[1] It is considered one of "the most complete" publicly available statistical football databases in the world, and has virtually every piece of historical information.

[2] This enterprise, according to its founders, was created in January 1994[3] by three regulars of the Rec.Sport.Soccer (RSS) Usenet newsgroup: Lars Aarhus, Kent Hedlundh, and Karel Stokkermans.

It was originally known as the "North European Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation", but the geographical reference was dropped as its membership from other regions grew.

The spin-off projects are dedicated to Albania, Brazil, Denmark, Norway, Romania, Uruguay, Venezuela and Egypt.

First presented in 1992, the readers of the newsgroup voted in a format similar to that of the France Football Ballon d'Or award.