Wikipedia:How many footballers

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

This essay, WP:How many footballers, refers to the number of articles about footballers in the English Wikipedia, which contains more than 726 footballer articles. More are added each day, where website Playerhistory.com has listed over 242,000 footballers, as an idea of how many articles there could be. The current count, here, can be estimated by counting the entries in each national category of association football players:

{{PAGESINCATEGORY:English footballers}} = 9
{{PAGESINCATEGORY:French footballers}} = 18
{{PAGESINCATEGORY:German footballers}} = 11
{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Australian footballers}} = 0
{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Australian soccer players}} = 10
{{PAGESINCATEGORY:American soccer players}} = 14

However, to use the number in a calculation, get "|R" format:

{{PAGESINCATEGORY:English footballers|R}} = 9

For the total, add all the national categories together:

Total of 104 nations: 726

The expression of the separate counts for each national category is the following set of added numbers:

Expression of adding category counts: {#expr: 9 +

11 + 10 + 0 + 7 + 23 + 18 + 11 + 8 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 9 + 9 + 11 + 6 + 6 + 5 + 7 + 10 + 7 + 9 + 7 + 6 + 5 + 7 + 6 + 7 + 5 +

7 + 6 + 0 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 7 + 5 + 7 + 3 + 4 +

6 + 8 + 8 + 6 + 6 + 5 + 6 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 4 +

6 + 6 + 8 + 3 +

8 + 8 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 4 + 7 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 5 +

7 + 7 + 8 + 0 + 6 + 8 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 0 +

9 + 15 + 4 + 8 + 5 + 6 +

7 + 5 + 6 + 5 + 8 + 6 + 5 + 17 + 5 + 6 + 6 + 15 + 8 + 4 + 9 + 5 + 6 + 8 +

14 + 10+ 9 + 9 }}

Adding the category counts together is an effective method for estimating the total of footballer articles.

[ This essay is a rough draft to be expanded later. ]