BERLIN -- The World Cup winners' podium used at the 2006 tournament in Germany has been found abandoned at Berlin's Olympiapark, near the Olympiastadion where the final was played.
On July 9, 2006, following a turbulent final featuring a red card for France captain Zinedine Zidane in his last competitive match, Italy captain Fabio Cannavaro stood on the podium and received the trophy from Horst Kohler, then the German president.
Eleven years later, the podium is slowly falling apart in bushes in the park.
"I can't tell you how long it's been there," Martin Pallgen, the spokesperson for Berlin's senate department for sports and the interior, told ESPN FC.
Pallgen had spotted the podium during a walk through the Olympiapark near the Sommerbad Olympiastadion swimming pool.
"It's a leftover. A Hamburg-based auction house acting on behalf of FIFA could not sell it," Lutz Imhof, a long-time event manager at the Olympiapark, told ESPN FC.
"There's been loose interest in it a couple of times, mostly from Italians, but nobody ever bought it."
While parts of the podium remain intact, others have not survived the test of time.
"Whoever wants it can have it," Imhof said.