While FC Barcelona hotshot Luis Suarez was attending teammate Lionel Messi’s wedding, a statue of the Uruguayan football player was vandalised over the weekend.
According to AS newspaper in Spain, there was a hand-written note at the scene which read: “I went to Messi’s wedding, I’ll be back soon.”
It was discovered early on Sunday morning that the sculpture in Salto, Uruguay, was snapped from its metal base and lying face down on the street. Earlier this year, Messi also met a similar fate when miscreants stole the entire top half of the Argentine’s statue in Buenos Aires.
The bronze statue was found broken in half with the head and torso removed. The statue was unveiled last June in a public attempt to convince Messi to reconsider his international retirement after losing in a penalty shootout to Chile in the Copa America final.
The statue stood on Paseo de la Gloria (Glory Street) which also has sculptures of tennis player Gabriela Sabatini and basketball player Manuel Ginobili. Interestingly, the incident happened the same day Cristiano Ronaldo beat Messi to the Best FIFA Player of the Year award in a glittering ceremony in Zurich.
About 250 guests attended the marriage of Messi and Antonella Roccuzzo at a luxury hotel. Apart from Suarez, FC Barcelona teammates Neymar and Gerard Pique, who was joined by his wife, Colombian pop star Shakira also attended the wedding.
Argentines were abuzz over the wedding in Rosario, an agricultural hub and the country’s third-largest city about 300 kilometers (186 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires.