The man who shaped the world's most recognizable trophy

Every four years, billions of people watch footballers lift it above their heads in tears of joy. But few know the name of the man who made it — a Milanese sculptor named Silvio Gazzaniga.
In 1970, Brazil claimed a historic third World Cup title and, under FIFA rules at the time, earned the right to keep the original trophy — the Jules Rimet Cup — permanently. That left football's governing body with a problem: they needed a new one. Their solution was to launch an international design competition, drawing 53 artists from 25 countries. The winner was Gazzaniga, then 50 years old and already a seasoned craftsman with over three decades of experience as a goldsmith and sculptor.
His design was unlike anything that had come before. Where previous trophies had been bulky urns or wide-mouthed cups, Gazzaniga envisioned something dynamic and immediate — a 34-centimetre sculpture of two athletes stretching their arms skyward, their bodies forming an elegant double helix. He described his creation in almost poetic terms: "The trophy represents two players raising their arms toward the sky in the exultant joy of victory. It captures the dynamism, strength and speed of the game, the athletic effort, the emotion, the exhilaration of standing on top of the world."
But Gazzaniga's masterstroke wasn't just the design itself — it was how he submitted it. Fearing that drawings alone wouldn't convey the true power of his vision, he built a custom wooden crate, screwed his plaster model inside, marked it "fragile," and shipped the physical sculpture to FIFA. His son Giorgio would later joke that the crate was "the forerunner of the Louis Vuitton case" in which the trophy travels today.
The gamble paid off. FIFA officials could immediately see not only how striking the trophy was, but how well it would photograph — no small detail in an era when hundreds of millions were already watching the tournament on television. The interplay of light and shadow between the rough-textured figures and the smooth, gleaming globe at the top gave it an almost cinematic quality.
FIFA announced Gazzaniga's win on 28–29 January 1972. The trophy was then cast by Bertoni, a Milan-based manufacturing firm with which Gazzaniga had a long-standing collaboration, in solid 18-carat gold with a base of green malachite. Its dimensions — 36.8 cm tall, 13 cm wide at the base, weighing 6,175 grams — have never changed. After each tournament, before returning to FIFA's headquarters in Zurich, it stops at Bertoni to be cleaned, re-gilded and polished.
Despite overseeing the trophy's restoration well into his late eighties, Gazzaniga earned little from its continued fame. Commercial rights belonged entirely to FIFA — meaning that the numerous players who over the years quietly approached him or Bertoni hoping to commission a personal replica were always turned away empty-handed.
Still, the legacy was its own reward. The success of the World Cup trophy opened doors to a remarkable second chapter: Gazzaniga went on to design the UEFA Cup (now the Europa League), the Africa Cup of Nations, the UEFA Super Cup, and the World Cups for volleyball, bobsled and baseball. It earned him a title as fitting as any he ever sculpted: the Lord of Trophies.
Silvio Gazzaniga passed away in 2016. His tools, sketches, plaster casts and a wax replica of his most famous creation are still kept by his son Giorgio — in a workshop just outside Milan, where it all began.