He was full-blown on the telly: gloriously orange face and splendid platinum blonde hair that lent him a smidgen of gravitas for a fraction of a second. The Thingy (henceforth TT) sat at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, facing the camera that he so adores. I did a double take while TT spewed tripe and twaddle as usual, and my eyes slid to the credenza behind him: the shiny thing looked like a strangled phallus. Was that an original copy? In gold? How very like him. That’s why Melania had disappeared. She didn’t want the world to know what she had been through. Or been through her. Apart from my surprise, I realized what the shiny thing behind TT was: the FIFA World Cup Trophy, loaded with childhood memories.
FIFA stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association (International Federation of Association Football), with headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland. FIFA is the governing body and the last word in everything football worldwide: who hosts the World Cup, who gets free tickets to watch all the games and enjoy outstanding hospitality, and, allegedly, who gets the bribes. FIFA also lords over men’s and women’s tournaments of footsal, youth cups, beach soccer, and more. For competition purposes, FIFA has shrewdly divided the world into continents and galvanized its members to hold national, continental, and worldwide championships where national teams get to play in the World Cup. Besides, members vote for best players in every category, and FIFA distributes coveted trophies and medals at star-studded FIFA-fests. The only thing FIFA doesn’t control is Americans calling soccer what the rest of the world calls football. They’re so busy!
All that busyness seems to have befuddled FIFA officials in 2017 when they announced the co-hosts of the 2026 Football World Cup: Mexico, Canada, and the United States. Today, it looks like satire, brilliance, clairvoyance, or all three. Hence the peculiar trophy behind TT who seems to have an unhealthy attachment to appearances at big sport events to give the impression that he’s one of the people, just like us, while getting himself sprinkled with the gold dust of popularity. TT thinks he’s a winner and he got the gold trophy to prove it.
Did someone at FIFA Zurich HQ predict that TT, immigrants, walls, tariffs, an archaic law from the 18th century, Greenland, the Panama Canal, narcotics from Mexico, fentanyl from Canada, and the World Cup, would ever figure in the same sentence? Did anybody ever think that the world would be boycotting American goods and trips to America this year? The American advisory for difficult visas will likely include countries that will qualify for the World Cup. As of the writing of this blog, four countries have already qualified: Japan, Argentina, New Zealand, and … Iran. How’s the American nuclear diplomacy working then? It’s a long shot, but what if Palestine qualified, too? This looks like TT’s own goal.
Under FIFA’s aegis, Mexico, Canada, and the United States will share the pleasure and the honour of hosting the remaining 45 qualifying national teams, who will battle it out with their best ball skills, to culminate with the final clash at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, with the capacity of 82,400 slightly unhinged supporters, on 19 July 2026. Will TT have sorted out the tariffs by then? Who will figure in the Brave New World order?
Being a host nation is a very, very special treat for stable and unstable football geniuses: the host nation team does not need to go through the expenses and exertions of qualifier games, and they have a guaranteed place among the 48 competing national squads. Besides, the host nation is always on the first game of the competition. It’s tit for tat.
It seems unfair to the rest of the football world. It’d be understandable if the host country were a football giant, which is not the case for 2026. Below is a very brief football history of the three co-host countries (done in alphabetical order, just like FIFA would do if the USA were not involved):
Canada has been trying to qualify for the World Cup since 1958, and its national teams have had more misses than hits. They qualified in 1986 and 2022 for the group stage, but, in the end, they went nowhere near the trophy. Canada will host games in Toronto and Vancouver.
Mexico has been competing for the FIFA trophy since 1930 and the best results were the quarter finals in 1970 and 1986. The Estadio Azteca (capacity 87,000 slightly frenzied supporters) in Mexico City held World Cup matches in 1970 and 1986. As it will also host the first game on 11 June, 2026, it’ll be the only venue, in the whole FIFA world, to hold World Cup games thrice. In 1990, Mexico was banned from the World Cup because it had fielded three over-age players in the under-20’s team. Now three Mexican cities will welcome matches: Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Monterrey.
The male squad of the United States has been sprinting after the trophy since 1930, and their best result was third place that same year. The US were absent from the World cup 1950-1990. Now they’re hoping to hang on to the end of the comet tail left by the women’s team that won the World Cup in 2019. Matches will be spread in stadiums in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle.
