Grant 12:30, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I disagree with most of that paragraph. In places like Australia, and other nations such as New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, the term would most likely refer to the Rugby World Cup. In addition, in South Africa the term has more meaning that just football, and could arguably refer to Rugby when used by itself. I suspect cricket would have similar reference in places like India Sri Lanka. Arguably, the World Cup does not automatically refer to FIFA in some parts of Europe. I think the section needs to be ditched, there are just too many claims to the description, and the page is always the victim of people's sporting agenda. Cvene64 13:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't think the paragraph contradicts anything you've said here. But I've taken part in rugby club and cricket club quizzes in the UK, and I know that if a question had been asked even in those surroundings about the World Cup (with no context implied) everyone present would have taken it to refer to the football World Cup. In this country, you can talk about the World Cup absolutely confident in the knowledge that everyone will understand the term to mean the football World Cup. Tancred (see below) states that this is also the case in Australia – a country where sport is taken very seriously, but where football is far from the dominant sport. I understand and accept that there might be some countries where it is not the case, but I maintain (although I'm prepared to be proved wrong by someone with actual knowledge, rather than suspicions, arguments, or estimated likelihoods) that there is no country in the world where you could ask a local if his country had qualified for the World Cup and he would automatically assume that you were asking about a specific sport other than football – and I believe this section should reflect that. If there turns out to be such a country after all, then by all means mention it in the section. But currently we're still bending over backwards to deny the precedence of football's claim to the term that (as far as I'm aware) it coined in 1930. Grant 17:07, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

As an Australian, the World Cup is the World Cup, and the Rugby world cup is called the "Rugby World Cup".Tancred 07:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

In North America, probably the most soccer-apathetic continent on earth, an undisambiguated "World Cup" still refers to the FIFA event 95% of the time in my opinion. Kirjtc2 11:46, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I can confirm that in my experience as a passionate sports fan in the US (but not particularly soccer) that I never never, in my life, heard the words "World Cup" not referring to the soccer version. To me, the term "World Cup" not referring to the FIFA World Cup is quite absurd. It's the same in golf: saying "The Open" refers to "The Open Championship" held in the UK, and isn't ambiguous. If you mean US Open, you say that. Starwrath (talk) 20:11, 11 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Oops. Accidentally hit return while typing my last edit summary. What I was trying to say is although I've spent the last few days establishing that 'the World Cup' is the football one, the frequency of football's world cup is way too specific for this article, let alone the introduction.

World Cup Sport an international tournament open to (qualifying) national teams from all parts of the world, in which the winning team is awarded a cup; esp. (Soccer) the world championship tournament held every four years in a different country; (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) Grant

World Cup n a competition in some sport, notably football, between teams representing different countries, usu involving qualifying rounds and a final tournament. (The Chambers Dictionary) Grant 14:48, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

World Cup n. 1. A soccer tournament held every four years in which qualifying national teams compete to determine a world champion. 2. The championship awarded to the winner of this tournament. (The American Heritage Dictionary)

The FIFA World Cup predates the cricket and rugby world cups by 45 and 57 years respectively. According to the list of world cups and world championships, it was the only world cup in existence for its first 23 years – not counting the World Cup of Baseball, which followed after only eight years, but which even many baseball commentators seem to be unaware of (according to its own Wikipedia article). In the same way that the World Series is the baseball World Series, despite the subsequent existence of various other World Series, the World Cup simply is the FIFA World Cup. Grant 15:46, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

In Oceania, I would say that the the term would refer to Rugby, rather than football (I disagree with the above poster regarding Australia, the current sporting events may beg to differ, but most Australians would not be refering to soccer when just saying WC). That being said, who actually goes around throwing the term around so loosely? Apart from countries where rugby union, cricket, rugby league is not played, the single term is ambiguous. Also, what is the point? World cup shouldn't just be a page for soccer to gain norotity. I mean I'll admit, in those countries where the RWC, CWC etc dont have much coverage, the single term refers to soccer, but having a map of where soccer is the most popular sport in a world cup article is just pov, it shouldnt really get into what the most popular sport in the world is. This article should represent a worldwide view, and (in my opinion) shouldnt just be trying to push aside other sports that stage world cups. Cvene64 01:32, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

