Football and the FIFA World Cup: Rules, Winners and Trophies

The correct answer is C, Uruguay. The first FIFA World Cup was staged in Uruguay in 1930, the country having been chosen partly because it was celebrating the centenary of its independence and partly because it was the reigning Olympic football champion. Uruguay also won the tournament, beating Argentina in the final at Montevideo, so the host became the first world champion.

Option A, Brazil, hosted the World Cup for the first time in 1950 and again in 2014, and although it has won the trophy more often than anyone else, it did not host the first edition. Option B, Italy, hosted the second World Cup in 1934 and won it, and hosted again in 1990. Option D, France, hosted the third edition in 1938 and hosted again in 1998, when it won the title at home; the Frenchman Jules Rimet was FIFA president when the tournament began, which is the source of the confusion.

The correct answer is B, Brazil. Brazil has won the FIFA World Cup five times, in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002, more than any other nation. It is also the only country to have appeared in every edition of the tournament since it began, which is a favourite second question of examiners on the same fact.

Option A, Germany, has four titles, won in 1954, 1974, 1990 and 2014, the first three as West Germany. Option C, Italy, also has four, won in 1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006, so Germany and Italy are tied in second place. Option D, Argentina, has won the trophy in 1978, 1986 and 2022, which places it with Uruguay on two before 2022 and three afterwards, still short of Brazil's tally.

The correct answer is C, Zurich. FIFA has its headquarters at Zurich in Switzerland, from where it administers the World Cup and the world rankings. The body itself was founded in Paris in 1904, and candidates often confuse the city of founding with the city of the present headquarters, which is exactly the trap this question sets.

Option A, Paris, is where FIFA was founded by seven European associations in 1904, but the office moved to Switzerland long ago. Option B, Lausanne, is in Switzerland too and is the seat of the International Olympic Committee and the Court of Arbitration for Sport, not of FIFA. Option D, Geneva, houses the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization and the International Labour Organization among others, but not the world football body.

The correct answer is B, twelve yards. The penalty mark in football is twelve yards, about eleven metres, from the midpoint of the goal line, and a penalty kick is taken from that spot with only the goalkeeper defending. This measurement is among the handful of numbers from the laws of the game that examiners ask directly.

Option A, ten yards, is the distance at which defending players must stand back from the ball at a free kick, so it is a real number from the same game but the wrong one here. Option C, fifteen yards, corresponds to nothing fixed in the laws and is placed only as a plausible distractor. Option D, eighteen yards, is the depth of the penalty area itself, which extends eighteen yards from the goal line and is often loosely called the eighteen yard box, which is the source of the confusion.

The correct answer is B, Durand Cup. The Durand Cup was first played at Shimla in 1888 and is the oldest football tournament in India and in Asia, and the third oldest in the world. It is named after Sir Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of British India at that time, and it later moved to Delhi and then to Kolkata.

Option A, the Santosh Trophy, began much later, in 1941, and is the national championship played between the states and units rather than between clubs. Option C, the Subroto Cup, started in 1960 and is the best known school level football tournament in the country, named after Air Marshal Subroto Mukerjee. Option D, the Rovers Cup, was founded in Bombay in 1891, which makes it older than the other two but still three years younger than the Durand Cup.

The correct answer is C, Brazil. The Jules Rimet Trophy, named after the FIFA president who conceived the World Cup, was to be kept permanently by the first nation to win the competition three times. Brazil achieved that in 1970 in Mexico, having already won in 1958 and 1962, and the trophy was handed over to it for good. FIFA then commissioned a new prize, the FIFA World Cup Trophy, awarded from 1974 onwards.

Option A, Italy, had also won three titles by 1982, but the rule applied only to the old trophy, which had already gone to Brazil. Option B, Uruguay, won the first World Cup in 1930 and won again in 1950, so it never reached three wins. Option D, West Germany, won in 1954 and 1974; its 1974 victory came with the new trophy, not the Jules Rimet.

The correct answer is B, 1962. India won the Asian Games football gold medal twice, first at the inaugural Games in New Delhi in 1951 and again at Jakarta in 1962, where the team beat South Korea in the final. Those two titles, together with the fourth place at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, mark the golden age of Indian football under the coach Syed Abdul Rahim.

Option A, 1958, was the year of the Tokyo Asian Games, at which India did not take the football gold. Option C, 1966, refers to the Bangkok Asian Games and is also the year England won the World Cup, which makes it a tempting but wrong choice. Option D, 1970, was the year of the Bangkok Asian Games at which India won the bronze medal in football, a good result but not the gold.

The correct answer is A, hat-trick. A hat-trick in football means three goals scored by the same player in a single match. The term travelled to football from cricket, where it originally meant three wickets in three successive balls and the bowler was rewarded with a hat, and it is now used across several games.

Option B, grand slam, is a term from tennis and golf, where it means winning all four major championships, and it has no place in the laws of football. Option C, a double, in football usually describes a club winning two major competitions in the same season, such as the league and the national cup, not a feat by one player in one match. Option D, a treble, likewise refers to a club winning three trophies in a season, most often the league, the national cup and a continental title.

The correct answer is B, states and units. The Santosh Trophy, started in 1941 and named after the Maharaja of Santosh in undivided Bengal, is the national football championship of India, played between teams representing the state associations and certain institutional units such as the services and the railways. It is the oldest surviving national competition of its kind in Indian football.

Option A, clubs of the top division, describes the national league competitions rather than the Santosh Trophy. Option C, schools, is the domain of the Subroto Cup, begun in 1960 and organised in New Delhi for school teams from across the country and abroad. Option D, universities, points to inter university championships organised by the Association of Indian Universities, which are separate from the Santosh Trophy.

The correct answer is B, 1942 and 1946. The World Cup is played every four years, so after the 1938 tournament in France the next editions would have fallen in 1942 and 1946. Both were cancelled because of the Second World War and its aftermath, and the competition resumed only in 1950 in Brazil, twelve years after the previous one.

Option A is wrong because the 1938 World Cup was in fact held, in France, and won by Italy. Option C is wrong because the 1950 tournament did take place in Brazil, where Uruguay won the decisive match at the Maracana. Option D names 1940 and 1944, which were never World Cup years at all; the four year cycle from 1930 falls on 1934, 1938, 1942 and 1946, so those two years are outside the schedule entirely.

The correct answer is C, eleven. A football side takes the field with eleven players, one of whom is the goalkeeper, the only member of the team permitted to handle the ball, and that only within his own penalty area. If a team is reduced to fewer than seven players through dismissals or injuries, the match cannot continue.

Option A, nine, is the size of a baseball side and of a softball team, not of a football team. Option B, ten, is the number of outfield players in football once the goalkeeper is set aside, which makes it the most attractive wrong answer in the set. Option D, twelve, is the number of players in a kabaddi squad on paper and in some other games, but in football a twelfth player on the field is an offence that brings a penalty against the side.