GOAT Tour<\/a> (Greatest of all Time Tour) of India in December.<\/p>\nBut West Bengal state legislator Sharadwat Mukherjee said it was no longer safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe statue of the Argentine football legend in the city of Kolkata was found unsafe by engineers of the West Bengal government,\u201d he told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have noticed that the statue is swaying in the wind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Workers on Wednesday used ropes to attempt to secure the statue, which looms over a busy road.<\/p>\n
Mukherjee said it was not clear when it would be brought down.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemoval has proved easier said than done,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are planning to remove the statue at the earliest opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did not say whether the statue would be re-erected at another site.<\/p>\n
Argentina is set to begin its World Cup campaign on June 16 against Algeria in Kansas City.<\/p>\n
Messi has not formally confirmed his plans to play in the World Cup, but is widely expected to return for what would be a record-matching sixth appearance at the tournament.<\/p>\n
He remains the side\u2019s talisman for the defence of the title they won in Qatar four years ago.<\/p>\n
India \u2013 a nation of 1.4 billion \u2013 is a cricket powerhouse, but struggles on the football pitch and is 142nd on the FIFA rankings.<\/p>\n
Football, however, is the country\u2019s second favourite sport, according to research by data company Nielsen released on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Statue to honour World Cup winner Lionel Messi, unveiled during his GOAT tour of India, unstable on busy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[3858,307,304,305,306,576,308,93,1128,61,2568,60,19144,43,850,102024],"class_list":["post-469522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-argentina","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-asia","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-football","tag-ie","tag-india","tag-ireland","tag-latin-america","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}