There is no doubt it has been a colourful route from Berlin, via Milan and Barcelona, and back, but amid all the razzmatazz, look behind the tattoos and beyond the bling and you will see: Kevin-Prince Boateng is an exceptional footballer. The Berlin Wall was still some months away from falling when Kevin-Prince Boateng was born in the German capital in early March , but given his cosmopolitan upbringing and a career in which he has collected almost as many clubs as Air Miles, you suspect no man-made barrier would ever have stopped him bridging the gap between countries and cultures.
You just need to look at his very first club to understand the mindset of a man who has played in four of Europe's top five leagues, and counts Hertha , Tottenham Hotspur, Borussia Dortmund , AC Milan, Schalke , Eintracht Frankfurt and Barcelona among the 14 professional clubs whose shirt he has pulled on. He could have excelled if he had joined the club's jazz or street dance sections — anyone who saw his Moonwalk after winning the Serie A title with Milan in can vouch for that — but he opted to dip his twinkle-toed feet into football.
Hertha were soon keen to tap into Boateng's natural-born potential, and aged seven, he was snapped up by the German capital's premier club. Knowing I can return to Frankfurt and the people will welcome me with open arms is beautiful.
His winning of the Fritz Walter bronze medal in the U18 category in and his triumph in the senior U19 category 12 months later gave tangible proof of the quality he was showing on the pitch for Hertha, who — after four goals in 42 league outings — saw him move to Tottenham Hotspur.
It gave him the chance to play against his half-brother, Bayern's Jerome — then at Hamburg after having first played with Kevin-Prince at Hertha — for the first time, a duel they would notably reprise at FIFA World Cups in and as well as in the Bundesliga when Kevin-Prince returned to Germany to join Schalke in after a season at Portsmouth and three years in Milan.
