Born in Germany, Kevin-Prince Boateng, who committed his national team future to the Black Stars, became the most hated player in the country of his birth, and it was not because he decided to play for Ghana.
Boateng, while playing for Portsmouth in the FA Cup game against Chelsea, slid into Michael Ballack and ruptured several ligaments, which cost the captain of the German national team the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
Reflecting on the incident, Boateng said his life changed for the worse, and he recounted a bizarre incident where a staff member of the Berlin airport threw his passport away because of that infamous tackle.
“I played good with Portsmouth, and I was lucky that I had the World Cup. My last game for Portsmouth was the FA Cup final against Chelsea where we lost 1-0, and I tackled Michael Ballack, which ended his career. In Germany, they literally killed me for it because it was the last game before the World Cup.”
“His management wrote that they wanted to sue me, and I was on eight million front pages in the world being the bad boy. In Germany, they called me public enemy number one. It was crazy. I land in Berlin, and a guy looks at my passport, and he goes like, you are the guy. He then throws away my passport. That is how I was hated. They sent me letters home and threatened to kill my kids and rape my wife.
“A week before that I had announced that I was going to play for Ghana so all those things came together. I was called a traitor, and even the racism thing came out” Kevin-Prince Boateng said on Rio Ferdinand’s Vibe with Five podcast.
By: Koel Eshun/Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
