Blagoy Georgiev, a 33 year-old midfielder with top Russian outfit Rubin Kazan, was visiting Rome as a tourist with his girlfriend, when he decided to leave his mark on the Colosseum by engraving his initials on a ground floor pillar with a coin, tgcom24 reported.
The football ace was caught in the act by security guards who notified the authorities, The police charged him with vandalizing the historic building and confiscated his coin.
The crime comes just days after a Lebanese tourist was caught doing exactly the same thing.
Penalties for damaging the priceless monument can be very heavy indeed. Last year a 42-year old Russian tourist was fined €20,000 after carving a large letter K into the wall of the Colosseum.
Such a fine was perhaps not heavy enough to put off the player who has been capped 50 times by his country and earned a reported €0.9 million in 2013.
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