Which country has won the FIFA World Cup the maximum number of times?

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 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.