 The World Cup is the greatest sporting prize on Earth, competed for every four years by all the qualified nations of the world, and only eight nations of our planet have ever won the elusive prize. The current World Cup has been in use since 1974. The previous World Cup was retired as an award for the Brazilian success in the competition and in 1970, Brazil took the prize permanently after three straight World Cup wins in a row, something never achieved before or after. Originally named Victory for the Greek goddess Nike, but later renamed the Jules Ramey Trophy, an honor of the Frenchman who proposed on 28 May 1928 at the 17th FIFA Congress in Amsterdam. Jules Ramey tabled the extraordinary proposal that FIFA stages a world championship, later named the World Cup, and the trophy victory would be the prize. A competition that is now the greatest show on Earth and the 2018 World Cup in Russia was watched by 3.6 billion people across the globe. A staggering figure and the connections the beautiful game brings across all cultures and beliefs is a symbol of the potential of unification. It was designed and modeled in France in 1929 before traveling all over the world over the next 54 years. Jules Ramey himself stipulated that the trophy should be given in perpetuity to the first team to win it three times. The World Cup was stolen twice in England in 1966 and when missing, only to be found by a sniffer dog named Pickles behind the wheel of a car while out walking with his owner. When England won the trophy that year, the dog and its owner were awarded heavily. £5,000 in 1966 was a significant sum and a reflection of the true value of the trophy, not in a monetary sense, but as an object of wonder and hope. The second time it went missing, the trophy was on display on the third floor of the CBF offices in Rio. On the evening of December 20, 1983, the building's night watchman was overpowered by a group of thieves seemingly in no mood to embrace the Christmas spirit. After apparently tying up the night watchman, the thieves pried open the wooden frame of the bulletproof glass display box that housed the trophy and took it. To this day, it has never been seen again in public. The crime triggered a desperate search for the perpetrators and the trophy, with several covert foundries in and around the city, fears grew that the trophy would be melted down. The bullion value was believed to be around £8,000 at the time, while the Rio de Janeiro state bank issued a hefty reward of millions for the trophy's safe return. In his book, Martin Atherton writes that the CBF president made a nationwide appeal asking all Brazilians to help recover the trophy, saying the spiritual value of the cup is far greater than its material worth and that the thieves had no feeling of patriotism. The nation hung its head in shame. The police embarked on an intense investigation pursuing an inside job line of inquiry and condemning the night watchman's evidence as inconsistent. The day after the theft, two men who had previously worked at the CBF offices as janitors were arrested. However, no charges were made and the trophy was never discovered, widely believed to have been melted down and sold as bullion. And so the glorious trophy, the gilded 30 centimeter high statue of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, made by the Parisian sculptor Abel Lafleur in 1929, vanished forever. We hope you have enjoyed this video today, guys, for all the sports history buffs out there who may not have known that the trophy was actually stolen and possibly lost forever. A needless theft that would have benefited so few and when you consider how much influence the trophy had on the world, then this is even more a sickening loss of something that isn't ancient. But the symbolism was a glowing beacon of all that is good in a world that is eclipsed with darkness. A beacon lost for the purposes of keeping us in that darkness, but the light must prevail. Always. What do you guys think about this anyway? Comments below and as always, thank you for watching.