The English Invented Football, Right? Hmm…
It depends what century you’re thinking about. You could time-travel to Meso-America almost 4,000 years ago and you’d find yourself playing football with a rubber ball, except you’d use your hips to send the ball this way and that. Or you could also travel to China around 500 BC and play kickball with a leather ball. The game’s goal was to kick the ball into a net stretched between two posts. There was a Chinese League of kickball, and soon enough the game found adepts in Korea and Japan.
In the 12th century Europe, big teams, exact number unknown but reputed to count whole villages or perhaps towns, met on a big field of unknown size or shape, where a ball was kicked, carried or thrown towards an opponent’s goal. Violence was such that authorities, whoever they were back then, tried to ban the game.
Europeans back then seemed a tad blasé about numbers, measurements, and record keeping in general. It was not until the 19th century that football was somewhat reborn in England. The Football Association was formed in 1863, and they came up with the rules of the game, something they try to keep up with to this day.
FIFA was an embryo in 1872, when the first international match, England vs Scotland, in Glasgow, played in a cricket ground, resulted in a draw (0-0). Frustrating, I know, someone should have won, they could have arranged a better result for the good of the sport. Between 1876 and 1904 the Football World Championship consisted of English and Scottish clubs, and it was a male amateur sport.
The Organised Hoi-Polloi
With the general population taking a greater interest in football and a growing number of international matches, some people felt the need to organize rules and regulations, players, and competitions because, frankly, it was a nightmare, a veritable free-for-all. So, in 1904, representatives of France, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland met in Paris to found FIFA. They elected FIFA’s first president, the French journalist Robert Guérin.
Where were the English in all this? Did those Europeans just blast the inventors of football out of FIFA? Well, in a most honourable show of strength and mutual support, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (in alphabetical order) refused to allow foreign influence in the game that was theirs and theirs alone. The four nations missed the opportunity to be among the founding members of FIFA, which, as some may say, may not have been a bad thing.
In 1905, a year after FIFA’s creation and when the first rules of football were being kicked about in foreign pitches, England crawled back and FIFA welcomed it as a member, and eventually, the other Three Nations followed suit. The Four Nations used their membership as a yo-yo power play, withdrawing from FIFA when they disliked some rules or other members that had joined, for they had fought a war or two against them, or joining again at will.
Indeed, FIFA, in its initial decades, lurched between members’ wars, political leanings, lack of coordination, and other maladies. Until the election of Jules Rimet as president in 1920. Rimet focused FIFA’s work, to great acclaim, on the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympic Games football tournaments, in Paris and Amsterdam, respectively. Uruguay, rising from the southwestern Atlantic ocean like an untameable beast, won both Olympic gold medals.
When Was It Official?
FIFA and Rimet staged the first proper World Championship in 1930 in Uruguay, not only because the country had established its football credentials in two Olympic championships, but also because the country would then commemorate its centenary of independence, and the Uruguayan government was willing to cough up the money for the party. Who could say no to that?
I wasn’t a witness to the wheeling and dealing of the 1930 World Cup venue determination and the gracious Uruguayan offer. But I do know that Uruguay became independent of Spain in 1811. From then on, Uruguay was rocked by several battles, sieges, invasions, and annexations, left, right, and centre by Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Britain, and Paraguay, and possibly other bullies I know nothing about. During that time, leagues, alliances, and allegiances were signed, stamped, sworn by, French kissed, and quickly forgotten, until 1830, when the new Uruguayan Constitution was fully approved and in force. So, when the first official World Cup happened in Montevideo in 1930, it was in reality a celebration of the centenary of their constitution, not independence of Spain, as FIFA and others claimed.
I totally understand and approve celebrating one’s constitution, as I observed, as a citizen, the flourishing of Brazil’s most recent constitution in 1988, when each page guaranteed individual rights, responsibilities, and freedoms, and suffocated the old dictatorship or any future one. But let’s face it, for the PR people in Uruguay and FIFA, celebrating one hundred years of independence sounded better than celebrating a constitution in 1930.
