A japanese naming related question

I've watched a football match with japanese comments, and I noticed that the names of the players were all in kanjis.
Is there a rule for translating names from english to japanase, or do you just replace the letters with similarly sounding kanjis?

well if it's an english -> japanese you would use katakana.
like the name Sally, it would translate to sari-(サリー)
if you want to put your name into kanji it'd be pretty hard finding the sounds/kanji that go with it? ;_;'' but you can do that like how they did zeus and occult.
Zeus ->seusu> 世宇子

I really don't know how to phrase it. orz||