I recently attended The Football Quiz at the Barefoot India Sport's Quiz Fest, held at FMS Auditorium, Delhi University, South Campus. It was pure agony for me as our team came 4th, missing out on 3rd place by a mere 2.5 points!!! But it was a brilliant event overall, and for a quiz-loving football fanatic, starved for football quizzes, it was a one of a kind experience!
The event was well publicised, with the Barefoot team regularly posting updates and tricky questions on their Facebook event page to give us a taste of what we were going to face. Not wanting to be completely unprepared, i looked up a few football quizzes on slideshare and felt reasonably confident that maybe we could achieve something.
The day of the event arrived, and to be honest, i felt quite excited, this being my first quiz of this semester. An empty Auditorium greeted me, and i absent mindedly leafed through the complementary copy of 90 mins football magazine that was given to me. Gradually, the venue started to fill up. My teammates, Akshay (also from NSIT) and Raghav (from Venky) arrived and we began to ponder on whether we had any realistic chance of achieving anything. I hadn't given any thought to the fact that the quiz was ‘Open’ until now, and looking at the confident and upbeat faces around me, I realized we had no scope of making it to the finals.
Anyway, the prelims began. We stared at the first question in dismay as the people around us exclaimed in recognition. It was an image of somebody holding a piece of paper. We had nooooo idea what it was!! (We later found out it was an image of Messi's first contract).The next two question were again greek to us and we began to lose hope. Thats when Akshay got the 4th question (they asked for the name of Norwich City's Chairman, and he knew, amazingly!). The 5th one was easy and we started to feel better. The prelims went on, they had some amazing questions (even one related to Total Football!), but somehow we started to get amazing answers as well and began to get excited.
The 12th question deserves particular mention. It was a pic of this random dude from the Faroe Islands who'd played few Intl. matches in his entire career, but, as part of his nation's U-23 squad, he'd played matches against England and Italy, and swapped T-shirts with 2 particular players. They were in the news for a similar reason, the Q. said. They were asking for the reason or the players. I got really excited, cause i had seen this before, but it didn't strike me. I tried to guess, but couldn’t remember. The answer was later revealed to be Fabrice Muamba and Piermario Morosini, the two players who had been victims of cardiac arrest while playing a match, in the previous year. The question struck me as an amazing question, and indeed, many other people also applauded .The prelims also had questions related to Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Del Piero, Lazio, Neville Neville (You mussst check out the chant related to this guy! :D) and even Carlton "worst player ever" Palmer.
We calculated our score to be 16.5,and we were unsure about whether we would make it or not. We got through, thankfully, but our fears were justified, as all 6 teams who got through had scores between 16 and 18 points. The final was a ‘pounce + bounce’ format, with written rounds interspersed in between. Our opponents looked threatening, but now, we were confident.
The first round was written, a quote unquote round. We just made random guesses for most of these, as we had no idea. Some of them turned out to be right, though, and we finished this round on 7.5 points.We were nowhere though, other teams were on 17.5, 10, 15 etc.
The 2nd round was simple infinite bounce. We were on fire in this one, pulling off some unexpected ones. There was one question in which i was so excited that i saw the first line, pounced, gave the answer and it turned to be wrong. The answer was Javier Zanetti, and I had said Juan Sebastien Veron! I didn't read the full question, and as a result we got a ‘-10’. The significance of these points only dawned later and this is one of the things we regretted, along with not pouncing for other questions that we knew the answer to.
Still, we were 2nd after this one, with two other teams close behind. The team coming first were wayyyyy ahead .The 3rd round was again written and this time we were whooped. We answered few, and now we were third. Somehow, we maintained our position in the 4th round, which was infinite bounce again. By now, the teams coming 1st and 2nd had galloped ahead,and we were in close competition with the team coming 4th. The teams coming 5th and 6th were now quite far behind, and we were more or less fighting for 3rd place, with the team just behind us breathing down our necks, 7.5 points behind.
The last round was a mega-connect, or theme round. Each question was worth 10 points.The first one was a pic of Cafu (who we failed to recognize) and to our annoyance, our challengers got it right. We knew the next one, they did too. We didnt know the third one , but they didnt either. Then we got the 4th one,thankfully, they didnt! If things stood this way, we would come 3rd! There were 6 questions, and the 5th one was again easy, everyone got it. We held our breath for the 6th one, it turned to be a pic of a bald dark skinned Brazilian goalie in an AC Milan shirt (I’ll leave it for you to guess who! :P). The Mega Connect was open to Multiple attempts, but none of the teams with a chance to win could answer. (It turned to be an exhaustive list of people who had won one both the Copa Libertadores as well as the UCL) So, i thought, we had come third!!! I was the only one in my team keeping score, so i was elated, while my teammates kept on asking me "You sure na?" "Pakka????"
Then the results came. We were 4th!!!! I was shocked! I went and argued with the score keeper! I was convinced that we had beaten them! But we found out that they had answered one of the toughies that we couldn't get in the last round (the third q, a pic of Roque Jr) . Other teams confirmed this, and we were devastated. I managed to drag myself off the stage, but was just staring at the stage in disappointment when the awards were given out (15k for the winning team, 9k for second place, 6k for third. Also, each person winning got a 6 month subscription of 90 Minutes magazine!).
The Zanetti question mistake pinched even harder now, and while we absent mindedly attempted the Olympics filler quiz and Cricket Quiz Prelims that followed, we were left feeling sad about what could have been. So close, yet so far. :( We had finished best among the three college teams that reached the finals, but still, the disappointment of missing out on a position stung badly.
Although dispirited, we left the place silently acknowledging the brilliance of the event. One does not simple score 200 plus points and still come 4th in a bad quiz!!!!
Hats off to Wasi Manazir, the Quiz Master, and Barefoot India in general, for organizing such a terrific event!!!! Looking forward to coming back next year, hopefully, will do better then! :)
-Vinayak Mishra
NSIT Quiz Club
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