Unfortunately, in 1930 the world reeled in a financial crisis, and there wasn’t much money to go around to pay for national teams and their hangers-on to cross continents and oceans to play a game that wasn’t, yet, to everyone’s taste. FIFA also had to put up with national gripes because players would have to skip several home games, as well as work days, just to participate in a competition in a country nobody could find in a map. Denmark and Germany refused to attend on principle, because FIFA was accepting professional players and football, in their opinion, was, and would always be, an amateur game. England demurred: the World Cup was not prestigious enough. But it wasn’t all bad: King Carl from Romania, himself, proudly chose each member of his squad, and had serious conversations with players’ bosses to guarantee their jobs upon return. In the end, only four European teams participated in the first World Cup, plus nine teams from the rest of the world, Uruguay included. Mind you, at that time qualifying games didn’t exist – everyone was welcome, which sounds very egalitarian and diplomatic and fair.
The spanking new Estadio Centenário in Montevideo (capacity 60,000 slightly wild fans) wasn’t quite ready when the World Cup started, but the games went ahead, anyway. In the final, Uruguay defeated Argentina 4-2, and was the first official winner of the glistening, new Victory Trophy.
The First Trophy
The Victory Trophy was created by French sculptor Abel Lafleur, and it represented Nike, the Greek winged goddess of Victory holding an octagonal cup. For a trophy, it reached the smallish height of 35cm, but it was said to weigh 3.8kg of pure gold, with a base of lapis lazuli. Some rotten tongues, perhaps belittling the World Cup and the trophy, said it was made of gold-plated sterling silver.
La Coupe du Monde, the World Cup, would be awarded to the winning team to take home and be its guardian until the next championship, when it would be handed over to the next winner. In true FIFA spirit, and to make the competition a little more interesting, the trophy came with the tri-win rule: if a national team ever achieved the highly improbable and totally impossible feat of winning the World Cup three times, they would keep the trophy for all eternity.
In 1946, FIFA paid homage to its long-serving, and possibly long-suffering, president by renaming the Victory Trophy the Jules Rimet Trophy. During the same meeting, FIFA decided that Brazil would host of the 1950 World Cup. And so started the Brazilian delirium to conquer the trophy that became affectionately known as A Jules or A Copa.
The 1950 Cup
FIFA had cancelled two World Cup tournaments (1942 and 1946) due to World War II. By the time of the World Cup in 1950, FIFA had refined its organization and rules of participation. For instance, there would be a total of sixteen national teams. With the host, Brazil, and Italy, the winner of the previous cup automatically qualified, there were fourteen places for a qualifying draw from worldwide teams. What happened next was an example of global village life.
In South America, Argentina, Ecuador and Peru had a disagreement with the Confederation of Brazilian Football, so they withdrew from the championship. In their place, by default, entered Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
In Asia, Philippines, Indonesia and Burma withdrew. The only one left was India, who turned up by default. So far so good.
In Europe, FIFA had decided that the British Home Championship should yield the two British teams qualified for the World Cup. That was England, first, and Scotland, second, and that meant England’s debut in the World Cup. But the chairman of the Scottish Football Association had already said for all who’d hear him that Scotland would only go to Brazil if they won the home championship. Well, they didn’t, so Scotland withdrew from the tournament. Since Turkey had also withdrawn due to lack of funds, there were two European places to be filled. And since FIFA didn’t know who’d say yes to their invitation as substitutes, they asked Portugal, Republic of Ireland, and France, who had all been eliminated during the qualifiers (apparently a blessing in disguise). Only France accepted. Then Belgium and Austria withdrew, too, which meant Turkey and Switzerland were in automatically, without the need to play their last games.
Italy, winner of the 1934 and 1938 World Cups, was the star that refused to play in Brazil. A large part of its winning team had died in a plane disaster in 1949, and there wasn’t much willingness to fly, and perhaps play, ever again. After much effort from FIFA, the Italians proved they were the most resilient team in the world: they travelled to Brazil by ship.
FIFA made the draw, all was well with the groups of teams that would battle it out to reach the finals and win the gleaming trophy. But at the last moment France withdrew, because there was far too much travelling to be covered between matches.
An apart: That was a good reason, I think. Matches were scheduled in six venues. Today, according to Via Michelin, if a punter had to drive from Recife, the northeasternmost match venue, to Porto Alegre, the southernmost one, they would spend over 44 hours driving non-stop in a car, covering over 2400 miles. Back then, I don’t think there were roads in certain parts of the route or direct flights. Plane hopping was a forbidding option for most, except those linked to a prosperous FIFA and well-heeled national teams.
