FIFA World Cup Trophy

Lore & Background

The story of the World Cup trophy is inseparable from the story of the tournament itself. When FIFA launched the competition in 1930, Jules Rimet commissioned a silver cup depicting Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, holding up a wreath. It became the emotional centrepiece of every final for four decades. Brazil's third triumph in 1970 — a dazzling, attacking display that many still call the greatest World Cup team ever assembled — earned them the right to keep it forever. That cup, the Jules Rimet, was stolen from a museum in Rio de Janeiro in 1983 and has never been recovered, adding a layer of mystery and loss to football's lore.

By the late 1960s, FIFA had decided that no single nation should hold the trophy in perpetuity again. In 1971, Italian sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga was commissioned to design a new prize. His concept — two footballers straining upward to hold the globe — was meant to convey both the physicality of the sport and its universal reach. The trophy debuted at the 1974 final, where West Germany edged the Netherlands in a tense, tactical affair. Since then it has been lifted by Argentina, Italy, West Germany, Brazil, France, and Spain, among others, each time under the roar of a packed stadium and the weight of a nation's expectation.

The ritual of presentation is itself a small ceremony: the captain of the winning team lifts the trophy, the confetti falls, and the players circle the pitch. The original is then carefully returned to FIFA's vault, and the replica — identical in form but gold-plated rather than solid — is presented to the federation. The contrast between the two objects, the real gold and the gilded copy, has become a quiet metaphor for the tournament: one unrepeatable, irreplaceable moment of triumph, and the long memory that follows.

In Their Own Story

The night of the 1998 final in Saint-Denis, the stadium lights hummed with a low, electric buzz that you could feel in your teeth. The trophy sat on a velvet-draped stand at centre circle, wrapped in plastic, waiting. When France won, the plastic was peeled back in slow motion, and the gold caught the floodlights and threw it back at the crowd like a second sun. Zinedine Zidane, quiet as ever, lifted it with both hands, and for a heartbeat the noise simply stopped — not silence, but a held breath, a collective inhalation of 80,000 people who understood they were watching something that would be replayed in living rooms for a generation. Then the noise came back, and the confetti started falling like gold snow, and the trophy disappeared into the arms of a thousand hands, each one wanting to feel the weight of it, the real, solid, 18-carat weight of winning the world.

Reader's Guide

The current FIFA World Cup Trophy was designed by Silvio Gazzaniga and first presented in 1974. Its form — two footballers in mid-stride, arms raised, supporting a stylised globe — is cast in 18-carat gold and mounted on a double ring of green malachite. The design was chosen to move away from the classical, static figure of the earlier Jules Rimet Trophy (which depicted Nike holding a laurel wreath) toward something more dynamic and modern.

The Jules Rimet Trophy, in use from 1930 to 1970, was a silver cup about 35 cm tall. Brazil, after their third title in Mexico 1970, were granted permanent ownership. The cup was stolen in Rio de Janeiro in 1983 and never found, making it one of football's great unsolved mysteries.

Because no nation now holds the trophy in perpetuity, the presentation ritual carries extra weight: the winning captain lifts the original, the team celebrates, and the cup is returned to FIFA. The federation then presents a gold-plated replica to the national association. The original is stored in a vault and travels only for the final match.

The trophy has been won by West Germany (1974, 1990), Argentina (1978, 1986), Italy (1982), France (1998, 2018), Brazil (1994), and Spain (2010), among others. Each presentation is broadcast to a global audience of over a billion viewers, making the lift of the trophy one of the most-watched sporting moments on Earth.

Did You Know?

• The Jules Rimet Trophy was stolen from a museum in Rio de Janeiro in 1983 and has never been recovered, despite an international search.
• The current trophy is never permanently awarded to any country; the winning team receives a gold-plated replica, while the original remains in FIFA's vault.
• Silvio Gazzaniga's design was selected from among 15 proposals submitted by sculptors from various countries in 1971.
• The trophy's malachite base is a deep green stone, chosen to evoke the colour of the pitch and to contrast with the gold of the figures above.