It's a freelancer's flaky best friend, a constant source of topical mischief, but also occasionally just a faithful reflection of how things stand. Wikipedia and football were made for one another. The trouble is, the pesky concepts of copyright and image rights have made the business of finding images of footballers an unnecessary minefield.
The result of that is some occasionally creative but often just charmingly mundane attempts to stay within the ethical and legal parameters. Mostly, the best bet is to track down a grainy, maximum-zoom mobile phone picture of the player warming up before a Premier League game about six years ago. If that doesn't work, things get a little interesting.
10) Carlos Pavon
You would be forgiven for not knowing who Carlos Pavon is, let alone what he looks like. Unfortunately, his Wikipedia page is on hand to provide clarity for only one of those things.
In the absence of a useful, rights-free image of Honduras’ all-time top goalscorer, Wikipedia user JVC3ETA saved the day by scouring their local police department’s e-fit database for someone who looks like they’ve played for no fewer than 20 clubs.
Even after the extensive research for this article, your correspondent still doesn’t know what Carlos Pavon looks like and has no intention of Googling him to find out. Any photograph would surely be an anticlimax after this.
9) Alan Curbishley
Wikipedia user Egghead06 getting up close and personal with everyone’s favourite non-managing football manager back in those heady days of the mid-to-late 2000s. Note that Curbs’ Wikipedia photo isn’t of him patrolling a technical area, or leaving the training ground in his car, but looking like he’s just been convicted in one of the biggest financial fraud cases of the decade and sentenced to 35 years.
8) Clayton Blackmore
Football wasn’t invented in 1992, and nor did the advent of the smartphone bring us the joy of photography. In that spirit, please behold the honest, raw, retro beauty of the Wikipedia photo of former Manchester United midfielder Clayton Blackmore.
While we ignore the evening and/or indoor use of sunglasses for the moment, it’s clear that this image doesn’t belong on the internet. It belongs on a student’s wall in the early 1990s, clinging on by virtue of a ball bearing-sized amount of Blue Tac.
Otherwise, all those years ago, the photographer (one Øyvind Vik, whose more famous work will appear later) was unwittingly ticking some boxes for the textbook footballer’s Wikipedia page of the future. Slightly blurry? Yep. Captured during a brief autograph-signing session, like all good Creative Commons images of sportspeople? You bet.
Now, those sunglasses.
7) Mario Jardel
Wikipedia, with its often sterile, matter-of-fact tone, can be an unforgiving beast.
On one hand, Mario Jardel’s utterly silly goalscoring record - in the first half of his distinctly top-heavy career - is there for all to see. 275 games for Porto, Galatasaray and Sporting produced 269 goals and a couple of European Golden Shoes that straddled the 1990s and 2000s.
Wikipedia, then, surely should have a picture of a lethal goalscorer in his pomp.
“Jardel training with Newcastle Jets” is a caption that somehow does his career a huge disservice and yet still manages to sum it up in the space of five words. Brutal work, Wikipedia user Kevin Airs. Still, at least the big man is smiling.
6) Andy Townsend
In and around Wikipedia, there is a clear struggle to ensure that the main photo of a person’s page really captures the essence of its subject. Here, photographer Marion O’Sullivan has, thankfully, managed to get a snapshot of some pure Andy Townsend.
He isn’t just signing that Aston Villa shirt, he’s really signing it, possibly while receiving some moderate banter from the early arrivals for a 2010 FA Cup semi-final. “Thanks guys, cheers, thanks very much”, this photo screams. A low-key triumph.
5) Bixente Lizarazu
Depending on your motivation and self-worth, some retired footballers’ Wikipedia photos can be a reassuring or dispiriting sight. They’ve let themselves go since hanging up their boots, they’re looking a bit sad as they attend some sort of dinner, they’re forcing a polite, squinty smile as they pose with yet another 40-year-old who just wants to tell them how much of a legend they are.
Bixente Lizarazu is not one of those.
Since retiring from tenacious left-back duties at an elite level for club and country, Lizarazu has got stuck into hobbies that only rock-hard and/or handsome people are permitted to do: namely, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (European blue-belt lightweight champion, for god’s sake) and surfing, as confirmed by his Wikipedia photo taken by Oscar Alonso Algote.
He also speaks four languages
4) Les Ferdinand
Once again, not a photo that captures its subject at the very peak of his powers.
Perhaps Les Ferdinand has extremely well-marshalled image rights, but this rather sad tableau of a Queens Park Rangers legend sat, all alone, digesting their relegation from the Premier League in 2015 surely cannot be the best that the world wide web can muster. Meanwhile, photographer Brian Minkoff’s vantage point also gives the impression that he’s about assassinate Sir Les because he simply knows too much.
3) Bob Wilson
At first glance, there’s nothing to get too concerned about here.
Just a free-to-use picture of the amiable former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson going about his business in (perhaps slightly too specific here, Wikipedia) Hatfield, Hertfordshire in February 2009.
But some further investigation - that is, clicking on the image itself - reveals something rather more mundane. And therefore, on the part of photographer Hilton Teper, quite sinister. Is Bob at one of his charity events? Is he opening a new supermarket?
No, it turns out he’s buying some petrol. Can a former Arsenal goalkeeper and broadcaster not buy some Premium Unleaded in peace any more?
2) Terry Venables
It’s tempting to let this image breathe for itself, without any comment whatsoever.
For years, this was the Wikipedia image of choice for the former Tottenham, Barcelona and England manager Terry Venables. Someone, somewhere - that’s you, Ben Sutherland - decided that a decapitated Spitting Image puppet of Terry Venables, sat in a glass case of a museum, would do the job.
These days, Venables’ Wikipedia page is simply imageless, the result of a tense battle in December 2013 as several editors fought to-and-fro over his “joke” and “inappropriate” image. But, deep in the archives, the puppet head remains.
1) Denis Irwin
We’re here. No.1. The defining moment. The masterpiece of the glorious Footballer’s Low-Key Wikipedia Picture genre.
It’s Denis Irwin walking past some bins at the old Manchester United training ground!
“Use it free” says Wikipedia user and aforementioned Clayton Blackmore enthusiast Øyvind Vik, a surprising act of intellectual benevolence over something that belongs in an art gallery of underwhelming-but-supposedly-definitive pictures of highly reliable full-backs.
Taken in 1992, this photo offers little hint of the seismic changes happening (or, possibly, about to happen) to the British footballing landscape. Here, we just see a Premier League footballer looking like he’s skiving off secondary school.
