The wild and weird journey of the original Jules Rimet Trophy took another twist on Tuesday, as FIFA founds its stone base in storage last month.
As with all things FIFA, how an important piece of soccer history could go missing only to be found in the basement is pretty much absurd.
The base has the names of the tournaments first four winners, Uruguay and Italy each took it home twice, and became history when FIFA put a new base on it in 1954.
Later, the original top of the trophy and second base was given to Brazil upon its third win -- it was widely known that the first team to win three World Cups would keep the trophy -- and it was stolen in 1983.
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Not the original base, though. That was in the basement. Cue FIFA museum creative director David Ausseil.
From the Associated Press:“It’s like finding an Egyptian mummy,” Ausseil told The Associated Press. “You can’t put a price tag on it because it’s family jewels.”
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“We thought (the base) was lost in Brazil,” Ausseil said. “We think no FIFA president has seen it since Jules Rimet himself.”
The director spoke on the sidelines of a tour of the museum construction site in downtown Zurich. The World Football Museum, with exhibits on three floors, is scheduled to open in March 2016.
It wouldn’t be shocking if the news leaked that Sepp Blatter had been using the trophy as a paperweight.