Then India wanted to play barefoot. They claimed they got their qualification by playing barefoot in all their matches so far, so they should play barefoot. Not allowed, said FIFA. So India withdrew, too.
Just like its neighbour Uruguay, Brazil had, back then without the aid of internet, computers, and regular fast planes, four years to plan and build its showpiece Estádio do Maracanã with a capacity calculated by different sources to be from 155,000 to 200,000 slightly feral spectators, in Rio de Janeiro. Maracanã had three times the capacity of Estadio Centenário! But that was probably a tad ambitious; true to incomparable Latin-American timing, our Maracanã wasn’t ready for the first match — missing loos and press boxes, for instance. But really, nobody cares about minutiae like that.
The final match at Maracanã was the clash Brazil v. Uruguay. Brazil was, naturally, the huge favourite. After thrashing Sweden and Spain ( 7-1 and 6-1), Brazil was on the home straight for its first World Cup.
But they wrenched A Jules from our hearts. Uruguay beat Brazil 2-1.
An apart: Let the 1950 World Cup, with its challenging national issues, be a cautionary tale for those who envy the job of FIFA president. Of the nine presidents since FIFA’s inception, three presidents have died on the job. (Another president was impeached, just like TT.) That’s a 33% death rate. Not worth risking it, even though the current president, Gianni Infantino, makes just over €4 million a year – that’s not much in Switzerland, as I have learned. Maybe FIFA offers a good life insurance.
My Cup Runneth Over — Almost
Between us and everyone else, the Jules Rimet Trophy had long been plunged in shady history, since someone first whispered it was not made of solid gold. It seems things started in Italy, the World Cup winner in 1934 and 1938. With Mussolini in power, the Italian team made their fascist salute at the beginning of each match (I will not reproduce these photos here), and were a strong contender for the third win and the title of eternal keeper of the cup.
The trophy was so precious for the Italians that it was hidden in the depths of a bank vault in Rome, away from greedy eyes and sticky fingers. World War II erupted, as did the news that Hitler, no doubt envying Mussolini for his two football cups, wanted to hold a World Cup in 1943 in Germany and keep the gold trophy for himself. Italian FIFA’s vice-president, Ottorino Barassi, decided in his wisdom that the trophy wasn’t hidden enough, and took upon himself to hide the trophy from the Nazis. He secretly retrieved it from the bank vault. Ottorino laid down the trophy like a little baby in a shoe box, and placed the box under his bed. The Nazis hunted for the trophy, invaded Ottorino’s apartment in Rome, but it seems they were so inept that they never looked under Ottorino’s bed, which I find difficult to believe. But the trophy was saved! Or so they said.
The trophy became a globetrotter, being proudly exhibited by winning teams every four years. But wherever it went, it seemed surrounded in mystery and intrigue. For instance, West Germany won the trophy in 1954, at the Wankdorf Stadium in Bern (risen in its place now is the Stade de Suisse), and chatter spread quickly that the trophy exhibited in Germany looked taller than the original one. Plus, the base was different, too. “Everyone” thought it was a copy, although that didn’t necessarily make it so.
By 1958, Brazil was supposed to play Sweden in the finals. Both teams discovered their uniforms’ first shirts were yellow, and the brouhaha started when they were told that one of them would have to change. FIFA had a draw, Brazil refused to participate in it, but that would give Sweden the cup! At the last minute, Brazilian staff went out, bought dark blue shirts and stitched on the Brazilian emblem. Brazil won 5-2, and conquered the trophy with the funny base.
Brazil did it again in Chile, in 1962. The grand year of 1966 fermented the Brazilian dream of becoming tri-campeão of the world, when our national team would bring A Jules home for all eternity. Oh, easier said than done.
In a Pickles
England hosted the 1966 FIFA World Cup, and the trophy was under Brazil’s responsibility as the previous winner. What do you know, the Brazilians decided to exhibit the trophy at Westminster Central Hall and, well, you couldn’t have an exhibition of just a single trophy, could you, so they padded up the exhibition with rare stamps. Or maybe it was the other way round, an exhibition of stamps with the bonus of a trophy. According to newspapers, there was security galore 24-7. In reality, there were two security people, and one of them was 74 years old, a ripe old age back then. And well, even security guards, old and young, have needs and can’t be expected to stay in the same place all the time.
