Editorial policy

This page is our editorial standards in one place — what we cover, how we source it, how AI is used in the drafting, how we handle corrections and complaints, and how to get in touch.

What we do, and how

Flagside.football is a fast football news outlet, published in 11 editions, each in its readers' language. We cover European football — the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, the Champions League and the Europa League — alongside the lanes that make football culture: viral moments, transfer drama, kit leaks, wonderkids, fan reactions, matchday chaos.
Our news reports are grounded in publicly available reporting from a curated set of football sources. We watch, we cluster, we summarise, we publish in our own voice. We don't syndicate other outlets' work; we tell the same story differently and credit the people who reported it first.
Alongside news reports, we publish explainers on topics football fans are discussing, explainers that answer readers' questions, match previews, and a weekly quiz whose questions are drawn automatically from our own player database.

Editorial independence

The newsroom operates independently of any commercial interest. We do not take operator money, run affiliate links, accept paid placements, or link to or promote any gambling operator anywhere on the site. Our reviews of clubs, players, kits, transfers, and managers are not influenced by any advertiser, sponsor, sportsbook, or club press office.
No external party — including any company that might one day buy advertising on the site — has a veto over what we publish, when we publish it, or how we frame it. Editorial decisions sit with the newsroom.

Sourcing standards

Every news report cites the upstream reporting it builds on. The full source list is printed at the foot of each news report alongside the clubs, players, and topics covered. Explainers on topics football fans are discussing are written from our own published archive and general football knowledge; they do not report news and carry no source list.
Where a fact is reported by a single source we say so, and we use language that reflects the level of confidence available — "according to", "reportedly", "understands", "is said to". When we describe a transfer story, we attach a reliability label (official, advanced talks, strong rumour, early interest, social-only) so readers can calibrate the certainty of what they're reading.
We do not invent quotes. We do not invent fees, scorelines, ages, or contract lengths. If a fact is not in any source we have read, it does not go in a news report.
Tier-one sources for us are the BBC Sport, Sky Sports, The Guardian, ESPN FC, The Athletic, Reuters Sport, AP Sports, official club channels, and the major league press operations. Tier-two sources include trusted football specialists like Football Italia, Football España, Foot Mercato, Football Oranje, Sportbible Football, Footy Headlines, and Fabrizio Romano's public reporting. Each source is reviewed before it is enabled, and rate-limited so we don't put unreasonable load on anyone's servers.

AI-assisted reporting — full disclosure

Apart from the weekly quiz, articles on Flagside are drafted by an AI model; for news reports, it works from briefs derived from publicly available source reporting. We disclose this openly because we think you have a right to know. Every article is bylined "Flagside Newsroom", and every article except the quiz carries a line saying it was written with AI and checked automatically before publishing. There are no individual journalist bylines.
The pipeline runs four stages before a news report is published: discovery (we crawl enabled sources for new stories), clustering (we group source items that cover the same underlying story), drafting (an editor model writes a draft from the cluster's combined facts and the source headlines), and senior review (a separate model checks the draft for factual coherence, attribution, plagiarism risk, and a list of safety flags). Most drafts, not only those for news reports, are checked by an automated safety scanner and reviewed by a separate AI model against written rules. Drafts that pass are published automatically, without a person reading them first. Articles that fail the automated checks are held back for a human editor to approve, edit, or reject.
AI writes the drafts; the responsibility for what is published rests with us. The people who run Flagside monitor the site, and correct or remove errors. Every fact in our news reports is grounded in identifiable upstream reporting that is cited at the foot of the article. We do not use AI to fabricate quotes, and in news reports we do not use it to generate facts or "research" stories without source material.
We do not use AI to imitate the style of named individual journalists or to generate audio of real people's voices, and we do not generate images of real, identifiable people or real club crests for the site. Some cover images are AI-generated: photorealistic covers on explainers that answer readers' questions, and illustrations on explainers about topics fans are discussing. The page labels them "AI-generated image" or "AI illustration". All other cover images are either photographs, used as set out under Image rights, or branded graphics we make ourselves.

Corrections policy

When we get something wrong, we say so.
How to flag a correction: email corrections@flagside.football with the article URL, the part you believe is wrong, and any source that supports the correction. We aim to respond to credible correction requests within 48 hours.
How we publish corrections: minor typographical fixes are applied silently. Material factual corrections — anything that changes the meaning of the article — are made in-line, and a correction note is added at the bottom of the article describing what was changed and when. We don't quietly retitle or rewrite articles after publication without a visible note.
Major errors that go to the heart of an article will be acknowledged with a stand-alone correction or, in the most serious cases, a retraction. The original article URL will continue to work but will display the retraction and reason.

Right of reply

If you are named in an article and believe you have been treated unfairly, contact corrections@flagside.football. We will consider any reasonable response, factual clarification, or denial, and will publish it where we judge it fair to do so. Public figures and institutions can expect us to apply ordinary news-reporting standards; we will not hold an article back from publication simply because the subject would prefer we didn't run it.

Plagiarism and attribution

We rewrite stories in our own voice. Our automated review pass scans every draft for verbatim overlap with its source material. The senior-editor model is instructed to bounce any draft that re-uses an upstream sentence of more than ~8 words verbatim. Where a quotation is used, it is enclosed in quotation marks and attributed to the original speaker and the outlet that first published it.
We share the topic of a story with our sources; we don't share their words.

Image rights

Where we display a photograph of a real event we either: (a) make an abstract branded graphic ourselves; (b) hot-link the og:image of the source article we're building on, with attribution and a link to that article; or (c) embed an image from Wikimedia Commons under its free licence, crediting the author. We do not reproduce paywalled or contractually-restricted photography.
If you are a rights-holder and believe one of our images infringes your rights, contact corrections@flagside.football and we will remove or replace it on request.

What we won't cover

No operator content in any edition: we never link to or promote a gambling operator, publish bonus offers, run affiliate links or earn commission from gambling. This edition may publish betting analysis and tips. Where betting content appears, it is shown only to readers who confirm they are over 25, and any reader can switch it off in the privacy settings. The win probability shown on match pages is a measurement, not betting odds.
No coverage of minors (under-18s) that involves allegations, scandal, medical detail, or relationships beyond what is plainly part of the football story (under-17 internationals, academy debuts, etc.).
No reproduction of leaked private communications, photographs, or videos of named individuals without a clear public interest test.
No coverage of fan violence in a way that glorifies it.
No content that targets, harasses, or stereotypes a group of people on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, or nationality.

Help with gambling problems

Football and gambling are tangled up in the public conversation. If gambling is a concern for you or someone close to you, free and confidential help is available:
BeGambleAware (UK): begambleaware.org — free, confidential, 0808 8020 133.
Gambling Therapy (international): gamblingtherapy.org — free online support, multi-language.
NCPG (US): ncpgambling.org — 1-800-GAMBLER.

Contact

Corrections, complaints, right-of-reply: corrections@flagside.football.
Privacy: privacy@flagside.football.
Legal / commercial: legal@flagside.football.
News tips: news@flagside.football. We treat tips as confidential by default.