If a soccer article is created on Wikipedia that does not meet WP:FOOTY’s notability guidelines per an assigned administrator, the page may never go live. Also, if a page has already been created in the past and is live, at some later date, that WikiProject’s volunteers might tag it for deletion and, after some deliberation, delete that page.

This week a Wikipedia editor tagged most of the teams currently in the Gulf Coast Premier League for deletion. The assertion was that the articles do not pass WP:FOOTY’s notability guidelines for clubs. The general notability guideline (GNG) for sport which says that a topic needs significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. WP:FOOTY requires clubs to meet the GNG and, as a guideline, notes that a team generally meets GNG if it has played in their country’s national cup. England gets a specific guideline that a club meets GNG if it has played in at least level 10 of the English system or in one of four national cups.

Beyond the somewhat overzealous editor choosing to, overzealously, implement a general guide as an immovable rule, the bigger issue is that WP:FOOTY’s notability guideline for clubs doesn’t really work for US clubs. The number of clubs that can qualify for the US Open Cup’s First Round (yes, qualification doesn’t count under WP:FOOTY’s GNG guideline) has not remotely matched the relative number of notable clubs that have formed during the modern soccer explosion. In addition, clubs outside of the three pro Divisions have no competitive access to leagues with automatic entries into the USOC so their path to so-called “notability” is severely hindered by the very structure of US soccer.

While a relatively small issue in the grand scheme of the sport, a lower league club’s worthiness to have a Wikipedia article, is a practical example of the impact that US soccer’s top-down structure that overly prioritizes the worth of higher-level clubs over the vast number of grassroots clubs. Having most of the resources and easier access builds in notability while lower-level clubs must jump over unreasonable hurdles to gain that sheen of notability.