Who’d have thought! On the second day of the exhibition, A Jules disappeared. Brazilian representatives lambasted to all sides, In London! Land of the Queen! Land of civilized and polite society! It’d never’ve happened in Brazil, for over there even thieves love and respect A Jules and would never steal it! I’m sure they used a much more vibrant vocabulary which even I am unable to reproduce here.
Calculated to be worth £30,000 in 1966 (in today’s money, approximately £700,000, the price of fame not added), A Jules had gone. The Scotland Yard coordinated a national hunt for the trophy. How, we don’t know, because they had no clue. Until they received a ransom note, signed “Jackson”, for £15,000 in small denominations, or they’d melt the beloved and coveted trophy. The Yard prepared a briefcase with newspapers topped with £5 notes. A plain clothes policeman dashed to Battersea Park to deliver it to Jackson, who, once he was caught, was discovered to be a former soldier called Edward Betchley.
Bechley’s interrogation by the Yard stopped only seven days later, when Pickles, a border collie in his daily jaunt among the hedges of Norwood, in South London, found the trophy. In reality, Pickles’ owner, a David Corbett, had bent down to attach Pickles’ lead on, and found a strange package in the shape of the World Cup wrapped in newspaper and string, half-hidden near his neighbour’s car.
All that manpower and infinite police overtime, and, in the end, the case was solved by Pickles, who went on to have free dog food for a year and several TV appearances, and became the star in a film, luckily forgotten by now. Pickles received several medals of merit, including Italian Dog of the Year, and was invited to visit, according to his owner, most countries in the world. They did not go because of mandatory six months’ quarantine upon return. One year later, Pickles died, but his story remains. And who knows what happened to Pickles’ owner, the person who found the trophy, after he received his bounty of £6,000.
So it happened that England won the World Cup in 1966, beating West Germany 4 – 2. It was the first and only time they won the cup.
England had torn the trophy away from Brazilian’s dreams, but A Jules was rightfully reconquered four years later, in 1970, in Mexico.
Reverse-Reverse Psychology
A Jules made its way to Brazil, to remain on permanent exhibition at the Trophy Room of the Confederation of Brazilian Football (CBF), in Rio de Janeiro. A Jules found its perpetual home in a display protected by bullet-proof glass attached to a wooden wall.
Thirteen years later, in 1983, thieves lurked around CBF and planned to steal A Jules from its impossible-to-breach case. They ripped the wooden wall, and the trophy was gone. There was much merriment all over the country after it was announced that the thieves had stolen a replica, not the real one made of solid gold.
For thirteen years, thousands of visitors to CBF had gawped and ooh-aah’d at A Jules, and they didn’t know they had acquired the right to brag about a fake trophy. But football fans are understanding: Who would be stupid enough to exhibit the real trophy in Rio, Brazilian and perhaps South-American capital of crime? Please! No, no, you couldn’t take the chance!
Naturally, CBF executives were cautious to retrieve the real A Jules out of the strong safe and make the big reveal of the adored trophy. Unimaginable danger and extreme greed prowled around the greatest trophy on earth, and they did not wish to take more risks than strictly necessary.
But it didn’t take long for CBF executives to fess up: The trophy in the safe was the fake one. The beloved A Jules that was on exhibition was the real one.
Of course! Real, competent, intelligent bandits would go straight to the safe. And steal the fake A Jules! Who in their right minds would ever think that we’d ever exhibit the real A Jules for all to see in a bullet proof case stuck to a wall? As if we didn’t know that Rio was the Brazilian if not South-American and perhaps worldwide capital of thieves? We’re cleverer than them!
As it dawned in the Brazilian collective consciousness that the treasured A Jules had really disappeared, and shocked people realised that they’d have to live without that most august symbol of national unity and achievement, it fell to a slow police department to find the two thieves, aka Francis Bearded and Louis Moustache (I kid you not). Bearded and Moustache believed A Jules had been handed over to an Argentinian gold dealer, who melted it immediately — For all eternity! But the police also found that the thieves’ boss was a Sergio Peralta, representative of the Atlético Mineiro football team at CBF. It had been an inside job. The perpetrators spent a few years in jail, but the gold dealer swore during the trial that he did not melt the trophy, and didn’t know what had happened to it.
