World Cup quiz: Which player completes the Cafu-to-Mbappe sequence?

FourFourTwo’s Pre-Match Poser returns for its 31st edition with a World Cup-themed sequence puzzle: which player comes next after Cafu, Marco Amelia, Alberto Gilardino, Toni Kroos, Andre Schurrle, and Kylian Mbappe?

The answer will be revealed in next week’s edition, but the puzzle is designed to test whether readers can spot the underlying pattern connecting six players who, on the surface, span different eras, positions, and nations.

Last week’s answer: the longest-serving World Cup-winning captains

Last week’s conundrum asked readers to identify a list on which Lionel Messi sits at the bottom, a former Tottenham Hotspur captain sits second, and Cristiano Ronaldo would automatically leapfrog Messi if he were to win the World Cup.

The answer: the list ranks players by the time spent as the incumbent captain of a World Cup-winning nation.

Because no player has ever captained a side to back-to-back World Cup triumphs, every winning captain holds the title for roughly four years — with three notable exceptions. The 2022 World Cup was held in winter, meaning France’s 2018-winning captain Hugo Lloris held the title for four years and five months rather than the standard four. That, in turn, left Messi with five months fewer as the reigning winning captain after Argentina’s 2022 triumph.

Should Ronaldo win the World Cup, he would hold the title for a full four years — overtaking Messi but still falling short of Lloris.

Top of the list is Giuseppe Meazza, Italy’s captain when they won the 1938 World Cup. The tournament then went on a 12-year hiatus due to the Second World War, meaning Meazza remained the incumbent winning captain until 1950 — far longer than any other player in history. Last week’s puzzle image, which placed Messi and Ronaldo in front of the San Siro — officially named Stadio Giuseppe Meazza — was the intended clue.