Bobby Moore's 1966 World Cup winning shirt missing as England legend's ex-wife finds mystery 'owner' has put it on sale
21 April 2023, 23:54
The shirt that Bobby Moore was wearing as he captained England to victory in the 1966 World Cup has gone missing from his ex-wife's house.
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Tina Moore believed the shirt of her ex-husband, who died in 1993, was mothballed in her attic in Essex.
But it has now been offered up at auction by an unnamed private buyer, stunning the England legend's family.
Ms Moore told the Mail Online: "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 last saw the shirt in the 1980s, but the family discovered it was missing by the early 1990s.
Ms Moore spent years trying to track the iconic shirt down, before the FA told her they had found it - but it belonged to a private owner.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by that person, but the family want to know how they obtained the shirt.
Her daughter Roberta, 58, said: “It was a huge shock and at first, totally baffling.
"The shirt belongs to my mother and she had been looking for it for years. Now out of the blue, they were telling us about some private buyer, and it had been ‘found’?”
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?”
Read more: 'One of our greatest': England's 1966 World Cup winner George Cohen dies aged 83
Tina said: “If there is somebody out there who has the shirt, I appeal for them to come to us, and explain how they came about it.
"I’m sure it’s been done in very good faith, but I don’t think the people or this person are aware of what’s happened.
"I would just love to be able to talk to them and find out. But more than anything, I just want to get back the shirt which Bobby gave to me and entrusted to me. I owe it to him and the family."
An FA spokesman said: “Bobby Moore is an England hero. It would be wonderful if there was a way of finding his historic World Cup winning shirt and putting it on display for the nation.”