"Who actually goes around throwing the term around so loosely?" Well, I'm glad you asked that, because it is precisely the question that the section attempts to answer. And the answer is: Everyone in Britain for a start – whatever their own chosen sport. If Tancred is mistaken about his own country, and it really is uncommon for Australians to do so too (with reference to whatever sport), that just demonstrates that the difference between those countries where the World Cup is the World Cup and those where it is not is more than just a degree of ambiguity or a choice of sport. If someone who is not aware of this comes across the expression, and looks it up on Wikipedia, surely they are entitled to know which world cup is known simply (if not, perhaps, universally) as as the World Cup. They'd certainly find that out if they looked it up in a dictionary. Rugby union, cricket and rugby league are all widely played in the UK – in fact, they were all invented there – and some would consider cricket to be England's national sport. Also, England are the current holders of the Rugby World Cup. Notwithstanding all this, in the UK the World Cup is the football one. Unambiguously. All the other world cups were named after (long after) the original, just as the short-lived cricket World Series was named after the baseball World Series. Baseball has virtually no following in the UK, but the term World Series is always understood to refer to the baseball one. On Wikipedia, "World Series" even bypasses the disambiguation and goes straight to baseball – a move rightly rejected in the case of the World Cup. I put the map in (before I checked the dictionaries) in order to meet a request for a citation. You're right; it shouldn't be necessary. We don't even need a whole section. All we need is a statement near the beginning of the article to the effect that: "Throughout much of the world the expression 'the World Cup' means the FIFA World Cup." It was probably the attempts of people who don't believe what to half the world is self-evident to qualify and water down a simple statement of this kind (despite the fact that they need TLAs to distinguish the various other world cups) that caused it to expand to a section in the first place. I've no intention of garnering notoriety for football, either here or elsewhere; I'm simply trying to prevent the censorship of a fact that for whatever reason appears not to chime with some people's world view. Grant 21:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Well, maybe Iam overreacting, and you do have good points, but, I really disgaree with any atetmpts to try and say that soccer has a universal relationship with the term, and as for the other posting, I'm not simply disagreeing with him, I'm also Australian, and I'am confident that rugby holds the term over soccer here, and we can't forget about places like Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, and of course, New Zealand. Hmmm, I guess the page just has too much of a Euro-focus, I mean we can't just push aside Oceania and so on, and I think thats what the danger is with trying to make claims to a universal reference. I mean, the page is not massively bias, but I would definantly prefer that the soccer map was removed. Your suggestion "Throughout much of the world the expression 'the World Cup' means the FIFA World Cup." is alright, but why cant the lead be The most notable world cups are Football, Rugby and Cricket. and then, it would be less pov to emphasize ther relevence of current events to the single use, but go onto say how footballs large popularity in some countries sees the single use refer unconditionally to soccer...though in some areas the term is more likely to refer to rugby union......but I do think the current events explaination is mch more important....I dont know.Cvene64 06:20, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Really, truly, honestly: If you think that the meaning of the term to most people on the planet is dictated by the currency of a particular event, then you just haven't got it. That's understandable, because you live in a country where association football is probably not in the top six sports, and consequently people there don't 'actually go around throwing the term around loosely'. End of story as far as Australia's concerned: Wikipedia doesn't have to explain something that never happens (although Tancred assures us that it does happen, and when it does it's in reference to football). In most of the rest of the world, people do throw the term around 'loosely' – except that to them it's not loosely, because it has a precise meaning. I would never talk about 'the FIFA World Cup' or 'the football World Cup' outside the unique situation of Wikipedia. Take the second paragraph. After user 213.121.207.34 pruned the genuinely 'not true' last bit, what's left is meaningless waffle: "The meaning behind the unqualified use is most obvious when a competition is current. For example, during June and July 2006 many English people will refer to the FIFA competition in Germany as simply the "World Cup"." I can assure you that all British people with any awareness of sport refer to the FIFA competition simply as 'the World Cup' all the time. It's not even to do with football's popularity. It's to do with history. Grant 13:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Cvene64 - I would have to agree with Tancred concerning Australia. Over here in the West "The World Cup" refers to football (soccer), as opposed to 'the Rubgy World Cup' or 'the Cricket World Cup, which must be specifically mentioned to avoid confusion. The only exception to this would be when talking to South Africans or New Zealanders. I for one vote for the "World Cup" to refer to football (soccer).Skooter 13:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yet another tedious example of a perfectly ordinary article getting over-run by a huge debate about what the less than 1% of the world who live in Australia mean when they talk about football or World Cup, or anything related to the sport of Association Football. In this case there is no debate. The vast majority of the world, including the English speaking world, think of soccer when they think of the World Cup. Mralph72 00:16, 11 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm interested to know what is understood in India/Bangladesh/Pakistan by "the World Cup". --Dweller 14:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Anecdotal, I know, but when I was in Calcutta in 2003 my Indian companion showed me the stadium "where India beat Pakistan in the World Cup Final". Being English, I was about to retort that - as far as I knew - those countries had never competed in the [football] World Cup, before it dawned on me that he was talking about another sport. Mind you, I'd earlier been in Munich, where my German host showed me the stadium "where Germany won the World Cup", and on that occasion there was no ambiguity at all, I'm afraid. 62.231.145.254 10:26, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps, as he was showing you a cricket stadium, he assumed you knew he was talking about cricket. Grant 11:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The lead picture on the front page of the online Times of India (21 June 2006) is of a Portuguese player doing a stretching exercise. The caption doesn't mention football, or even the World Cup. Presumably the paper expects its readers to take for granted that the picture relates to the World Cup. At the bottom of the page, there is a list of World Cup story links under the heading 'World Cup 2006', suggesting that even in India people are more likely to need reminding what year it is than that the World Cup is about football. Grant 11:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

