MMXXVI~originally published 28th June 2026
669 words
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It's men's football World Cup time again and TV and social media space has been hijacked by the North American franchise of the 96-year-old elite footballing extravaganza…the 48 (yes 48!) qualifiers have just finished battling it out to determine which 32 countries proceed through to the knockout stages of the “big sporting dance”. It might be a good moment to cast a glance back at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico—rated one of the greatest of all in the championship’s long history—and one of the strangest episodes of that tournament ‘s history which took place some 13 years after the 1970 cup was done and dusted.
The 1970 cup itself was won by the Seleção, the stellar Brazilian national side, routing an Italian team— over-reliant on a catenanaccio (“door-bolt”) defence and “take no prisoners” tackling—by the margin of 4–1 in the final. This was confirmation of association football-obsessed Brazil’s domination of the sport. Equipped with a squad chock full of mononymous, sobriquet-laden superstars, headed by the “football god” Pelé, Brazil reigned supreme over world “soccer” from 1958 to 1970[§].
But the focus of our story is not on Brazil’s epic sporting “three-peat” on the pitch in 1970, but on what happened away from the field long after the triumph. For being the first to win the World Cup for a third time, Brazil got to keep the prized gold-plated trophy, named after an instrumental former FIFA president Jules Rimet – in perpetuity.
Back home (but not necessarily safe), the Jules Rimet Trophy was housed on the third floor of the Brazilian Football Confederation HQ in Rua da Alfandega, Río de Janeiro, on display in a bullet-proof glass cabinet. However, just before Christmas in 1983 it was the victim of a daring heist, a gang of thieves overpowered the nightwatchman and removed the cup from its display cabinet, making off with it.
The brazen theft was a major embarrassment to the complacent Brazilian FA who had previously boasted that the trophy would never be stolen because Brazilian thieves, quote (ahem) “loved football too much” to ever steal it! Security in the premises was woeful, laughingly inadequate – the most sought-after prize in international football had been guarded by a single, unarmed nightwatchman. The back of the glass cabinet containing the cup had been amateurishly sealed in a flimsy manner which was “a piece of cake” for the thieves to effortlessly prise open and snatch the World Cup trophy. To compound the disaster, the thieves also made off with two other Brazilian national trophies at the same time.
The “Jules Rimet” was never recovered and it was widely speculated that it had been melted down for its precious gold bar component...although some people doubt that this in fact happened, holding out a glimmer of hope that the famed trophy may somehow still exist intact, somewhere. Notwithstanding this, a brace of suspects were initially detained for the robbery but managed to escape custody and avoid being tried.
The theft of the trophy was actually the second time the “Jules Rimet” had been stolen. Back in 1966, while it was in the custody of the English Football Association for that year’s WC finals, it was stolen in London (again, very lax security), but was fortuitously recovered within a short period thanks to the curiosity of a pet dog in the ‘burbs.
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[§] leaving aside a momentary glitch in the sequence in England, 1966
28 June 2026
Where’s Jules?: The original football World Cup Trophy already had a very eventful history – even prior to the first theft attempt. During WWII the trophy was retained by the Italians (winners of the previous (1938) World Cup) and held in the vault of a Rome bank. The president of the Italian FA, however, was worried that fascist Italy’s Axis partners, the Nazis, might just purloin the prized world game trophy (they did have form, after all!). So, he had the “Jules Rimet” smuggled out of the bank, and incredulous as it sounds, secreted it under his bed in his city apartment. The plan almost came unstuck because the Nazis did eventually search his apartment but narrowly failed to find the hidden trophy.
⍐ The Jules Rimet Trophy ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ What they play for now ⍐
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