Former Italy defender wants abandoned World Cup podium

Date: 4th April 2017 at 2:56am
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The World Cup winners’ podium used at the 2006 tournament in Germany has been found abandoned, and Marco Materazzi has stepped forward to give it a new owner.

Italy overcame France on penalties on July 9, 2006 in a match that saw Zinedine Zidane famously sent off for head-butting the former Inter defender.

After the match, then German president Horst Kohler handed the trophy to Azzurri captain Fabio Cannavaro, but the podium that was used that day is slowly falling apart in Berlin’s Olympiapark.

“It’s a leftover,” Lutz Imhof, a long-time event manager at Olympiapark, told ESPN FC.

“A Hamburg-based auction house acting on behalf of FIFA could not sell it. There’s been loose interest in it a couple of times, mostly from Italians, but nobody ever bought it.”

That could change in the near future, as once news broke of the story, Materazzi contacted La Gazzetta dello Sport, making it known that he wants the now abandoned podium.

No doubt the podium holds a special place in the former defender’s heart, as it was Materazzi that levelled the score at 1-1 in the final before Italy’s famous triumph.

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