Of course he did, but he could not say it. That the trophy was made of solid gold might have been a myth. Apparently, the trophy shown in Germany was a genuine copy of the original, and it was not made of solid gold. And the trophy found by Pickles? Who knows.
It’s tragic that the trophy Brazil won for all eternity but kept for only 13 years, the same trophy that had been smooched and slobbered by every great football player from 1930 to 1970, could have been a real fake. To this day, there’s no sign of the trophy from Rio, but the suspicion falls on all types of football staff or players who, by now, have died and might have happily taken A Jules to the other side with them. For all eternity.
The Second Cup
After Brazil won the Jules Rimet Cup for the third time and kept the trophy, there was the natural need of a new FIFA trophy. The second official trophy, cuddled and canoodled by winners of the World Cup since 1974, and making an appearance on TT’s credenza, was dryly named FIFA World Cup Trophy, and depicts two people holding a globe. The Stabilimento Artistico Bertoni, in Italy, made the trophy which weighs just over 6 kg, has malachite bands at its base, and cost the bagatelle of US$242,700 back then (equivalent of over €1.4 million today, price of fame not added). It’s made of 18 carat gold, but I don’t know if it is solid gold. The trophy is safely on show at the FIFA World Cup Museum in Zurich, from where it leaves only at competition time, probably surrounded by great Swiss secrecy and utmost security.
FIFA has learned a thing or two about trophies and competitions. Now, each third-time winner of the World Cup takes home a replica of the FIFA World Cup trophy made of gold-plated bronze. Germany was the first winner of the second version of the trophy, and the most recent holder of a replica is Argentina.
Other Famous Copies Faffing Around
After the theft of A Jules in England, the English Football Association decided it would be safer to have a replica of the trophy for their public appearances and celebrations. They used the replica on several occasions until 1997, when for some altruistic reason, they decided to auction it. What do you know, FIFA bought the replica at auction, for the trifling sum of over £250,000. Due to the high price, speculation was rife that it was the real A Jules being auctioned. The trophy, whether real, replica, or imaginary, was then donated by FIFA back to its seller (the English Football Association), and it has been on display at the English National Football Museum, in Preston. Go figure.
In 1986 FIFA was good enough to give CBF a replica of A Jules. CBF had its own good replica, the one that remained after the heist, so they didn’t need another. It was a kind gesture, no doubt, but it seems FIFA has been very generous with their replicas elsewhere, too.
A most faithful copy of A Jules was made under Kodak Brazil’s sponsorship, with FIFA approval. They located A Jules’ original moulds in Germany, and a new replica of A Jules was made and brought to Brazil and presented in a ceremony to Brazilian dictator João Figueiredo. Funny how dictators get attached to gold things and trophies. After that, the trophy made the rounds of large Brazilian cities, and it’s probably the one on exhibition at CBF Rio.
Nate D. Sanders Auctions tried to sell two different Jules Rimet Trophies originally given by FIFA to a 1950 referee and another to a German couple who had received it from FIFA because they “had supported FIFA”. Only the first one sold, with the lot consisting of other items, such as whistles, for just over US$6,000.
To complicate things, in 2015, the pedestal of the original A Jules was found, of all places, at FIFA’s cellar in Zurich (with five underground levels, was the cellar in the minus six?). With the blue lapis lazuli pedestal they also found the plates engraved with the names of the winners of the four initial competitions: Uruguay (1930; 1950), and Italy (1934; 1938). For whatever reason never explained, someone, never named, had decided to make a new base for the trophy in 1954. The remnants of the apparently original A Jules pedestal are on exhibit at the FIFA Museum. Make of it what you will, but it supports the strangeness of the trophy in Germany.
Sotheby’s, the auction house, tried to sell in 2020 what could be a replica of the trophy that had once belonged to Pelé. The trophy had lost its lustre and the gold plating, if that’s what it was, and was badly tarnished. Sadly, it looked washed out and cheap, despite its venerable provenance. The same trophy had been sold in 2016 for US$571,000, but it was withdrawn from the more recent auction.
