Glossary61 terms

Glossary

Every term this record uses in a specific sense, defined. The classification, status and sourcing terms below are generated from the same vocabulary the badges and filters are generated from, so a definition here cannot drift from the label it defines.

Preserved Spanish and Argentine procedural terms

These are Spanish and Argentine procedural terms. They are shown in their original wording throughout the site, with the explanation below rather than an English substitute, because the nearest English words name different things: a procesamiento is not an indictment and an embargo is not a forfeiture. Rendering them that way would assert a procedural equivalence that does not exist.

Investigado: Argentine procedural status: a person formally under investigation. Not equivalent to a U.S. charge or indictment. A revocable status, not a verdict: the record includes an instance of a court revoking a person’s investigado status. The research record’s living-persons rule treats every named individual as an investigado or a witness unless a conviction is documented.
Procesamiento: Argentine procedural order finding grounds to proceed against a person. Preserved verbatim — not rendered as “indictment”. The research record defines it as an investigating judge’s reasoned interlocutory finding of sufficient suspicion to continue prosecuting — not a grand-jury indictment, not a trial verdict, and appealable. No conviction follows from an investigation, a charge, a procesamiento, or an appellate affirmance.
Embargo: Argentine precautionary attachment of assets to secure a possible future liability. Preserved verbatim — not rendered as “forfeiture”.
Falta de mérito: Argentine finding of insufficient merit to proceed at this stage — neither a conviction nor a definitive dismissal. One of the two counterpoints to a procesamiento, alongside sobreseimiento.
Sobreseimiento: Argentine dismissal or definitive closure of proceedings in a person’s favour. An auto de sobreseimiento is one of the two thresholds that would change the Negreira matter’s status in this record — to “dismissed”.
Auto de apertura de juicio oral: Argentine order opening the oral-trial phase of a proceeding. The other threshold: an auto de apertura de juicio oral would move the Negreira matter to “on trial”. Until one of the two is issued, the matter stays as the record has it.

Wherever one of these terms appears on a record, it carries this explanation as a tooltip. The reasoning behind preserving them is set out under what this site will not do.

Claim classifications

The seven primary labels every claim and timeline entry carries. Exactly one applies to a record at a time. There is no numeric score anywhere on this site — the classification, together with the record’s sources, is the confidence system.

Confirmed fact: Supported by a primary record, adjudicated finding or strong independent evidence
Credible reported allegation: Credible reporting or a formal allegation, not adjudicated as fact
Disputed interpretation: Evidence or qualified experts support more than one reading
Circumstantial connection: A documented proximity or overlap that does not prove causation or misconduct
Analytical inference: A reasoned interpretation derived from documented facts
Unsupported or false: Contradicted by evidence or lacking a credible basis after review
Not independently verified: Traceable claim with insufficient independent confirmation

How a record comes to carry one of these labels — including the reconciliation of the five different vocabularies the underlying research was written in — is set out under how claims are classified.

Secondary statuses

Additional flags a record can carry alongside its classification. A record may have several, or none. They qualify a classification; they never replace one.

Official finding: Established by an adjudicated or official determination, not only by reporting.
Developing: The record is not closed. A developing entry carries its primary classification for what is established, plus the date the position was last accurate.
Reported — single source: One originating report. No independent confirmation located.
Independently corroborated: Confirmed by at least one source with a separate sourcing chain.
Repetition only: Reproduced widely, but every reproduction traces back to one origin. Not confirmation.
Not found: Searched for and not located. This is a result, not an omission.
Inaccessible: Located but not retrievable — held in a court registry, behind a paywall, or under judicial secrecy.
Corrected: The record has been changed since first publication. The prior wording remains visible.
Superseded: Replaced by a later record. Kept rather than deleted.

Sourcing and independence

How this site counts what stands behind a claim. The counting rule matters more than the total: a large reference count and a single originating report are a weak position, not a strong one.

