To soccer fans around the world, the Jules Rimet Trophy is one of the most famous and important trophies in all of sport. Named after the third president of soccer’s ruling body FIFA, the Jules Rimet Trophy was for many years the top prize in the FIFA World Cup competition, awarded to the contest’s winner every four years, beginning with the very first champions, Uruguay, in 1930.
In the decades that followed, the trophy was handed out to whichever national soccer team won this most prestigious of association football competitions. And as befits such a high-status competition, the trophy itself is a remarkably impressive prize.
Standing more than 14 inches tall, the Jules Rimet is made from 18-carat gold-plated sterling silver, decorated around its base with rich green lapis lazuli stone, and depicts the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, holding a globe in her outstretched arms. That design remained in place right up until the 1970s when Brazil won the FIFA World Cup for a record third time. As per the competition’s rules at the time—and as stipulated by Jules Rimet himself, back in the 1930s—that victory ultimately allowed the Brazilian team to hold on to the trophy in perpetuity, and as a result, a new trophy (of almost identical) design was commissioned. Teams today compete for what is officially known simply as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, which has been awarded at every competition from 1974 to the present day.
That long and impressive history of one of sport’s most equally impressive trophies was, however, interrupted for several weeks in the mid-1960s. The 1966 FIFA World Cup winners were England, who took the title for both the first time in their own history and the World Cup competition’s history. Played on home turf at Wembley Stadium in London—and in front of an audience of 96,000 spectators, with more than 30 million people watching at home—the English team swept to a decisive 4-2 victory against longtime rivals West Germany on July 30. After the game, England captain Bobby Moore (who was later knighted for his contribution to England’s victory) made his way up into the Wembley stands and was handed the Jules Rimet Trophy by Queen Elizabeth II.
A few months earlier, however, the chances of that presentation ever being able to take place were thrown into considerable doubt.
In January 1966, several months before that year’s World Cup competition got under-way, the Jules Rimet Trophy arrived in London and was handed over to England’s Football Association organization for safekeeping. The following month, the FA agreed to loan the trophy out to an exhibition to be held at Westminster Central Hall in London and thereby allow fans from across the country to come and catch a glimpse of one of soccer’s most illustrious prizes. The exhibition, with the Jules Rimet Trophy as its main attraction, opened on March 19, 1966; but the following day, the case in which it was kept was jimmied open and the trophy stolen.
Scotland Yard was quickly put in charge of the case, and news broke of the theft the following morning. Descriptions of two suspects—suspicious characters sighted in the vicinity of the exposition the previous day—were handed to the press, but little progress had been made on the case before a parcel containing the removable gilt lining from the top of the trophy arrived on the doorstep of Joe Mears, the Chairman of England’s Football Association. Alongside the parcel was a note demanding a ransom of £15,000 cash—equivalent to more than a quarter of a million pounds ($350,000) today—in exchange for the safe return of the trophy. The perpetrators explained that the cash should be left in a specific location, inside a leather briefcase, by the following Friday, or else they would melt the trophy down and it would never be seen again.
With the help of the police, Mears went along with the thieves’ demands, and a decoy briefcase containing a few genuine banknotes padded out with reams of worthless scrap paper was used in a swiftly-arranged sting operation just a few days later. On March 24, a petty thief and used car dealer named Edward Betchley, was arrested and charged with both the theft of the trophy, and a separate charge of breaking and entering. Betchley, however, claimed to be little more than a paid middleman in the exchange, and explained that he had been given a fee of £500 to act on behalf of a third party — the true thief — who had been known only to him as “The Pole.” Only he, Betchley claimed, knew the whereabouts of the trophy, and now that Betchley had been arrested there was no way of contacting this shady third party; or of recovering the Jules Rimet trophy.
In the trial that eventually followed, Betchley was found guilty of demanding money with intent to steal and received a two-year jail sentence. Scotland Yard’s sting operation might have successfully caught at least one party in the theft of the World Cup trophy, but in apprehending Betchley, it seemed the police had also simultaneously lost the trophy for good.
Then, on March 27, something quite unexpected happened. A Londoner named David Corbett was walking his black and white collie dog — Pickles, in the Beulah Hill district of southeast London, when Pickles started to nose at a disheveled-looking parcel—wrapped in an old newspaper, and tied up with string—lying under the hedge of Corbett’s house. Luckily, Corbett didn’t merely dismiss the parcel as little more than litter and opened it up. Inside was the Jules Rimet Trophy.
The Trophy was handed in to a police station in nearby Gipsy Hill, London, and was held by the Metropolitan Police as evidence until the middle of April, when it was finally handed back to the Football Association for the run-up to the competition. As for Corbett—and, more importantly, Pickles the dog—they became heroes.
Corbett was awarded a £5,000 reward for finding the trophy, while Pickles was awarded the silver medal of the National Canine Defense League, gifted a year’s worth of free dog food, and named “Dog of the Year” by pet food manufacturer Spillers. Pickles even went on to make a series of television and film appearances, including the 1966 comedy crime caper, The Spy with a Cold Nose.
Sadly, Pickles died the following year. But for his extraordinary and unexpected contribution to world soccer, he is now memorialized in the park where the trophy was found with a special commemorative plaque, while his collar remains on display to this day in England’s National Football Museum, in Manchester.