(indenting back here to help readability) Firstly, a warning - that URL caused 4 annoying pop-ups on my PC. Argument cuts both ways - this article [1] on the same site, refers to a cricket world cup as "World Cup". I'd be more interested in sub-continental print sources anyway, as these would undeniably be written for the consumption of the local population. --Dweller 11:45, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That's hardly the same, is it. This (non-sport-based) article refers twice to the "2007 World Cup", in each case clearly establishing the cricketing context in the same sentence. Obviously, once the context is tightly constrained, the specific sport doesn't have to be appended to the term. The article should establish what is meant when no context has been established – and that is quite definitely football. And what percentage of those relying on the Times of India web site for their World Cup news (rather than astrological predictions about Indian cricketers and the Gandhi dynasty) would you expect to be from outside India? Even if the online version really is aimed at a primarily international audience, and the editors really have omitted any explicit reference to FIFA or football from their World Cup headings for their benefit, surely that says something about the international perception of the World Cup. It must do if it's worth (apparently) confusing more than a billion Indians. Grant 19:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Despite the extensive discussion above, I want to try again to settle this whole world cup mess.

Please let me know what you think:

1. It is my belief that the phrase "World cup" should be capitalized as such: "World Cup." Very few (if any at all) competitions title their event _____ World cup. I feel that this should be capitalized.
2. Currently, we have three pages dealing with the term "World Cup." The first is this page (World cup -- changed to such a name after I performed some page moves which swapped around names). This page is a glorified dictionary definition in my opinion. The second is World cup (disambiguation), which lists competitions named "World Cup." The third is List of world cups and world championships, a very extensive list, which includes (to the best of my knowledge) all of the competitions already mentioned at World cup (disambiguation).
3. In terms of international viewership, the FIFA World Cup is the most widely-viewed sporting event in the world, with 1.1 billion people watching the 2002 tournament final. source It is the goal of all editors to ensure that when users type in something in the search window and hit "Go," that they will find what they are looking for within a reasonable amount of time.

