Career Path Quiz: Can You Name These 20 Footballers from Their Clubs?

How this quiz works

Each line is one player's senior clubs in the order he joined them, as the career box of his English Wikipedia article lists them, with reserve and B teams left out. The ? is the club where he played the most seasons, and it is hidden every time he played there: two question marks mean he went back. It is the same rule as our Career Path game, which deals you five new careers every time you play.

Score yourself the way the game does: 100 points for a player named from the clubs alone, minus 25 for each clue you need.

Easy: the superstars

Clubs only. Most people get these in a few seconds; the first one is a warm-up.

1. Cannes → Bordeaux → Juventus → ?
2. Monaco → Juventus → ? → Barcelona → New York Red Bulls → ?
3. ? → Preston North End (loan) → Real Madrid → LA Galaxy → AC Milan (loan) → AC Milan (loan) → Paris Saint-Germain
4. Independiente → Atlético Madrid → ? → Barcelona
5. Feyenoord → ? → Manchester United → Fenerbahçe → Feyenoord
6. São Paulo → ? → Real Madrid → ? → Orlando City → São Paulo (loan)

Medium: cult heroes

His nationality is in brackets, the first clue the game would sell you after the years.

7. Kyoto Sanga → PSV Eindhoven → ? → Queens Park Rangers → PSV Eindhoven (loan) (South Korea)
8. ASEC Mimosas → ? → Manchester City → Liverpool → Celtic (Ivory Coast)
9. Cremonese → ? → Juventus → Chelsea (Italy)
10. Sport Recife → ? → Lyon → Al-Gharafa → ? → New York Red Bulls → ? (Brazil)
11. Slovan Bratislava → Brescia → ? → Dalian Professional → IFK Göteborg → Trabzonspor (Slovakia)
12. Independiente → River Plate → Real Madrid → ? → Leicester City → Olympiacos (Argentina)
13. ? → Manchester United → Blackburn Rovers → Birmingham City → Sydney FC → Sunderland (Trinidad and Tobago)

Hard: before the dugout

Every one of these men became a famous manager. This is what they did first. Nationality and position are in brackets.

14. Vélez Sarsfield → Pisa → Sevilla → ? → Inter → Lazio → ? → Racing Club (Argentina, midfielder)
15. Queen's Park → St Johnstone → Dunfermline Athletic → Rangers → ? → Ayr United (Scotland, striker)
16. Bologna → ? → Lazio → Leicester City (loan) (Italy, striker)
17. Perugia → Rangers → Salernitana → ? → Sion (Italy, midfielder)
18. ? → De Graafschap → ? → RKC Waalwijk → Utrecht → ? (Netherlands, defender)
19. Belenenses → ? → Braga (loan) → Al-Wakrah (loan) (Portugal, midfielder)
20. Hertha Zehlendorf → ? → Bayer Leverkusen → Hamburger SV → Bayern Munich → ? → Red Bull Salzburg (Croatia, midfielder)

How to read a career path

• Count the question marks. Three of them in one path, like puzzle 10, means a player kept going home, and very few players do that.
• Read the clubs either side of the gap. They show where he came from and where he went next, which usually narrows the hidden club to a league, then to a handful of teams.
• Loans are clues. A run of loans early on means a big club believed in him; a loan late on often means he was on his way out.
• The last club tells you the era. MLS, Qatar, India or China at the end of a path points to a career that finished in the 2010s; Japan, often to the 1990s.

For more on why careers take the shape they do, from academy contracts to loan rules, see our guide to understanding player career paths. For general quiz technique, read how to get better at football quizzes.

Answers

Fifteen or more is a very good score; anyone who got number 15 without the answers is a Scottish football historian. When you have finished, play Career Path: about 3,000 careers, five a game, in Classic or against the clock.