It is essentially the most well-known second in English soccer. Bobby Moore, the England captain, hoisted at the shoulders of his teammates, preserving the World Cup trophy aloft in 1966.
While the instant used to be captured on digital camera and preserved for posterity, the purple England blouse the centre-half used to be dressed in, with the quantity six at the again, has been misplaced – and Moore’s ex-wife is urging its present proprietor to go back it.
Tina Moore, the West Ham defender’s first spouse, has known as at the non-public purchaser who has the blouse to go back the a part of footballing historical past. She informed the Daily Mail that the remaining time she noticed the blouse used to be in her attic at their house in Chigwell, Essex.
“I would really love to get that shirt back where it belongs – with me, with my family, and with the nation, for everyone to have a chance to look at it and marvel at Bobby’s achievement,” she stated.
Tina, who used to be married to Bobby for twenty-four years, stated the blouse used to be saved in a bag at their house. When Bobby used to be death of most cancers in 1992, his daughter Roberta introduced his trophies, medals and caps for him to carry.
However, the gathering didn’t come with his England blouse, and Tina, 79, who were given his soccer memorabilia in her divorce in 1986, then spent years searching for it. She is astonished at how the blouse has vanished from their ownership.
The thriller used to be partly solved in 2021 when the Football Association phoned Roberta, 58, and stated: “Your father’s shirt has been found.” They stated it used to be within the arms of a non-public purchaser, whose identification stays a secret. It is unclear how repeatedly it’ll have modified arms since they remaining noticed it within the Nineteen Eighties.
“It was a huge shock and at first totally baffling,” Roberta informed the Mail. “The blouse belongs to my mom and he or she have been searching for it for years. Now all of the sudden they had been telling us about some non-public purchaser and it have been ‘discovered’?”
She added: “It was all very strange. The information was vague. The shirt had been ‘found at a general auction of an unknown deceased person’. It was hard to comprehend. How does the shirt go from being tucked in a bag in my mother’s attic to an auction of a deceased person?”
Moore performed greater than 100 occasions for England and, in a profession that spanned greater than twenty years, gave the impression just about 550 occasions for West Ham. He performed 124 video games for Fulham earlier than transient spells within the United States and Denmark.
He used to be awarded an OBE within the aftermath of the World Cup triumph, nonetheless the England males’s group’s best primary trophy win since its basis, and become the primary footballer to win BBC Sports Personality of the Year. He is remembered with a statue outdoor Wembley Stadium. He died in 1993 elderly 51.
When the circle of relatives had been alerted by way of the FA to the blouse’s whereabouts, they had been informed that it have been authenticated by way of knowledgeable utilized by Sotheby’s and Christie’s public sale properties.
Tina believes the blouse went lacking within the Nineties, after making an attempt and failing to seek out it in 1998. She is undecided the way it took place.
“The divorce deeply affected me. It used to be a horrible time of my existence, I used to be in turmoil. I put all my valuables right into a financial institution vault and concept on the time that the entire shirts had been integrated, however I found out a lot later that they were not. So we simply do not know what took place to them,” she said.
An FA spokesperson said: “Bobby Moore is an England hero. It can be glorious if there used to be some way of discovering his historical World Cup-winning blouse and striking it on show for the country.”