That being said, I propose:

1. Capitalize "World cup" appropriately, on World cup and World cup (disambiguation).
2. Either:
   1. Merge the current World cup page into World cup (disambiguation).
   2. Move the current World cup page to World championship. This would allow the generalized form of the term "world cup" (which will be reserved for competitions actually named as such) to serve a purpose at its new name -- "World championship" refers to a contest for teams or individuals to compete for a title of being the world champion of some sort -- the same goal of a World Cup (in any sport).
3. Redirect World cup to FIFA World Cup. This is the most common usage of the term, as measured by international viewership. See above. To relieve confusion, the {{otheruses}} template would be used, redirecting users to one of the following:
   1. World cup (disambiguation), as it would (a) list all contests named World Cup, (b) give a link to a more extensive list, and (c) either (1) have the general definition/explanation of "World cup/championship" or (2) have a link to the World championship page, depending on the results of what we do with the World cup page.
   2. World championship, with another {{otheruses}} template directing users to either the extensive list of competitions that are the world championships, or the World cup (disambiguation) page.

In an effort to gauge consensus (and possibly take some action on the fronts stated above), I've set up some votes/polls (depending on your view of Wikipedia is not a democracy). Please vote only once per proposal. Each will be numbered according to the above list. If you want to add any proposals that I haven't thought of, please do so, but only add new additions to the bottom of any lists to maintain numbering. Ian Manka Talk to me! 09:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)Reply

Merge the current World cup page into World cup (disambiguation).

1. See 2.2. Besides, the article serves two different purposes if we're going to include a list of every world cup in addition to a general treatment of the concept. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sam Vimes (talk • contribs)
2. The net effect of 'merging' this article with the disambiguation page would simply be to delete the article. If the undoubtedly useful information from this page were added to the disambiguation page, it would cease to be a disambiguation page – if it ever was. In fact, looking at it again, it is the disambiguation page whose creation was misguided. It falls between the two stools of this article and the list page, achieving nothing. I would delete the disambiguation page, and replace the 'other uses' reference to it in the note at the top of this article with a link to the list page – moved from the 'see also', which could then be deleted (as the World Series link has no place here). Grant 18:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)Reply

Move the current World cup page to World championship.

1. I like this one - I think "World championship" is probably the proper place to host a general article on the concept, while someone typing in World Cup is probably looking for information on his favourite World Cup. It should be mentioned on the World Cup page, though, something like For a general article on the concept of awarding a title to the champion of a particular sport, see World Championship or somesuch (better phrasing requested) Sam Vimes 09:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)Reply

1. There is a case for a world championship article – but in parallel with this one, not instead of it. Then the bits from here that are not related to world cups could be combined with other types of world championship not covered here, such as the challenge type (boxing, chess etc.). There is a difference – as evinced by the fact that some sports have both a world cup and a world championship. Grant 00:19, 16 July 2006 (UTC)Reply

• If we were to move World cup to World championship, then World cup (disambiguation) would be moved to World cup, and List of world cups and world championships would either:
  1. Be merged into the new World cup article after the World cup → World championship (that is, the disambiguation page)
  2. Be listed as a "see also" section at the bottom of the new World cup page, as well as the World championship page
• The italicized heading at the top of the new World cup page would read something along the lines of:
  • This is a disambiguation page of uses of the term "world cup." For an article about the concept of world cups as a whole, see World championship.
• So, that's what it would change to, if this proposal would pass. Ian Manka Talk to me! 07:30, 18 July 2006 (UTC)Reply

Why oh why does this page not directly link to the Football world cup? I've read all the arguements below but it's still not in any way convincing. World Cup is taken to mean the football world cup by almost everyone in Europe, East Asia, West Asia, South America and by many people in the USA and Canada. Only a few countries (India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and the Carribean) would use the term to refer only to the Cricket World Cup.

