The thieves ignored three million pounds' worth of stamps. On Sunday 20 March 1966, four months before England was due to host the World Cup, the Jules Rimet Trophy was on public display at a stamp exhibition in Methodist Central Hall, Westminster — a short walk from Scotland Yard. At some point around midday, while guards were elsewhere, someone forced the display case, lifted out football's most famous prize, and walked away. The vastly more valuable rare stamps sharing the exhibition were left untouched. English football, preparing to welcome the world, had managed to lose the World Cup.
The trophy itself was small — about 35 centimetres tall — but drenched in history. Designed by the French sculptor Abel Lafleur, it depicted Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, in gold-plated sterling silver on a lapis lazuli base. It had been commissioned for the first World Cup in 1930 and later named after Jules Rimet, the FIFA president who had willed the tournament into existence. It had already survived one brush with disappearance: during the Second World War, the Italian FIFA vice-president Ottorino Barassi smuggled it out of a Rome bank and hid it from the Nazis in a shoebox under his bed.
Now it was gone, and the embarrassment was global. Brazilian football officials declared such a theft could never have happened in Brazil — a boast worth remembering. The Football Association, meanwhile, received a ransom demand: a phone call and package to FA chairman Joe Mears, containing the removable lining from the top of the trophy and a demand for £15,000. Police set a trap for the handover, and a man named Edward Betchley was arrested. He insisted he was merely a middleman, paid to deliver the ransom demand by a mysterious figure he knew as "The Pole". Betchley was convicted for his part in the extortion, but the trophy itself was not in his possession. It was still missing, and the trail was cold.
Enter Pickles
Salvation arrived on four legs. On the evening of 27 March 1966 — one week after the theft — a Thames lighterman named David Corbett stepped out to make a phone call near his home in Beulah Hill, South Norwood, taking along his black-and-white collie cross, Pickles. The dog began nosing insistently at a package lying by a garden hedge, wrapped tightly in newspaper. Corbett tore off the bottom of the wrapping and found himself looking at a golden statuette, and discs bearing the words Brazil, West Germany and Uruguay — World Cup winners past. "I've found the World Cup!" he told his wife. The police, understandably, first treated him as a suspect; he was soon cleared, and questioned or otherwise, no one ever established who had actually stolen the trophy or dumped it under that hedge.
Corbett collected rewards reported at around £6,000 — several times what each England player received as a bonus for winning the tournament itself that summer. Pickles, though, got the fame. He became a national celebrity, starred alongside Eric Sykes in the film The Spy with a Cold Nose, was named Dog of the Year, and was invited with his owner to the celebrations after England's victory, where by fond accounts he was allowed to lick the plates clean. His story ended sadly and soon: in 1967 Pickles died when his lead snagged on a tree branch as he chased a cat.
The trophy's second vanishing
The FA, mortified once, took quiet precautions. It secretly commissioned a replica of the trophy for use at exhibitions and celebrations, keeping the real one under closer guard. That replica developed a remarkable afterlife of its own: when it was auctioned in 1997, it sold for £254,500 — many times its estimate — with FIFA itself the buyer, amid speculation that the bidders suspected the "replica" might actually be the genuine article.
Jules Rimet's founding rules stated that any nation to win the World Cup three times would keep the trophy permanently. In 1970 in Mexico, Pelé's Brazil beat Italy in the final for their third title, and the little gold Nike went to Rio de Janeiro for good, displayed at the Brazilian football confederation's headquarters — while FIFA commissioned today's FIFA World Cup Trophy as its successor. Then, in December 1983, thieves broke into the confederation's offices in Rio and stole the Jules Rimet Trophy from its cabinet. This time there was no ransom note, no sting, and no Pickles. It has never been recovered, and is widely believed to have been melted down — an ignoble end for an object that survived Nazis, ransom plots and an English hedge. The country that swore the theft could never happen at home had lost it forever; England, at least, only mislaid it for a week.
Quiz nuggets
- The Jules Rimet Trophy was stolen from a stamp exhibition at Westminster's Methodist Central Hall on 20 March 1966.
- A collie cross named Pickles found it a week later, wrapped in newspaper under a hedge in South Norwood, London.
- During the Second World War, Italian official Ottorino Barassi hid the trophy from the Nazis in a shoebox under his bed.
- Brazil kept the trophy permanently after their third World Cup win in 1970 — and it was stolen again in Rio in 1983, never to be found.
- Pickles' owner David Corbett collected rewards worth more than each England player's 1966 winning bonus.