Yours Exclusively Trivia Quiz

Answer: 100th career goal.

Rogério Mücke Ceni was the goalkeeper for the Brazilian giants São Paulo for his entire career. A very agile and keen goalkeeper, Ceni was also the set-piece free kicker and took the penalty kicks on the team. Amazingly, in a 2011 match against Corinthians, Ceni's free kick goal became the 100th of his career (and the eventual game-winner). He finished his career with 129 goals and was in the top-10 for São Paulo all-time.

Ceni was a great goalkeeper and leader on the team. Despite some serious injuries, Ceni was always able to recover and to return to the team to defy the expectations. He was team captain, and was also called up to the Brazilian national team many times though only playing 16 games for them.

Answer: UEFA Champions League Champion

With many more awards than the ones mentioned in the question, Totti has never won the UEFA Champions League (nor the Europa League) with Roma. Totti is remembered as a prolific goal scorer with memorable victory dances when he scored goals. Often Totti would have a t-shirt on with a message that he would flash to the crowd and cameras after he'd scored a goal.

Totti was not only a crafty goal machine but also has great ball-handling skills and good game vision. He was able to pass the ball to the open man just as well as he could redirect the ball into the back of the net. Despite being wooed during his career by other clubs, Totti never thought of leaving Roma. He played in 25 Serie A seasons and scored 250 Serie A goals in that time. He was the team captain from the age of 22 until he retired in 2017.

Answer: Score a goal on a header

Jamie Carragher grew up as an Everton supporter, which made his signing with Liverpool very strange. Even stranger was that he spent his entire 17 seasons in the Premier League in uniform for the Reds, never signing with another club. In his very first start for Liverpool in the 24th round of the 1996-97 campaign, Carragher scored a goal in a 3-0 win over Aston Villa off of a header. Despite this good game, Carragher wouldn't play again for the remainder of the season.

Nevertheless, Carragher was a brilliant defender and was not kept out of the first squad for long. That following season saw him getting more and more starts for the Reds, and he would have been noticed more except that was also the year that 18-year-old Michael Owen started his career of brilliance.

Carragher won many awards with Liverpool including the UEFA Cup, the Champion's League, domestic cups, and, in fact, the one thing that eluded him was a league title. Carragher, for his last ten seasons with Liverpool, was co-captain of the squad.

Answer: Catalonia

Carles Puyol was a brilliant defender for Barcelona and for Spain. In fact, internationally, he played in exactly 100 games for Spain. However, coming from a little town about a three hour drive from Barcelona, Puyol was also eligible to play for Catalonia, the autonomous district in Spain. As Catalonia is a non-FIFA member, eligibility rules don't apply and Puyol chose to play in friendlies for the team, traditionally around Christmas.

Puyol broke onto the scene for Barcelona but was third in the pecking order to Frank de Boer and Michael Reiziger. He nearly was traded away to Malaga because of this. Puyol chose to persevere, and, fifteen seasons later retired, still in a Barcelona uniform. He originally trained as a goalkeeper, then a striker, then a defensive mid before settling in his defender role. As a defender he was very highly regarded and his style of play was praised highly. Sadly, knee problems cut his career short.

Puyol captained Barcelona for ten years. He captained Spain and Catalonia as well.

Answer: Ginger Ninja

Paul Scholes was considered by many to be one of the greatest midfielders of his time. He received accolades from players, managers, and coaches alike. He was a very technical player who wasn't particularly fast, but had a brilliant way of seeing the game and could shoot with either foot and was equally dangerous with his head.

The "Ginger Ninja" (maybe due to his red-headedness as well as the fact that he was carded so often) played in 19 seasons for United, scoring in each season for them. United won 11 the Premier League titles in those seasons. When he retired in May 2013, the second time (his first was short-lived from May 2011 to to January 2012), Scholes was the most decorated English football player and one of the most respected players of all time. He won two Champions Leagues, three FA Cups, five Community Shields amongst other awards, playing a key role in securing the silverware.

Paul Scholes was not a regular as team captain.

Answer: A statue of him was erected.

