Iconic WC

The 1966 World Cup saw their introduction and we’ve been freaked out ever since...

GOLEO AND PILLE

Goleo was a lion dressed in a Germany shirt but had no pants. Pille, a talking football, was his sidekick (almost literally). To put it mildly, Goleo didn’t go down well with Germans, not least because he was pants-less, but also that lions last roamed Germany about 60,000 years ago. The less said about Pille the better – the name says it all, really.

CIAO

There was something beautifully simple about Ciao, essentially a stick figure with a football for a head. “Being abstract and detached from historical references, Ciao (stood out from) the nearly 50,000 proposals received, most often marked by icons of regional gastronomy or imperial splendor,” Italian writer Michele Galluzzo wrote in 2016.

ZAKUMI

When Zakumi was first unveiled, no one quite knew what to make of him. We were told he was a leopard, but really... and those flowing green locks? Nevertheless, a bit like the vuvuzela, South Africans gradually grew to love him and then actually defended him when others who couldn’t figure out what he was tried to give him stick.

PIQUE

That sombrero. That moustache. And Pique just happened to be a jalapeno pepper, too. The name, according to Wikipedia, was derived from the Spanish word for spicy, picante, and was apparently also a pun on “PK” or penalty kick. Pique was used in ads at the time to sell everything from cars to record players, plastic furniture and bicycles.

GAUCHITO

What better way to try and distract from the fact that just two years before, your country had suffered a military coup than to have a cute little boy in a gaucho hat, wielding a whip and kicking a ball to help promote the tournament. Argentina controversially chose not to pick the real Gauchito, Diego Maradona, then just 17.