Football General Knowledge Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sheffield

Sheffield FC was founded in October 1857 by Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, two members of Sheffield Cricket Club who, having organised informal football games within their cricket team, decided to formalise their participation. At the time, there were no standard set of rules for football, and so the club members drew up their own set of rules that they would play under, which were the first rules published by a club, rather than a school or university. Although Sheffield joined the newly established Football Association (FA) in November 1863, they continued to use their own rules, which had been adopted by other clubs in the city, rather than the new rules drawn up by the FA.

Sheffield celebrated their 150th anniversary in 2007, a landmark in football history, which saw the club celebrate with special matches against European giants Inter and Ajax, while three years earlier they received FIFA's Order of Merit. In this, they were one of only two clubs to receive the honour, the other being Real Madrid. The same year also saw the club achieve success on the pitch by winning promotion to the Northern Premier League, the highest level they had reached.

Answer: Civil Service FC

Civil Service FC was founded in 1863 as a club that played both football and rugby. On 26 October 1863, it became one of eleven clubs that met to form the Football Association, where they were represented by George Warne, a civil servant from the War Office, which led to the founding documents of the FA referring to the club as the "War Office Club". Civil Service played in the first FA Cup in 1871, while club members were prominent in organising the first matches between English and Scottish representative teams in the early 1870s.

Civil Service is one of two clubs that are recognised as being founding members of both the FA and the Rugby Football Union, which was founded in 1871, alongside Blackheath. However, the Blackheath club quickly left the FA as a result of disagreements over the newly defined rules, while Civil Service, although still ostensibly a single entity in 1871, was largely operating separate football and rugby clubs by then.

Answer: Aston Villa

The first FA Cup trophy was made by Martin, Hall & Co, a Sheffield based silversmith, for the cost of £20. the trophy was first awarded to Wanderers for their victory in the inaugural FA Cup Final in 1872. In 1878, after the same team had won their fifth overall, and third consecutive title, rather than keeping the trophy, as were allowed by the rules of the competition, they returned in to the FA, on the proviso that no one else would be permitted to keep it if it was subsequently won three times in a row.

In 1895, Aston Villa won the trophy by beating West Bromwich Albion 1-0 in the final, held at Crystal Palace. To promote their victory, the club loaned the trophy out to various local businesses for display. On 11 September 1895, five months after the final, while it was on display at William Shillcock's football outfitters in Birmingham, the trophy was stolen from the shop window. Although a £10 reward was offered for its return, the trophy was never recovered, and the FA fined Aston Villa £25 for the cost of a replacement. An identical replica was manufactured, and was used until it was replaced in 1911. In 2005, the second trophy was purchased by David Gold, then chairman of Birmingham City, after which it was placed on permanent display at the National Football Museum.

Answer: Budapest Honvéd

In 1953, Wolverhampton Wanderers installed a set of floodlights at their Molineux stadium, with the first game to be played using them being a friendly against the South African national team on 30 September. To publicise their new infrastructure, the club organised a number of prestigious midweek friendly games against opposition from around the world. these "floodlit friendlies" proved popular, with a number screened live by BBC Television. On 13 December 1954, the latest team to play at Molineux was the Hungarian club Budapest Honvéd who, at the time, featured a number of players from Hungary's national team, the so-called "Magical Magyars", who were at the time regarded as the best team in the world and who had, in the previous twelve months, humbled England twice.

In the game, although the Hungarians went 2-0 up after just 14 minutes, at half-time the Wolves manager, Stan Cullis, ordered the pitch to be watered, thus preventing Honvéd from playing their natural passing game easily. Having scored a penalty four minutes after half-time, Wolves, with less than 15 minutes left, scored twice to take a 3-2 lead. After the end of the game, both Cullis and the English press declared that Wolves were now "champions of the world". This led to a number of European journalists to dispute the claim, with Gabriel Hanot of "L'Equipe" suggesting that a tournament between European clubs be organised to find the best. The following year saw the debut of a new tournament organised by UEFA, the European Champion Clubs' Cup, which came to be known as simply the "European Cup".

Answer: Benfica

From its debut in 1955, the European Cup was dominated by Real Madrid. Led by Argentine forward Alfredo Di Stéfano, who joined the club in 1953, Real went undefeated in the competition for five years, which culminated in their victory in the 1960 European Cup final when they beat German club Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in Glasgow. Their fifth consecutive victory saw them go into the 1960-61 tournament as favourites. However, they were drawn in the first round against their great rivals Barcelona, and ended up losing 4-3 on aggregate, the first European Cup tie they had ever lost.

Barcelona ended up reaching the final, where they played Portuguese giants Benfica, who had had a relatively easy progress through the competition. The final, played in Bern, saw the Portuguese club win 3-2, for their first victory in the competition, and the first club other than Real Madrid to win the trophy. Benfica reached the final for the second consecutive time in 1962, where they played Real Madrid, and won again, this time by five goals to three. Benfica also reached two of the next three finals, losing to AC Milan in 1963 and Inter in 1965. Real Madrid also lost another final in 1964 to Inter, before they finally won their sixth title in 1966.

