From when does the World Cup start to who’s likely to win football’s greatest prize – the 2018 tournament explained



This World Cup everybody’s talking about. What is it, exactly?

The Fifa World Cup is an international football tournament contested by 32 nations every four years. This year’s competition kicks off on 14 June, when hosts Russia play Saudi Arabia in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium. After a total of 64 matches played in 12 venues across 11 different Russian cities, the champions will be crowned in the same arena on 15 July. It is, without question, the biggest, most prestigious sporting event on the planet.

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OK, so who organises it and for how long has it been “a thing”?



Fifa stands for the Féderation Internationale de Football Association and their third president Jules Rimet was the innovator behind the first World Cup, an invitational tournament contested by just 13 teams that was staged and won by Uruguay in 1930. This year’s tournament will be the 21st.

With just 32 teams taking part, an awful lot of nations must miss out. That hardly seems fair.



With the exception of Russia, who qualify automatically as hosts, the other 31 teams all had to go through a rigorous two-year qualifying process to make it this far. Fifa has 211 national association affiliates spread across six different confederations around the globe.

Did any traditionally “big” countries not make it?



England were the only “home nation” to qualify, while Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland all failed with varying degrees of predictability. The USA, the Netherlands, South American champions Chile, Africa Cup of Nations winners Cameroon and the four-times World Cup winners Italy are among the most high profile nations to miss out on qualification for Russia 2018. For many international powerhouses, qualifying is invariably little more than a formality. For others it is an incredible achievement.

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Others? What others?



Iceland will contest their first World Cup finals this summer and with a population of just 335,000 are the smallest country to qualify in the history of the competition.

How will a winner be decided from those who did make the cut?



The 32 countries have already been drawn into eight groups of four teams which will be decided on a round robin basis. The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stages, which is when things start to get really tense.

What happens if any of these knockout matches end in a draw?



If the sides are level after 90 minutes, they play an additional 30 minutes of extra time.

And if they’re still level?



The outcome is decided by a penalty shoot-out. There have been 26 in World Cup finals history and both Brazil (1994) and Italy (2006) have actually won finals by this very stressful method.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 80,000-seater Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow will host seven World Cup matches including the opening game and the final. Photograph: Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty Images

Who is expected to win this year’s tournament?



It’s a tough one to call. Germany are the holders and are expected to be in the shake-up again, while Brazil, France, Spain and Argentina are other former winners who many expect to do well.

Have England ever won the World Cup?



Once, in 1966 and they’re still dining out on it over 50 years later.

Tell me more ...



As tournament hosts, they beat Germany 4-2 in the final at Wembley Stadium to win the Jules Rimet Trophy.

The what now?



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The Jules Rimet Trophy. It was originally called Victory but later renamed in honour of the Fifa president who dreamt up the World Cup. Brazil got to keep it after winning it for the third time in 1970, but it was stolen 13 years later and has never been returned.

So what do the winners get now?



Acclaim, medals, hero status in their homeland and a hefty financial bonus from their national Football Association. They also get presented with the Fifa World Cup trophy, which is just shy of 37 centimetres in height and weighs 6.1 kilograms. Made of 18 carat gold with a malachite base, it depicts two human figures holding up the earth. It is arguably the most iconic trophy in all of sport.

Such a popular event must generate a lot of cash. Who gets it all?



Fifa get most of it. They sold the TV rights for the last World Cup for $2.48bn and made a further $2.34bn from marketing and licensing rights. Only about 10% of the revenue it generated came from actual ticket sales.

Anything else I should know?



This year’s tournament will be the first World Cup in which Video Assistant Referees (VAR) will be used to help referees avoid making potentially match-deciding mistakes when it comes to such important issues as awarding goals, penalties or doling out red cards. It will also referees avoid cases of mistaken identity, as has been known to happen from time to time.

Sounds like a good idea ...

It certainly does in theory, but many are predicting disaster once it’s put into practice. VAR has been tested in a number of tournaments around the world, often with hilarious consequences and a number of referees will arrive in Russia with no prior experience of using it. While Fifa are confident it will be a success, many doom-mongers are predicting that VAR could become the main, unwelcome talking point of Russia 2018.

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If I want to sound knowledgable in front of people who know more about the World Cup than I do, what should I say?



“It’s strange that nobody is mentioning Uruguay as likely winners even though they finished ahead of Argentina in their qualifying group.”

If I want to sound knowledgable in front of people who know more about the World Cup than I do, what should I not say?



“It’s strange that nobody is mentioning England as likely winners even though they finished ahead of Scotland in their qualifying group.”