You had a vote on the matter but like all Wiki votes it's worthless - only those strongly opposing will bother to vote. Only techies will vote and not ordinary non-geekie Wiki users. Why doesn't Wiki just have statistics to see what page people who visit 'world cup' visit next? Wiki votes are a joke. Xania 18:03, 14 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

These are the only diplomatic procedures we have, and everyone is entitled to have their say. We can't just say an opinion is right "because", we need consensus, from people that are willing to build one. Without that, we're all just acting unilaterally and that leads to edit warring.

Out of interest, the countries you name that wouldn't consider the Football World Cup the primary World Cup, may only be few in number but consist of a great deal of the population of the planet, around a quarter by a quick guess. Erath 01:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

Several other languages Wikipedias articles are linked here as the translation, but they are not, as they should be translated World Championships - like Weltmeisterschaft in German (instead of Weltpokal or Weltcup), Championnats du monde in French (instead of Coupe du monde), also Portuguese Campeonato do Mundo is surely the World Championships and I am sorry I cannot read the Korean and Japanese language. I only repaired the link to the Czech Wikipedia, where the situation was just the same. Okino 02:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

After reading it, I feel that I have gained no information whatsoever. It contains Weasel Words ("However, in some sports the Olympic title carries at least as much prestige."), Vagueness ("Some sport governing bodies prefer the title world championship", and I'm not sure it represents a world view. (As "World cup" means many things depending where you hail from, but the page lists fifa world cup, and only two of the potential world cup formats, without examples)

Looking back over the discussions, I see there's lots of (valid) points and suggestions made, but at the moment, this page just seems to be solving a problem that doesn't exist. At the least, cites and examples are needed. Personally, I feel this information would be better condensed down, and used as an opening paragraph for either the disembarkation page, or the list of world cups page. 81.149.182.210 02:06, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Is there currently any objection to this rather thin but accidentally much-visited article being moved away somewhere (like World cup competition)? This would be in preparation for making World Cup either a disambiguation page or a move destination for FIFA World Cup, depending on the result of the move debate.--Kotniski (talk) 10:15, 11 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

I'm going to be bold and do this.--Kotniski (talk) 10:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

The IAAF World Cup doesn't fit in to either of the types described here. Geschichte (talk) 22:00, 17 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Which country has hosted the most world cups in different sport codes?

This edit request to World cup competition has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

59.101.76.18 (talk) 06:37, 30 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

 Not done - This is not a "spot the difference competition" Please suggest any changes in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ".
Please also cite reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 17:19, 30 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

This article has a whopping one citation. Thanks to this four-year-old edit, instead of pointing to any kind of source, it instead points to the homepage of an unrelated homework-help website. If the page weren't semi-protected, I'd revert it myself; instead I must ask someone else to do so. 198.73.125.126 (talk) 20:46, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

 Done I've manually rewritten the citation to use the standard template. Liu1126 (talk) 21:56, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The redirect Coupe du Monde has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 August 19 § Coupe du Monde until a consensus is reached. A1Cafel (talk) 11:00, 19 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

There have been previous votes and discussions above but they seem to be—like the current article—nearly evidence free. The justification for this page's existence seems to be a (praiseworthy) desire to avoid wp:bias... but taken up on behalf of other cultures who don't see any bias involved. The Aussie posting above parses 'World Cup' as talking about the FIFA thing, even while the Brits and Yanks are voting to defend the hono(u)r of Australia's dialect. No Desis have spoken up yet but, e.g., The Hindustani Times uses 'World Cup' to talk about the FIFA thing while distinguishing the much more important cricket contest as the 'T20 World Cup'. Google India has ~97% of the Subcontinent's search traffic. Look for "World Cup" and the results are a bit more than half cricket, a bit less than half soccer... but with all the pages talking about cricket distinguishing it as the 'Cricket World Cup', the 'ICC World Cup', or the 'T20 World Cup'.