Answer: Queen's Park

From 1870, a number of representative matches between teams representing England and Scotland were played, primarily organised by Charles Alcock, then secretary of the Football Association. All of these games were played in London, with the Scotland sides made up almost exclusively of players based in the English capital; only Robert Smith, who played for Glasgow club Queen's Park, appeared in these games. In 1872, Alcock issued a further challenge for a game this time to be played in the north of England. At the time, there was a limited number of players in Scotland playing to the rules originally drawn up by England's FA in 1863. Additionally, Scotland had no equivalent governing body. As a result, it was Queen's Park, who at the time were Scotland's leading club, that took up the challenge. The fixture, which was arranged to be played in Glasgow, was scheduled for 30 November 1872.

The entire Scottish team for the game was drawn from Queen's Park's players; although Scotland attempted to select Arthur Kinnaird of Wanderers FC and Henry Renny-Tailyour of Royal Engineers AFC, neither were available. The English side were selected from nine different clubs. The familiarity of the Scottish players with each other was seen as an advantage, although England improved in the second half. However the game ended 0-0. Four months after the game was played, Queen's Park were one of eight Scottish clubs that met and agreed to form the Scottish Football Association.

Answer: Uruguay

The first Olympic football tournament was organised as part of the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. Both this and the following tournament in 1904 saw club and scratch sides take part, rather than national teams. It was only at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, where the football competition was organised by the Football Association, that the tournament was first played between national sides. The following competition in 1912 was also organised by the national governing body, in this case the Swedish Football Association. It was only in 1920 that the Olympic tournament was organised by FIFA, the world governing body, for the first time.

The tournament in 1920 was won by Belgium but, because this was before FIFA adopted a definition of professionalism, they were classed as "World Amateur Champions". It was only from the 1924 tournament, which was the first in FIFA's "open era", that FIFA indicated that, in the absence of an actual world championship, the Olympic champions would hold the title of world champions as well. The 1924 champions were Uruguay, who retained the title four years later in 1928. The success of the 1928 tournament, in addition to the fact that the International Olympic Committee mandated that all participants in the Olympics had to be amateurs, led to FIFA deciding to organise their own world championship tournament, with the first FIFA World Cup held in Uruguay in 1930.

Answer: South America

Football was first established in South America in 1859 with the foundation of the Lima Cricket and Football Club, while the Argentine Football Association became the continent's first national governing body. In 1916, as part of the overall national celebrations for the centenary of Argentina's independence, an international football tournament was organised between Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Chile. The success of the tournament, which was won by Uruguay, led to the four deciding to form a governing body for South America, which was founded on 9 July as CONMEBOL.

The South American Championship continued until 1929, after which the enmity between Argentina and Uruguay following the 1930 World Cup saw the competition abandoned until 1935. Since then, the tournament has been played at varying periods, sometimes annually, sometimes every two years, sometimes every four, with the name Copa América adopted in 1975. It was only in 1986 that CONMEBOL mandated that it take place every two years in a single host country. In 2016, a special Copa América Centenario tournament to celebrate the competition's centenary was held in the United States, the first time it had been held outside South America.

Answer: Mexico

At the FIFA Congress held in Tokyo in October 1964, Mexico was selected as the host of the upcoming 1970 World Cup, ahead of a bid from Argentina. The tournament would be the first to be held in North America, and the first outside of Europe or South America, and would be the second major sporting event held in the country in two years, following the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Although the tournament proved spectacularly successful, the likelihood of Mexico hosting a second tournament was small, as, at that point, no nation had hosted the tournament a second time.

In June 1974, Colombia was selected as the host of the 1986 World Cup. At the time of the hosting being awarded, the World Cup was a 16-team tournament. But, from 1982 onwards, the competition was expanded to 24 teams. FIFA's list of requirements for the hosting of the tournament, in relation to the stadiums and infrastructure, were determined to be too onerous for Colombia to meet and, in November 1982, just four months after the 1982 tournament ended with the display of the message "Nos vemos en el Mundial Colombia 86" (See you at the World Cup Colombia 86), Colombia withdrew from hosting. New bids were then invited, with Mexico and Canada reaching the final two, and Mexico selected in May 1983 to become the first nation to host a second World Cup, maintaining the traditional alternating of host duties between Europe and Latin America.

Answer: South Korea

A total of 13 teams took part in the first World Cup in 1930, with seven being from South America, four from Europe and two from North America. Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and the United States were the four seeded teams, and were kept apart in the draw. The winners of each of the four groups advanced to the semi-finals; the United States, with a pair of 3-0 wins over Belgium and Paraguay, won Group 4 easily and went on to play Argentina in the semi, where they lost 6-1. With no third-place playoff, the two losing semi-finalists were ranked according to their tournament records, with the United States claiming third place.

Following the 1930 tournament, the competition became dominated by European and South American teams, with the furthest that teams from outside these two areas reached in the tournament being the quarter-finals - Cuba (1938), North Korea (1966), Cameroon (1990) and Mexico twice in 1970 and 1986. It was 2002, which was the first tournament held in Asia, that saw a team from outside Europe or South America reach the semi-finals when co-hosts South Korea, having qualified top of their group, beat first Italy and then Spain before falling in the semi to Germany. South Korea eventually finished the tournament in fourth place.