Tony Yeboah

Ghana

Yeboah was born in Kumasi, Ghana. He began at Asante Kotoko in 1981 and he won the Ghana Premier League in 1981, 1982, 1983, and the African Cup of Champions Clubs in 1983. He then played for Cornerstone between 1983 and 1985. Yeboah joined Okwawu United in early 1986, and he won the Ghana Premier League Top Scorer award in both the 1986 and 1987 seasons.

1. FC Saarbrücken

Yeboah joined German club 1. FC Saarbrücken in 1988. This move was of some historical significance, because Yeboah became one of the first black players to appear in the Bundesliga. Yeboah had a slow first year, but then scored 17 league goals in his second Saarbrücken year.

Eintracht Frankfurt

Yeboah moved to Eintracht Frankfurt in 1990, where he was at first booed by a section of fans and—being the first black player the team had ever signed—subjected to monkey-noises and other racist insults. In the Hesse metropolis, Yeboah quickly established himself and became the first African Bundesliga club captain. He was the top Bundesliga scorer twice with Eintracht, in 1993 and 1994. In December 1994 Eintracht's new manager Jupp Heynckes ordered extra training for Yeboah, Jay Jay Okocha and Maurizio Gaudino, who subsequently made themselves unavailable for the next fixture and were then suspended indefinitely by the club. Heynckes had also removed the captaincy from Yeboah, whom he considered to be three kilos overweight. Yeboah later attributed a racist motive to Heynckes and…

He was a member of Ghana's national team for over ten years, and represented his country at three Africa Cup of Nations during the 1990s. Yeboah reportedly scored 29 goals in 59 appearances for Ghana, the fourth highest goalscoring total in the nation's history behind Asamoah Gyan, Edward Acquah and Kwasi Owusu. RSSSF records credit Yeboah with 15 goals in 56 caps. Yeboah featured for Ghana in their 1992 African Cup of Nations final defeat, but the occasion was marred by a dispute over the team captaincy. With Abedi Pele suspended, regular vice-captain Yeboah was controversially overlooked for the captaincy in favour of Anthony Baffoe.

On 3 November 2008, he was appointed as the new chairman of the newly promoted Ghana Premier League club Berekum Chelsea.

Yeboah entered Germany with a passport which stated his year of birth as 1964. He later modified this to 1966, explaining that he had used the pretend 1964 birth year to gain early access to senior football in Ghana when he was only 17 years old. Yeboah and his cousin, former Mainz player Michael Osei, ran an international sports agency called Anthony Yeboah Sportpromotion and owned a chain of hotels in Ghana (Accra, Kumasi) called Yegoala. Yeboah is married and has two children. His nephews, Kelvin and Obed Yeboah, are also professional footballers.