Independent sources: The number of separate sourcing chains behind a claim. Articles that repeat one original report are linked to that report and collapse into it, so ten outlets echoing one wire story count as one independent source, not ten.
Total references: Every reference shown for a claim, repetitions included. Shown alongside the independent count so the difference between the two is visible rather than hidden by whichever number is larger.
Repetition only: Many outlets, one origin. Not confirmation. The research record uses this where a figure or claim is widely reproduced but every reproduction traces to a single originating report.
Originating source: The report a repetition derives from. A source that has one cannot be counted as independent confirmation of the same claim, and a source cannot be both the originating report and an independent confirmation of it.
Primary record: A court, prosecutorial, governing-body, corporate or official match document — the record itself rather than an account of it.
Wikipedia: Never evidence and never independent confirmation on this site. It may appear in internal discovery notes only. A Wikipedia-derived reference is excluded from every independent-source count regardless of how it is flagged in the data.

The counting rule, with a worked example from the record, is under how sources are counted.

Legal and procedural status

The status vocabulary used for named people. These are never coloured red or green anywhere on the site: a person’s procedural position is not an editorial verdict. The preserved Spanish and Argentine terms are listed separately above.

Mentioned in reporting: Named in reporting, with no procedural status of any kind.
Named by a witness: Named in the testimony of another person. Not itself a procedural step.
Interviewed: Interviewed by an investigating body.
Subpoenaed: Formally required to appear or produce material.
Witness: Participating as a witness rather than as a subject.
Investigated: Subject of an investigation.
Charged: Formally charged.
Indicted: Formally indicted. Used only where the jurisdiction’s own process is an indictment.
Tried: Tried before a court.
Convicted: Convicted. Used only where a conviction is documented.
Acquitted: Acquitted.
Dismissed: Proceedings against the person dismissed.
Not charged: No charge brought. Recorded explicitly, because absence of a charge is itself a fact.

Source categories

The ten categories every source in the library is filed under. Wikipedia is deliberately not one of them.

Court or judicial record: A judgment, order, ruling or filing from a court.
Prosecutor or government record: A prosecutorial filing, tax-authority finding or other state record.
Governing-body regulation or decision: A published regulation, resolution or disciplinary decision from FIFA, CONMEBOL, UEFA, a national association or a league.
Official match report: The competition organiser’s own report for a fixture.
Corporate or financial record: A company filing, registry entry, contract or audited account.
Original interview, press conference or video: A first-hand statement — the recording or transcript itself, not an account of it.
Established wire or investigative reporting: Reporting from an established wire service or an investigative outlet doing its own sourcing.
Specialist legal or refereeing analysis: Analysis by a qualified legal or refereeing specialist. Expert opinion, not a finding.
Secondary reporting: Reporting that draws on other reporting rather than on its own sourcing.
Rumour or social-origin material: Material originating in social media or unattributed circulation. Recorded so its origin can be traced, never as evidence.

Source access states

What the research actually obtained, recorded at research time. These never collapse into one generic “unavailable”: a document nobody could find and a document behind a court registry are different facts, and only one of them is recoverable. A source’s access state is never rewritten if its URL later stops working — that is recorded separately.

Retrieved: Obtained and read. A retrieved source is guaranteed to carry a link or archive link.
Partially retrieved: Obtained in part — an excerpt, a summary, or some pages of a longer document.
Inaccessible: Located, but not retrievable: registry-only, paywalled, or held under judicial secrecy.
Not found: Searched for and not located anywhere. A null result, recorded as one.
Registry entry only: Only the registry’s own summary entry was available — the underlying filing was not.

Direction

A separate axis used only for officiating decisions, recording which side a decision fell towards. It is not an evidence classification and is never mapped onto one — a decision that benefited a team is not thereby evidence of anything.

Benefited: The decision fell in the recorded side’s favour.
Harmed: The decision fell against the recorded side.
Neutral: The decision favoured neither side.
Mixed: The decision cut both ways.
Not applicable: The record is not an officiating decision.