Sports Teams - freebase-schema/freebase GitHub Wiki

Table of Contents

  1. Roster
  2. Squad Number
  3. Position
  4. Coaches and other staff
  5. Location
  6. Arena/Stadium

Sports team refers to an athletic team comprised of athletes. A sports team is two or more athletes working toward an objective in a competitive sport. Sports teams can be composed of professional or amateur athletes and can compete in the same sport for any period of time, even for a single match or game. A useful metric for deciding team-ness is whether the entity changes if the roster changes. If not, it's a team. If it does change, it's something else.

Each sports team is involved in a certain sport, e.g football, basketball,baseball etc.

Let’s think about what are the key "ingredients" of a sports team.

The first and the most important would be the roster, in other words the athletes who are members of the team.

Let’s take a look at a few roster examples:

New York Knicks Basketball team

Baltimore Ravens American Football Team

Real Madrid Soccer team

What is the major difference you can notice in the three rosters above?

Most likely everyone will immediately notice the difference in roster size or the number of athletes on the teams. American Football teams usually have huge rosters when compared to basketball or soccer teams.

Now let us look at the similarities on the 3 rosters above.

Try to imagine you were a player on one of those 3 teams. What would you need to have in order to get out on the court/playing field and take part in an official game?

Usually, you would need to have a squad number assigned to you, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to participate in the game.

Squad number, often referred to as the uniform number, jersey number or shirt number is the number worn on a player's uniform, to identify and distinguish each player (and sometimes others, such as coaches and officials) from others wearing the same or similar uniforms.It is used to identify the player to officials, other players, official scorers, and spectators; in some sports such as American Football or Rugby, it is also indicative of the player's position.

For example in soccer teams players often wear the same number throughout the whole period with the team, while on the other hand in Rugby Union, each squad number indicates a certain position. Numbers 1–8 are the 'forwards', and 9–15 the 'backs'. Rugby union even has a position named simply after the shirt normally worn by that player in the "Number 8" position. Therefore, in Rugby Union it often happens that several players wear the same number during a season.

We already mentioned positions above.

Imagine you were a member of a sports team. Would you be able to go out on the court and play wherever you want or apply your own tactics?

Maybe for a few minutes, before the coach sends you back to the bench. You probably wouldn’t want that. Before you go out on the court you would have to have a position assigned to you.

Let’s go back to our roster examples and take one more look at the positions.

Do you notice any similarities? Can we consider a position from the soccer team roster the same as a position from a basketball team roster?

For example we can take a look at Sergio Ramos (#4) whose position is Defender at Real Madrid and compare it with Raymond Felton (#2) from New York Knicks whose position is Guard (G).

Now, for an average person who doesn’t follow soccer or basketball this might seem similar because the words defend and guard have a similar meaning. The definition of "to guard" is To keep (an opposing player) from scoring or playing efficiently, while the definition of “to defend” is To attempt to prevent the opposition from scoring or To be responsible for guarding (an opposing player).

But are defender (soccer) and guard (basketball) really similar positions?

After watching a few minutes of a basketball and a soccer game we would have our answer. No, they are not the same positions, not even similar.

In a basketball game all 5 players on the court defend and attack. All 5 of them guard a player when the opposing team attacks. For example, a Forward in basketball usually guards the Forward from the opposing team when the opposing team has the ball. So, not only guards have defensive assignments in basketball but all the other players as well. To add more to the confusion, usually the best defensive players in basketball are Forwards and Centers, which we can verify by looking at the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award . Out of 31 winners only 7 of them are Guards.

On the other hand, this is usually not the case in soccer. In soccer it is very unlikely that a forward(attacker) will have defensive assignments or that a pure defender will join the attack other than on few specific occasions during the game.

The conclusion is that we usually can not compare positions across different sports, even if they have a similar or even the same name. However, there are some exceptions. Here are are few examples: Goalkeeper in Soccer vs Goalkeeper in Futsal, Center in American Football vs Center in Canadian Football or Firstbase in Baseball vs Firstbase in Softball. Since the sports are basically variations of each other or they are closely related we can consider the positions above as same.

Some sports have just a few positions while other sports have many more. A quick look at the American football team roster would be enough to spot the difference in number of positions when compared to a basketball team.

