Football sculpture fetches £450,000
A monument chronicling 124 years of England's footballing hurt by listing every defeat suffered by the team between 1874 and 1998 has sold at auction for a staggering £425,000.
Starting with a 2-1 defeat to Scotland, the magnificent granite sculpture charts more than a century of England's footballing failures, finishing with a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Romania in the 1998 World Cup.
The gloomy untitled piece was created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and was being auctioned by Sotherby's as part of their Bear Witness art sale, which has already generated £26.5 million.
Mr Cattelan said: "Carved into it are all the defeats of England's national football team. I guess it's a piece which talks about pride, missed opportunities and death."
Among the defeats etched into the enormous black structure is the infamous 2-1 loss to Argentina in 1986, immortalised by Diego Maradona's "Hand of God" goal, and the shock 1-0 to the USA in 1950.
It was first exhibited in 1999 and its sale comes in the wake of one of England's worst performance at an international tournament in recent memory, after they crashed out of the 2014 World Cup without a single win.
Mr Cattelan is known for his satirical art pieces and is the mastermind behind other works such as a sculpture depicting Pope John Paul II being hit by a meteorite.
Almost 550 paintings will be sold as part of the Bear Witness sale, the remainder of which go under the hammer on March 11 and 12.
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