1) Capitalized World Cup should redirect to the FIFA World Cup or just be the main page for the article. It's been patently clear since the page's start that the wp:primarytopic here is the quadrennial FIFA men's soccer world championship and that's true across dialects. For the total Ngram corpus, '* World Cup' the top four responses—orders of magnitude higher than the others—are 'the World Cup', 'FIFA World Cup', 'a World Cup', and 'Women's World Cup'. There's the 'Rugby World Cup' and the 'Cricket World Cup' and then back to the rest of the top 10 being about FIFA contests. The only (misplaced) cite on the current page exclusively uses the term for the soccer contest.

2) It's actually a bit sillier than that. World Cup and The World Cup currently redirect here. Looking at Ngram, not only is lower-case 'world cup' not the wp:primarytopic compared with upper-case 'World Cup', it barely exists in the wild. It's even sillier than that. Click through to the actual uses (like you do above to see 'the World Cup' on those Ngram results is the soccer one) and... they don't exist. Ngram just has some rounding error mistakes that misparse 'World Cup' or 'world's cup' or similar things as lower-case 'world cup'. The OED entry is, of course, at "World Cup, n.", and has a single instance of lower case use from a regional newspaper in the 1930s.

I'm sure there are some informal or (like in the OED cite) mistaken uses of lower-case 'world cup' but they're so minor that we shouldn't be using 'world cup' in this article at all. There's just a bunch of separate World Cups, not 'world cups' as a common noun category in general English.

3) The way to handle that, as people already pointed out above, is that World Cup (disambiguation)/List of world cups is all that's needed. People searching for lower-case 'world cup' will still mostly be (somewhat lazily) looking for the FIFA World Cup, but it's fine to redirect that form to the general list for grammatical/logical reasons.

4) I hate blanking content but the current 'work' here doesn't seem to be worth saving. If editors disagree with that, it still seems better that cites should be added to anything worth saving and then that should be merged to the world championship article. My 2¢, unless there's some good evidence I'm missing (...that should also be added in some form to the article). — LlywelynII 13:36, 14 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

I've removed the {{Rfc}} header for now, as there is no discernible Rfc question. This doesn't change anything about your initial comment above and you and other editors should just keep on discussing it, but you don't need an Rfc for that. It is also appropriate to discuss here issues about a possible forthcoming Rfc such as, "Do we need an Rfc about XYZ", or, "How should an Rfc question be worded", or "How many options should there be to choose from", and so on. At minimum, please see WP:RFCBEFORE before starting another one.

Regarding your specific issues: in points 1 and 2, you can take them to WP:Rfd. In point 4, there is nothing stopping you from nominating the article for deletion. Please follow the procedures at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:11, 14 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

LlywelynII, are you still interested in this? I think you could make a good case for an Afd. Have you done one before? Would you like to discuss the possibility here first, to see if it's worthwhile starting one? I tagged the largest section as possible original research, and maybe the whole article is. Another reason might be that it seems to be an article about a term, and per WP:NOTDICT, we generally don't do that, although there are exceptions where the term itself (as opposed to the concept) has a history of reliable reporting. I don't believe that's the case here, although I haven't delved into it, and we should search first to see if they exist. If they don't, I think you have good grounds for deleting the article. Mathglot (talk) 18:26, 19 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't frame it quite this way but overall I agree that the situation is a bit of a mess. There is scant evidence that the generic phrase world cup is widely used. Ha! In fact, my laptop just autocorrected that to the capitalized World Cup. Even if I were using it to refer to something else, perhaps metaphorically or by way of comparison, I would probably capitalize, in much the same way I might describe something as the Olympics of underwater basketweaving or this is my Super Bowl. The FIFA World Cup appears to be the primary topic by both usage and long-term significance a List of World Cups featuring only those contest with World Cup in the name would be a suitable replacement for this article. It could retain some of the background and history—it's not uncommon for standalone lists to contain some prose. I don't feel strongly enough about this to push or a change at the moment and would need to think through what the best move is —Myceteae‍🌈 (talk) 23:33, 15 June 2026 (UTC)Reply