che bella!

We may have lost the game, but, we still had our heroes and Kevin Prince Boateng was one of the them. Not only because of his fantastic goal, but, also for the way he fought, his spirit and his determination to drag his team onwards to a possible victory.

In the end, however, it was not to be. Nevertheless, we have something special to savor.  Prince scored a goal which will undoubtedly remain in football history. According to what one television commentator said, “it was the most beautiful goal of the last ten years”. Controlling the ball in mid-air, he then backheeled the ball past a perplexed Eric Abidal before unleashing an unstoppable drive past Victor Valdes at his near post.

It was not the first time Prince’s star has shone bright this season. A wonder-strike against BATE Borisov he also scored a hat-trick against Lecce – in just 18 minutes.

While on the field things have been going great, off the field is another story.

Our number 27 has been living a sad moment of his life since he broke up with his wife. They have one child, Jermaine, who now lives with the mother in Berlin. In a recent interview he revealed how living alone has not been easy and how thoughts of what could be enter his mind.

“It happens that sometimes, when I come back home after training, I am just alone in my new house and I think, “if only Jermaine was here, he would rush forward to me and come with me to the garden to play football with him.””

Prince has been nostalgic about the whole affair at times. When a love story ends, you cannot do anything, because “that’s life”, he said. After spending eight years with her, now his main goal is to make their son happy. “I would never have borne Jermaine knowing that he would grow up in a broken home because I really know what it does mean. My childhood was very nasty, and poor. My father broke up with my mother when I was one years old and left my family without money: we got by anyway.”

The longing for his son is touching as he continued in the interview, “When I wake up in the morning and I do not find him at home and that is the worst moment. I miss his eyes, when he looks at the ball: he is crazy about football. He has got my blood. And I miss watching him dance like Michael Jackson.”

There is no doubting little Jermaine plays in the mind of his father a lot. But, you would not think it with how he has been playing this season.

In the interview Boateng goes on to talk about his football and how he ended up at Hertha Berlin when starting out.

“I was seven years old. It was a morning, I did not go to school, because I wanted to play football. So I was with Dennis, a blond-haired guy. We played against each other. At the end of the match he came to me and he said, “You are very strong. I have to tell this to my father”. His father was the coach of the young players of Hertha Berlin.”

Boateng has since gone on to play for Tottenham Hotspur, Borussia Dortmund, Portsmouth and, now, AC Milan. He also chose to play for Ghana, the country of origin, instead of Germany where he was born. However, due to health concerns, he has decided to quit international football to focus on his football with ‘the most successful club in the world’.