**NOTE: Even though in team sports the athletes on the teams usually have a squad number and position assigned to them there are teams where squad numbers and positions aren't applicable. **

Usually, the players’ positions are determined at early stages of their career and they depend on several different factors such as height, weight, speed, technical skills and many other. But ultimately the head coach (in some sports referred to as manager) decides which formation will be applied during a game.

Because of that, each team usually has a head coach.

Usually, the responsibilities of a head head coach include (but not limited to):

  • Selecting the team of players for matches, and their formation.

  • Planning the strategy, and instructing the same on the field/court.

  • Delegating duties to the coaching and medical staff.

  • Facing the media in pre-match and post-match interviews.

  • other duties such as buying and selling players in the transfer market depending on the sport

It is important to distinguish head coaches and other coaching staff such as reserve team coach, assistant coach, scouts, trainers,fitness coaches, goalkeeper coaches, offensive or defensive coordinators and many other members of coaching staff. All of them have a specific duty and all of them answer to the head coach.

A team may also have other staff which takes care of the business side of the sports organizations, such as general managers, CEO, owners etc.

Take a look at a few examples and try to answer if the person could be considered as a head coach of the team he is currently associated with:

  1. Louis Van Gaal

  2. Lou Lamoriello

  3. Alen Bokšić

  4. Josh McDaniels

  5. Michael Jordan

Only the first person can be considered as head coach, the others are either assistant coaches, general managers or owners of the teams.

Now that we went through the most important features of a sports team let’s think about the rest.

What else does a sport team usually have?

Each team usually has a certain location where it is based. In FB terms a Sports Team Location is a location which the team represents.

What does it mean? Can we say that the sports team location is always the location in which the team is located?

Let us look at a few examples..

İstanbul Güngörenspor - by looking through the article we can see that the club is based in Güngören, a district in İstanbul, Turkey.

What location does the team represent? Just one of the three locations or perhaps all of them?

The team name suggest that the team represents the city of Istanbul and the district of Güngören but there are many other football clubs based in Istanbul. What happens when İstanbul Güngörenspor plays against Galatasaray S.K. ? Both clubs are based in Istanbul. Can we say that the clubs represent the same location even if playing against each other?

Furthermore, what happens when Galatasaray S.K. competes in an international competition? Does it mean the team represents Turkey in an international competition? An average football fan outside of Turkey would probably agree to that. But, how about Fenerbahçe S.K. fans ( the biggest rival of Galatasaray)? Would a Fenerbahce fan root for Galatasaray and say the team represents Turkey? Probably not.

Fitzroy City SC - at first look, this looks like a simple case of team representing the location which the team is based in. However, is it really that simple?

If we dig a bit deeper, we’ll find out that the team nickname is "Serbia", the coach and most of the players are either Serbs or of Serbian origin. If we asked 10 people from Fitzroy to answer the following question: “Does the team represent the whole city of Fitzroy or only the Serbian population of Fitzroy?” we would probably get different answers.

As a short test please look at the following examples and try to answer the questions by yourself:

  1. Which location does Barnet F.C. represent?

  2. Which location does Chelsea F.C. represent ?

  3. Which location does Queensland Lions FC represent?

  4. Which location does Texas Rangers represent?

  5. Which location does Drapac Professional Cycling represent?

Once you answer the questions above try to think about your answers a bit more.

Would an average person agree with your answer? Would a true fan of those teams agree with your answer?

We would most likely get several different answers on all the questions above because there is probably no correct or wrong answer on those questions.

In addition to a bigger locations in which teams are based in (such as cities), most of the teams also have a home arena or stadium where they play their home games.Most, but not all.

Can you think of a sports team for which you are sure that it doesn’t have a home arena or home stadium?

How about these two Germany national football team , United States men's national basketball team ? Or this one Astana Pro Team ?

None of the above has a home arena/stadium. The first two are national teams and in most cases national teams don’t play their home games at only one stadium or arena. They usually play at different stadiums/arenas across the country.

The third example is a road racing cycling team. Even though the team might have a specific venue where they prepare for races, road cycling teams compete in road races across the World so we can’t say they have a home arena or stadium.