These days, anybody can get a replica of the first or second World Cup trophy at the FIFA website or any Chinese cheap-cheap online shop. Different sizes and quality are priced accordingly. Really, the market is flooded with all sorts of replicas, made of paper up to some sort of gold thingy. I swooned when I saw the Jules Rimet 15cm replica, offered for sale at the National Football Museum as an “official FIFA replica” for £150 (plus shipping, taxes and customs). Then I almost fainted when I saw the sublimely inspiring A Jules’ fridge magnet, and the joyous pin badge.
The Perspective
In the last 120 years, FIFA has leapt from strength to strength to become the colossus it is today with 211 members. In comparison, the United Nations has 193 member-countries; the Paris Climate Accord, 198 signatory countries; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 193 signatory countries (of different treaties); the International Criminal Court, 125 member-countries.
Football seems to involve more people, feverish dedication, and passion than any other human endeavour. Football unites some, separate others, but we know FIFA’s immense riches will never unite or save humankind from the demolition of rights and responsibilities perpetrated by TT, those he supports, and those he makes deals with. Gianni Infantino, the current FIFA president, seems star struck: he was present at TT’s rallies before he was sworn president, and (as of the writing of this entry) is currently in Saudi Arabia (FIFA World Cup 2034) rubbing shoulders with TT and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. It looks like Infantino is in trouble these days. But maybe he’s just dying to stay alive; he knows what happened to some of his predecessors, but the stakes are much higher now as crown princes and extreme-right presidents have a huge army of nullities to do their bidding, not to say killing, as happened to journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The Lack of Perspective
An estimated five billion people watched the last FIFA World Cup tournament in 2022, something unimaginable a century ago. Players back then never dreamed that in a century of rapid development and scrupulous organisation, players would have surged in popularity and accumulated untold riches such as bottomless bank accounts and private planes, plus dental implants, veneers, and Botox. And they’d have perpetrated unthinkable acts.
A quick look at known scandals and controversies through decades of football has revealed that some footballers and some in their orbit (and politicians come to mind, too) have been complicit in
- Sex with prostitutes, colleague’s partner, transvestites, underage persons, not only à deux, but also in orgies
- Drugs use, all types forbidden by FIFA or governments or both
- Betting, match-fixing, vote-rigging, bribing referees and players
- Governments’ and FIFA’s corruption (allegedly)
- Violence by spectators against players and among themselves in and out of the pitch
- Violence by players against opponent’s players, namely biting, kicking, spitting and racist remarks
- Murder of a player’s pregnant girlfriend, ordered by the player
- Murder of a football player who scored an own goal
- Segregation of football player who came out as gay
- Lasagna food poisoning of a whole team (who lost the game)
- Porn Queen demanding payment for participating in a film with a player, as it ended up in the internet for all to see
- Player running naked in town, being chased by ghosts – but really he did not want his wife to know he was running away from a mugging by the prostitutes whose company he had just enjoyed
I’ll stop here, but there are many other scandals and controversies that complement and expand on the above. Perhaps we can all agree that they have lent the game its time-honoured, genteel flavour that caters to the audience’s highly sophisticated taste.
Is an audience of five billion people enough to satisfy TT’s desire for notoriety and adoration? He sure can brag about five billion admirers in 2026. But TT shouldn’t brag about the size of his gold trophy – real, replica, or imaginary. There’s no gravitas, with or without orange-platinum patina, that can fix him. And we all know FIFA will never unite the three host countries of the 2026 World Cup, let alone the rest of the world.
Who Has Won The Most World Cups?
This rant would not be complete if I did not list the winners of the World Cup and how many times they won. So here they are:
Once: Spain and England
Twice: France and Uruguay
Thrice: Argentina
Quadrice: Germany and Italy
Quince: Brazil
Each World Cup winner adds a star to their emblem. Brazil, with 5 stars, is raring to go for their sixth win. I’m sure millions of Brazilian punters fantasize about keeping the World Cup replica for all eternity, and it does not matter that it is a replica, gold or bronze or spittle. I’m sure some shadowy professionals are already planning a way to pilfer it, give it a kiss of death, and melt it because they still don’t believe that that deformed foot-long golden phallus is not made of gold.
And Finally…
Music For The Rant: O Sole Mio, performed by the Three Tenors during the official concert of the 1990 FIFA World Cup, at Caracalla in Rome. José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, and Maestro Zubin Mehta. It was going to be Nessum Dorma (Nobody Sleeps), but today I decided that while there’s sunshine, there’s hope. Bing Videos
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