To start with, World Cup is an international soccer tournament held every four years. It is the most loved sporting event on the planet and brings most people from different countries of the world together.
How does it work?
All the world's 207 national teams are put into 6 different regions where they participate in lesser tournaments as each team tights for a slot in the 32 spots of the World Cup.
FIFA which is the body governing international football then puts the qualifying 32 national teams into 8 groups each containing 4 teams labeled A up to H.
Once the group stages begin, the four teams play against each other (each team plays the other three) just once; a win means 3 points, a draw means 1 point and a loss means 0 points.
The two leading teams in the group stages proceed to the knockout round. In the group stage, a team can lose but still play on but in the knockout stage the losing team is eliminated from the entire tournament and the winner proceeds to the next round.
Each game is worth 90 minutes, should it end a draw, an extra 30 minutes time is added. Should it end a draw again the teams proceed to penalties.
There is a round of 16, followed by the quarter-final, then the semifinal then the final World Cup where the winning team becomes the World Cup champions.
The hosting country (in this case, Russia) receives an automatic spot even with a weak team. Germany was the winner of the 2014 World Cup.
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