Tony Adams made his debut for Arsenal in 1983, and, by 1986, was a regular on the Gunners' squad. A central defender, he captained the club to the top-flight title in three different decades becoming the first to do that in England. He played 674 games for Arsenal as well as 66 games for England. He has the distinction of being the last player to score a goal for England at the old Wembley Stadium. He captained both England and Arsenal and was well-respected by his peers.

In 2011, a statue was unveiled of Tony Adams at the Emirates Stadium (Ashburton Grove) along with Thierry Henry and Herbert Chapman, and later Dennis Bergkamp was also added to the display. After his retirement, Adams tried his hand at coaching, though not with much success.

Answer: Ballon d'Or

"The joy of seeing Yuri Gagarin flying in space is only superseded by the joy of a good penalty save." - Lev Yashin

Lev Yashin was the benchmark for goalkeeping as he led Dynamo Moscow from between the sticks. He played 19 seasons for the squad, from 1950 to 1970 (missing the 1951 and 1952 seasons). He was admired and revered by many goalkeepers around the world for his athleticism, leadership, ability, reflexes, and height - which he used to his advantage to intimidate opposing attackers. In 1963, Lev Yashin became the first (and when this quiz was written in 2018, the only) goalkeeper to win the Ballon d'Or, an award for the player of the year.

Lev Yashin was not only a brilliant football goalkeeper, he was also a hockey net-minder. Also playing for Dynamo Moscow, Yashin won the Soviet Cup in 1953 with his team. Yashin stopped 151 penalty kicks in his career, a record which makes you wonder how many penalty kicks his defenders gave opposing players. Yashin, on the other hand, became the first (and only, at the time of writing this quiz) goalkeeper who let in a goal directly from a corner kick in the World Cup.

Yashin captained his club sparingly; at that time it was unheard of to give the honour to a goalkeeper. Nevertheless, he was able to lead his team and was often heard giving orders to his defenders, something that other goalkeepers started doing after seeing the effectiveness of this practice.

Answer: Phil

Gary Neville was a hard tackler and an even tougher critic, something that was often criticised by his opponents. He came up to the club as a young player along with other home-grown talent for Manchester United such as Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, and, of course, his younger brother Phil Neville. The investment paid off, as Gary Neville would continue to play for 20 seasons and over 600 games for United.

He was also called up to play for the England squad 85 times and has the distinction of having more own goals (2) than actual goals (0) for the team. Nevertheless, he was rarely overlooked when an England squad was selected and usually only missed games due to injury.

Neville captained Manchester United for five seasons, though not the England team.

Answer: AC Milan

One of the iconic defenders in the game, Paolo Maldini played his entire career, all 25 seasons, with AC Milan. He also played 126 games for the Italian national team which was, at the time of his retirement, an Italian record. As the son of Cesare Maldini, Paolo had the opportunity to play for his father while his father coached the U-21 and also the senior Italian squads.

Paolo Maldini was a world-class defender who even won the UEFA Best Defender title when he was 39 years old. He played with a lot of pace and stamina, and his athleticism, timing and technical ability made opposing attackers very wary when they were near him. He was cool and composed on the field and earned the nickname "Il Capitano" by his teammates. He also was awarded the captain's armband by Italy in 1994 and by Milan in 1997.

Answer: Giggs

Ryan Joseph Giggs was an amazing winger for Manchester united. His career spanned from 1990 when he was only 17 years old, to 2014. The decision to retire was due to his appointment as an assistant manager to Louis van Gaal. He was very successful and he helped the club be very successful; In his time at Manchester United, Giggs won the Premier League title 13 times, the Community Shield nine times, the FA Cup four times, the League Cup three times, the Champions League twice, and the Club World Cup, the Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup once each. His individual honours are too many to even begin to list. Nevertheless, let me leave you with one interesting achievement: In all of Giggs' 24 seasons with United, he was never sent off even once.

Giggs played 963 games for United (an all-time record), scoring 168 goals for the club. He captained the club for the majority of the 2007-08 season. He also played for Wales 64 times while scoring 12 more goals and captained the Great Britain team in the London 2012 Olympics.