How Often Is the World Cup Held?
The FIFA World Cup occurs every 4 years. In 2014, the event was held in Brazil, and Germany defeated Argentina 1-0 to claim the nation’s fourth-ever World Cup title.
FIFA, which stands for the Federation Internationale de Football Association, is soccer’s governing body. Member nations, of which there are 209 as of 2014, go through a qualification phase which begins the year following a World Cup event. Eventually, qualifying gets down to 32 nations, which are put into eight groups to participate in the tournament phase consisting of a group stage and knockout stage. The group stages occurs in a round-robin format, and the top two teams in each group advance to the knockout stage where teams are seeded and put into a bracket. Each game from then on is a single-elimination game leading all the way to the final game.
