This Week in Football History: Jules Rimet and the Beautiful Game's Holy Grail

Luis Felipe Scolari holds up a replica of the Jules Rimet trophy

In today's look back through the annals of football history and folklore, Adrian North recounts the tale of football's Holy Grail - the Jules Rimet trophy...

The Holy Grail - A cup of mythical and magical power that Joseph of Arimathea used to catch Jesus' blood in during the crucifixion before sending it back to Britain with Jesus' loyal followers. 

We all know what happened to this Grail. It fell into the abyss after Indiana Jones was told in no uncertain terms by his father to "let it go". Harrison Ford and Sean Connery got to ride off into the sunset together while Steven Spielberg reveled in all those sweet box office dollars. Spielberg however had made the wrong movie. There is another Holy Grail out there somewhere, a Holy Grail for which the story surrounding it is stranger than any George Lucas work of fiction.  

This is the story of football's Holy Grail, the Jules Rimet trophy.  

Among the pantheon of great sporting trophies, the Jules Rimet trophy stands alone as the most mythical, mysterious and fabled of them all.
Our story begins with the man behind the trophy, Jules Rimet himself. Jules Rimet was the third president of FIFA, back in the good old days when Rimet and FIFA believed that football could be used as force of unification across the world. In 1928 Jules Rimet championed the idea of a 'World Cup'. A tournament held every four years in which the world's leading footballing nations would come together and play a month-long tournament to decide who would claim the honour of being the world's best team. 

In 1930, the first World Cup was held in Uruguay, a tournament that the hosts won and on July 30, 1930 the players of the Uruguayan national team were presented with the World Cup trophy for the first time. At the time, the trophy was nameless, it was merely a gorgeous gold plated prize that Uruguay would keep for the next four years before it was won by Italy in 1934 and again in 1938.  

Italy's two victories in '34 and '38 were unquestionably a huge victory for Benito Mussolini's fascist propaganda machine, a victory that made his axis ally Adolf Hitler incredibly jealous. Hitler saw the enormous nationalistic wave of pride that swept through Italy in 1934 and 1938, and suddenly the world's most dangerous man had an interest in football.  

Hitler's right hand man, Joseph Goebbels had become increasingly interested in the way football could be used as a weapon of propaganda but Goebbels' growing fascination with the game hit a snag - the Germans weren't a very good side. In 1938, despite having several members of Austria's famed 1930s Wunderteam playing for Germany, the Germans were knocked out in the first round after defeat to the unfancied Swiss.  

12 months later Hitler and the Nazis marched into Poland and the world changed forever.  

During the early years of the Second World War, Hitler became more and more obsessed with the finding and appropriating of famous historical artifacts. He assigned his chief propagandist and ideologue Alfred Rosenberg to create a task force to go about the job of finding and procuring such historical artifacts as the Holy Lance, the true Holy Grail, numerous Michelangelo sculptures (they managed to steal his famous Madonna of Bruges) and the World Cup trophy that had eluded Hitler's attempts to win fairly in 1938.  

It took one brave Italian to ensure that Rosenberg and Hitler would not get their hands on the trophy that rightfully belonged to Italy.
Ottorino Barassi, the vice-president of FIFA and president of the Italian Football Federation, driven only by a sense of footballing pride, rather than by fascist ideology, decided the World Cup trophy needed to be hidden from the Nazis. Barassi went to the main bank in Rome where the trophy was being held, took it from its cabinet, returned home, put the trophy in a shoebox and hid it under his bed. At one point the Nazis, suspecting Barassi had stolen the trophy, raided his house in Rome, saw the shoebox under his bed, but never bothered to look inside. 

By 1945 Germany, had surrendered and the United States of America had become a nuclear power. The war was over, and once again, just as it had done 27 years previously, football more than any other pastime helped to heal the mental wounds of the greatest horror the Earth had ever seen. 

Ottorino Barassi dusted off his shoebox and in 1946 he helped to officially christen the trophy in honour of Jules Rimet. Four years later in Brazil, Uruguay once again won the World Cup after beating the hosts in the infamous Maracanazo. In 1954, West Germany would receive the Jules Rimet trophy from the Frenchman Rimet himself, just two years before he would pass away, in a moment of wonderful symbolism that saw the world embrace Germany as the champions of football, instead of vilify them as the antagonists of war.  

And this is where our story gets hazy. In 1958, Brazil introduced joga bonito to the world by destroying hosts Sweden in the final before captain Bellini became the first footballer to come up with the genius idea of lifting the trophy above his head in celebration. But journalist Joe Coyle, while researching his forthcoming book on the Jules Rimet trophy, wasn't convinced Bellini had held up the true trophy. Coyle remarked that the 1958 trophy was five centimeters taller than the one shown in pictures from 1954 and he theorized that the real Rimet trophy had been lost in Germany somewhere between '54 and '58 and that Bellini had been presented with a replica.  

