A 70ft statue of Lionel Messi in India is set to be taken down after it was spotted “swaying in the wind”.<\/p>\n
The giant monument in Kolkata, West Bengal, was erected in December during Messi’s ‘GOAT’ tour<\/a> of the country – GOAT meaning ‘greatest of all time’.<\/p>\n According to local media, engineers from the Public Works Department (PWD) carried out an inspection of the statue following complaints from local residents on Monday.<\/p>\n Its immediate removal and relocation were ordered after the inspection found the statue’s structural integrity to be severely compromised.<\/p>\n “The statue of the Argentine football legend was found [to be] unsafe,” said West Bengal state legislator Sharadwat Mukherjee.<\/p>\n “We have noticed that the statue is swaying in the wind.”<\/p>\n Mukherjee said the proximity of the statue to a busy road and a subway make the statue’s removal “easier said than done,” but that they plan to “remove the statue at the earliest opportunity.”<\/p>\n Local media say the fibreglass and iron structure has been secured with heavy-duty nylon ropes, while barricades have been erected to keep people and traffic clear of the site.<\/p>\n Authorities are reportedly exploring alternative locations for the statue, which was assembled over the course of 27 days by a 45-strong crew.<\/p>\n Messi, widely regarded as one of the games greatest players, unveiled the statue virtually – he appeared on a video screen and pressed a button on a remote control – in December, though his visit to Kolkata was overshadowed by violence<\/a> during an appearance at Salt Lake Stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 70ft statue of Lionel Messi in India is set to be taken down after it was spotted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-613791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}