Every fact on this site goes through the same sequence before it is published.
1. Find it in a primary source first
Governing bodies, official competition sites and official club sites come first: FIFA, UEFA, the AFC, Football Australia, The IFAB for the Laws of the Game. Reference works and reputable news reports come second, and are used to confirm rather than to establish.
2. Confirm anything that changed recently
Records move. Anything that could have changed in the last two years is verified against a current source at the time of writing, not recalled. That applies especially to caps, goals, championships and the Laws of the Game, which are amended annually.
3. Check the qualifier, not just the fact
Most football errors are precision errors rather than factual ones. Biggest win at a World Cup is not the biggest win in an international. The men’s caps record is not the all-time caps record. A match result is not an aggregate, and neither is a shoot-out score. We check which question the fact actually answers.
4. Try to break it
Before a batch is published, its answers are checked again by someone whose brief is to find errors rather than to confirm the work. That pass has caught real mistakes in every batch we have run, including a player’s name, a red card given to the wrong minute and a title credited to the wrong club.
5. Set a review date
Nothing is published without a date to be re-checked. That date appears on the article.