All-dancing show honours Boatengs
Tale of the talented brothers becomes a play on Berlin stage Portugal glory inspires Guinea-Bissau
UNHERALDED Guinea-Bissau hope to draw inspiration from former colonial power Portugal, who won the European championship six months ago, as they prepare to make their debut at the African Nations Cup finals.
One of the world’s poorest countries and ranked in the bottom 10 in the United Nation’s human development index, Guinea-Bissau caused a sensation in booking a place at the 16-team tournament in Gabon, where they will meet the hosts in the opening match in Libreville on January 14.
Team coordinator Caito Balde said the side want to continue to surprise the footballing world at the finals and do what Portugal did in France last July.
“Portugal are an inspiration to us for what they did at the Euro 2016 in France,” he said in an interview with the Portuguese news agency Lusa on Sunday.
“Many of the players in the Guineateam have played with many of those players who have now become champions of Europe.
“They have passed through the best training school that is Portugal and will look to show that at the Nations Cup.”
But Guinea-Bissau will still have to overcome serious problems if they are to make any impact, not least their haphazard preparations.
Promised government support to pay for a training camp ahead of the tournament has not materialised.
Instead a preliminary squad of 26 players has assembled at GuineaBissau’s national stadium daily since last Thursday for training.
It is still not known if a warm-up friendly will be organised for the team before they depart for Libreville next week.
Long overdue appearance fees from the qualifying campaign had been paid on Friday, Balde said, but
THE tale of the Boateng brothers Jerome, George and Kevin-Prince, two of whom made history by facing each other at a World Cup finals, has hit the stage in Berlin.
The play Peng-Peng Boateng ( BangBang Boateng) is based on the 2012 book The Boateng Brothers by sports journalist Michael Horeni with dance scenes replacing football matches.
The tale charts the brothers’ different paths from the football pitches of Berlin.
Kevin-Prince is an ex-Portsmouth, AC Milan and Tottenham Hotspur midfielder, now playing for Las Palmas in Spain.
George became a rapper after a prison spell, while Bayern Munich defender Jerome won the 2014 World Cup with Germany.
The Boatengs made World Cup history at the 2010 finals in South Africa by becoming the first brothers to play each other when Kevin-Prince’s Ghana lost 1-0 to Jerome’s Germany in a group game.
The siblings are sons of a German mother and Ghanaian father. But while George and Kevin-Prince were raised by their mother in Berlin’s working-class district of Wedding, Jerome lived with his father in the affluent suburb of Wilmersdorf.
“It’s a bit of ‘Wedding meets Wilmersdorf’, the bad brothers against the good brother and how they actually became who they are,” director Nicole Oder said.
“We used dance to replace the football and we partly improvised on the basis of the book, which means we have developed a part-documentary, part-fictional story.”
Despite Oder’s best efforts, the PengPeng Boateng team have never met the brothers.
Jerome, the youngest of the trio, is portrayed as the shy child who grew up to become a world champion, model and multi-millionaire. He has been held up by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a model of integration and is one of the most recognisable faces in Germany. But he has also been dragged into political storms in the past.
Alexander Gauland, deputy leader of the populist AfD party, said in June that “people think of him as a good footballer, but they do not want a Boateng as a neighbour” – comments which drew widespread condemnation.
He is known for a strong work ethic and has become one of the world’s best centre-backs. In one scene, Jerome, played by actor Nyamandi Mushayavanhu, suffers in training, accepting the iron discipline needed to succeed in German football, living under draconian rules to win his coach’s confidence.
Meanwhile, his brothers show a tendency to rebel, but there is a danger in stereotyping the characters, says Mushayavanhu.
“A lot had been heard about the brothers in advance and many people pigeonhole them,” said Mushayavanhu.
“George is the so-called bad guy, KevinPrince is the bad guy and Jerome is the good guy, but it’s not that simple when you look into it.”
Tamar Aslan plays Kevin-Prince, the talented midfielder who had been a key member of Germany’s U21 team, but was thrown out of the squad, after an ill-advised nightclub visit.
On stage, the character is tormented by the sanction and, unable to accept his punishment, decides never to play for Germany again and opts instead for his father’s country Ghana.
“The character of Kevin is the most interesting,” said Aslan. “We really see the warrior in him. ‘Germany don’t want me? Ok, well I will play for Ghana, but I will continue to play’”.
The actor says the cast read the original book and countless interviews with the brothers.
Each performance, which lasts 90 minutes, is physically demanding for the actors, as the story revolves around football matches told through dance, leaving them as tired as after a typical football match.
— AFP