At Spurs I’d party until 6am and once bought three cars in one day!
HE once stood before the United Nations to give a speech on racism. Now if FIFA want someone to tell clubs about the pitfalls of paying youngsters a fortune with no thought for how they might handle it, Kevin-Prince Boateng would make a good job of that, too.
‘It’s true,’ he says when asked to verify if he really did buy three cars in a day while a young player at Tottenham. ‘I still have a picture of me standing in front of three cars and a big house like I’m 50 Cent. I look at it sometimes and say, “Look how stupid you were”.’
Boateng, now 29, is convinced young professionals need more help. ‘If you’re 18, you don’t know anything. You get £5million net a year. You buy the world! That is exactly what you think: I can buy friends, girls, cars, everything!’
His move to Spurs was a decade ago. It ended after two seasons and barely 24 appearances but it did not finish him. He was inspired by a young Jurgen Klopp at Dortmund and ended up winning Serie A with Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He will be 30 next month and is the only player still playing who has scored in all four top European leagues.
Damien Comolli, Spurs’ director of football, signed him from Hertha Berlin in 2007 but later admitted: ‘We just looked at the talent. We forgot to look at the individual off the pitch.’
Boateng had grown up with his mother and older brother George in a run-down area of Berlin. ‘Named in the top 10 . . . but in a negative way,’ he says, adding that the adjacent Koloniestrasse was a no-go zone for the police, except when they were investigating a shooting.
Now he was living alone in Loughton, near Spurs’ training ground. And training was soon all he was doing after manager Martin Jol froze him out. ‘Jol told me after a month that he didn’t want me,’ says Boateng. ‘So it felt like me against the world.
‘I had a lot of money. I thought, OK, I’ll enjoy life. I went clubbing — and then of course you can’t perform. You try to buy happiness. I bought a Lamborghini. Wow! I was happy for a week. After that I didn’t even use it. Who drives around Loughton in a Lamborghini?’
Clubs are a little wiser now but still leave players to the mercy of ‘friends’. ‘They weren’t real friends,’ says Boateng. ‘They wouldn’t tell you, “What the f*** are you doing?” They’d say, “Let’s go out”. At first you don’t think anything is wrong. You’re in the second team but you see your money coming in and say, “OK, I’ll get fun somewhere else”. Girls, clubs, fake friends.
‘In the end I looked in the mirror and thought that’s not what I want to be. I looked old because every night I was out until 6am. I was 95 kilos (15st) — swollen because of the drinking and bad food.’
Not all Boateng’s friends were happy seeing him wreck his career and with help he cleaned out his fridge, started cooking healthy food and stopped drinking.
‘Two good friends in London came over and we cleaned my house together. They said, “If you want to go out, we’ll go out but we’re behind you if you want to play football”.’
His chance came when he went on loan to Dortmund, managed by a relatively unknown Jurgen Klopp. ‘He’s the best coach in the world,’ Boateng says. ‘There were players at Dortmund that played five minutes in six months but they worked hard because he made you feel you were important as a person.’
Klopp wanted to keep Boateng but a price could not be agreed and so he went to Portsmouth. ‘I’m happy to have met Klopp,’ he says. ‘I could see Dortmund was going to be special. They had a togetherness every club dreams of. Liverpool is perfect for him now.’
Portsmouth were already hurtling towards financial meltdown when he joined. Boateng says: ‘They told me, “The stadium is small”. I said, “I don’t care”. They said, “The pitch is bad”. I said, “I don’t care”. They said, “We have no money”. I said, “I don’t care”. It was small but it was noisy. They were real fans — crazy, it was beautiful.’
And never more beautiful than when he scored in the FA Cup semifinal at Wembley to beat Tottenham. ‘It was a little payback to
‘I’m so happy I met Klopp at Dortmund, he’s the best coach in the world’
show them that while I’d made mistakes, they had made a mistake too,’ he says.
