Football stars recuperate stolen antic statue

Tirana, Feb 9 – Igli Tare, a former striker for the Albanian national team and with a current managerial role at SS Lazio, his former team, has purchased for 20 million euro the statue of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. The antic statue was stolen in 1991 from the archeological site of Butrint.
Tare bought the statue together with Lorik Cana, another Albanian international and captain of Olimpique Marseigllie in France.
“We had heard that the statue was in the possession of a Roman art collector, who had bought it in an international auction,” said Tare. He managed to find the art collector through the help of his lawyers and bought it.
Together with Cana they will return the cobble statue of Asclepius’s head and hand it over to the Albanian President, in a ceremony in Tirana.
The statue is judged to belong to the 4th century BC and it was unearthed in 1932 at the archeological site of Butrint by an Italian archeologist, Luigi Maria Ugolini. The Italian catalogued his find, out of many, in his 1935 publication “Il Teatro di Butrinto. Atti della Pontificia Academica Romana di Archeologia.”
The statue was stolen in 1991 together with many ancient artifacts and ended up in the Italian capital. After 18 years of waiting, it will return to its homeland to be exposed next to other artifacts discovered by Ugolini.