Residents of the Tottenham defender’s home town of Ekeren have collected hundreds of signatures in the hope of seeing a likeness of the Belgium international, but he will not be signing himself
It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Ekeren, just outside Antwerp, may soon house a statue most people can get behind. Toby Alderweireld could not believe his ears when he heard several hundred local residents had signed a petition to erect a memorial to him in place of that to the former king of Belgium Leopold II, who oversaw atrocities in Congo from the late 1880s to 1908. The defacement and subsequent removal of Leopold’s likeness, which was targeted during the wave of protests following George Floyd’s killing in the United States, has left a vacancy where it stood in the town centre.
“I was laughing,” Alderweireld says of his reaction to the idea, which had gained more than 800 signatures by Friday afternoon. “I thought it was some kind of joke, that people are actually signing the petition.
Written by Nick Ames
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jun/13/toby-alderweireld-i-will-not-sign-the-petition-for-my-own-statue under the title “
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