Trophy turns up in German team's own basement after being reported stolen

Bartlomiej Jaszka of German Fuechse Berlin prepares to score as Maxim Babichev of HC Dinamo-Minsk tries to block him during their EHF Men's Champions League, Groupe Phase handball match in Minsk, Belarus, Sunday, Dec. 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

BERLIN — One of Germany’s most storied sports trophies was believed to have been stolen and melted down. Now it’s turned up in the champion team’s own basement.

A four-month saga took an unusual turn Monday when Germany’s champion men’s handball team Fuechse Berlin reported that the large silver dish which went missing from its offices in November had been found stashed in a basement storage area.

The club believes that suspects stole the trophy from its offices then hid it to retrieve later, but decided against doing so because of media attention around the theft.

“The risk of being caught seemed too high even for the master thieves,” the club said in a statement Monday.

The trophy, which was valued at around 12,000 euros (US$13,900) as of 2014, is engraved with the names of champion teams going back decades and had seemed lost.

After authorities found a silver bar during a series of raids on addresses in January, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office told the Sport Bild newspaper that the suspicion was the trophy had been melted down. The league has now canceled the order it made for a replacement, German agency dpa reported.

Handball is a fast-paced team game which is one of the most popular sports in Germany and northern Europe, and the men’s league is widely shown on TV.

Fuechse Berlin won’t get to hold the trophy again for a while longer, though. The club says it’s been taken by the police as evidence.

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The Associated Press