In keeping with the financial goings- on at Portsmouth, when Boateng left he joined two teams in one day — signing for Genoa, and immediately joining Milan on loan.
‘Two weeks after my agent told me I was joining Genoa he called and said, “What do you think about Milan?” I said, “Yeah, it’s a great club. Why?” He said, “Would you like to play for Milan?” ’
It was in Italy, fresh from playing his part in Ghana reaching the World Cup quarter- finals, that Boateng played his best football, and in special company, too.
‘I remember my first day in the dressing room,’ he says. ‘I just saw the names and said, “This is a dream”. I called my older brother and said, “You know I’m sitting next to (Andrea) Pirlo? He said, “Take a picture! Take a picture!” And I had David Beckham’s locker because he had just left.’
But of all the stars, Ronaldinho included, Ibrahimovic made the biggest impact. ‘You think he’s going to be this arrogant big f***** and not a nice guy, but he’s the opposite,’ says Boateng. ‘On the pitch, he’s serious, very professional. Off it he’s the funniest guy.’
The team won Serie A. ‘How could they not with those players?’ Boateng says, adding: ‘They had a superstar in every position and the crazy thing was that I was playing! I knew everybody there had talent and technique — maybe the only one with less technique was (Gennaro) Gattuso but he ran 120 minutes like a psycho — so I had to bring something different. Fighting spirit. I was running, I was getting fouls, I was kicking people to the point where they started saying, “He’s the new Gattuso”.’
Boateng famously stole the show at the title celebration, moonwalking dressed as Michael Jackson. It was an homage to one of his biggest heroes, just 12 months after he had met another, Nelson Mandela.
‘He was shining,’ he says, beaming. ‘He was like an angel. It was the South Africa World Cup and “David Black-ham” was what they were calling me.
‘He shook my hand and pulled me towards him and he said, “My daughter wants to marry you”. I said, “Sorry, I already have a girlfriend”, and he said, “No, no but I have others!”
‘When you meet one of these people it’s hard to describe the joy.’
Boateng would do his bit to fight racism in January 2013 when he walked off the pitch in a friendly against Italian fourth division side Pro Patria after he had been abused by a section of the crowd.
His team-mates walked with him and Rio Ferdinand was among those who applauded the move. That’s how Boateng ended up delivering a speech to the UN and heading the first FIFA anti-racism task force — one they abandoned last September, laughably declaring: ‘Job done’.
‘It is not something you can fix in a couple of years,’ he says.
‘But we have the chance to do more in what is the biggest sport in the world. Having people saying no to racism on a commercial changes nothing.’
He read about the break-up of the task force in the papers. ‘I was not even informed — and we have seen what happened to (Mario) Balotelli in Bastia since,’ he says.
‘He is a close friend and we spoke about it. He said, “What can I do? I can put something on Instagram, on Twitter”, but he can’t fight racism alone — and walking off every time is not the answer.’
He describes the ovation he received at the UN as the craziest moment of his life.
‘I was so nervous,’ he says. ‘ My legs were trembling and then the woman tapped me and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine”. I thought, “No, I won’t”. All I could see were 60 cameras with their red recording lights on.’
Asked what he will do when he stops playing, he does not see his future in sports politics but helping young players stay grounded while others want to spend their money will be a crusade.
Recalling those Tottenham days again, he says: ‘I did bad stuff — but I was 20! I left home, my family, my friends. I was alone. No one cares. No one asks, “How are you?”.
‘You are a number in the system. You cost money, so if you don’t work . . . they change the number.’
He plans to eventually work as an agent or adviser and ‘ help these young guys be the best they can’.
Boateng was the best he could be . . . eventually, and it’s not over yet. Las Palmas are ambitious and beat Middlesbrough to the signing of Jese Rodriguez from Paris Saint-Germain.
They want to qualify for the Europa League. Can the Prince get back into Europe? ‘ Why not?’ he says.
It would be some story — another for the collection.
‘I was 15 stone and swollen because of all the drinking and bad food . . . I knew it had to stop’