Whether or not Coyle's theory is true, a Jules Rimet trophy made it to England in 1966. In March of '66 during an exhibition in London, the Jules Rimet trophy was stolen, sparking huge embarrassment throughout England. The following investigation led London police to a man named Edward Betchley, the alleged thief. Betchley was quickly sentenced to two years in prison but it soon became apparent that Betchley had neither the resources nor intelligence to pull off such a heist. He was simple a middle-man for the true culprit.   

A week after Betchley confessed to not being the true thief, local Londoner Dave Corbett decided to go for the most important dog walk of his life. His adorable dog Pickles started sniffing at a parcel in a nearby bush. Inside the parcel was the Jules Rimet trophy and Pickles had just become England's most famous dog.   

Three months later Bobby Moore would be lifted on to his teammates shoulders to hold the trophy aloft for all of Wembley to see, spawning the most iconic photo in English sporting history.  

Four years on in Mexico City Brazil smashed Italy 4-1 in the World Cup final, and having won the tournament for the third time got to keep the trophy for good, and by 1974 a brand new trophy had been designed, and is still used to this day.  

The Brazilian FA kept the trophy on display at their headquarters in Botofogo, Rio de Janerio for 13 years, as a symbol of Brazilian footballing pride.  

But, on the night of December 20, 1983, a group of opportunistic thieves broke into the Brazilian FA headquarters, tied up the night watchman and escaped with the trophy. Immediately fears grew that the trophy was to be melted down into gold bars at one of Rio's many underground gold melting foundaries. The trophy was never recovered and the theory of it being melted down became more and more probable.  

Simon Kuper, writer for the Financial Times and author of some of football's best books doesn't believe this theory at all however, and he has pointed out some gaping holes in the 'melted down to gold bars' story. 

Firstly, and most importantly, it would have been impossible to melt the trophy down into gold bars, as the Jules Rimet trophy was not actually solid gold, merely a silver body with a gold coating. Secondly, Rio's police, after hunting tirelessly and even appealing to the Brazilian people on national television, never uncovered the slightest piece of evidence that the trophy was melted down anywhere in Rio. It appeared that the trophy had simply been stolen by a happy go lucky thief who has kept it ever since. 

In 1997 football's most mythical prize showed up once again, or at least that's what one person thought. 

In 1966, after Pickles had had his moment of fame, the English FA, fearing another attempt to steal the Jules Rimet trophy, commissioned a high-end London jeweler named George Bird to make a replica of the trophy, and in 1997 after Bird's death his family set up an auction at Sotheby's in London to sell it. This auction drew massive international attention but what was about to take place would make headlines in every corner of the world.  

Starting at a reserve price of 30,000, two anonymous men gradually began a bidding war against each other. 50,000 became 100,000 and then 150,00 and 200,000 before finally it was sold to one of the bidders for the insane price of 254,000. This mystery man turned out to be a representative of FIFA with clear instructions to buy the trophy at any price. FIFA believed they were buying the real trophy. 

One thing was clear - this trophy that had been auctioned looked nothing like the one in the famous Bobby Moore picture from 1966. The base was much thinner and longer. But considering the ludicrous price the supposed replica had been bought for, the seed of doubt had been sown amongeveryone at the auction house. Maybe, just maybe, this was the real trophy. FIFA believed that at some point between the Queen handing the trophy over to Bobby Moore and the England players leaving the stadium the trophy had been switched for the replica, even one of the England players (I don't remember which one) claimed that during the state of euphoria after the game a policeman came up to him, took the trophy away and presented him with a replica.  

This new story began to make sense - Bobby Moore and England had walked out of Wembley in 1966 with George Bird's replica trophy and eventually passed it on to the Brazilian FA. The real trophy went back to George Bird and his family by accident. It now appeared as though FIFA, who had just bid nine times the value for a comparable item at auction, had just bought the genuine Jules Rimet trophy.  

Upon a technical examination the trophy FIFA had bought was revealed to be a primarily bronze trophy with gold plating. The true trophy was known to have a silver body. 

FIFA had just bought George Bird's replica. The real Jules Rimet did leave Wembley with Bobby Moore and was indeed sent to the Brazilians where it was stolen in 1983 and despite popular thought was probably not melted down into gold bars.  

After such an incredible and seemingly folkloric life the Jules Rimet trophy really did disappear for good on December 20, 1983. But the mythical 30cm gold plated statuette of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory is still out there, on somebody's mantelpiece or in someone's shoebox, and one day it will reappear.

The story of football's Holy Grail isn't over yet.