| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Anthony Yeboah[1] | ||
| Date of birth | (1966-06-06)6 June 1966 (age 59)[1] | ||
| Place of birth | Kumasi, Ghana | ||
| Height | 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in) | ||
| Position | Striker | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1981–1983 | Asante Kotoko | ||
| 1983–1985 | Cornerstones Kumasi | ||
| 1986–1987 | Okwawu United | 35 | (35) |
| 1988–1990 | 1. FC Saarbrücken | 65 | (26) |
| 1990–1995 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 123 | (68) |
| 1995–1997 | Leeds United | 47 | (24) |
| 1997–2001 | Hamburger SV | 100 | (28) |
| 2001–2002 | Al-Ittihad | 22 | (5) |
| Total | 411 | (194) | |
| International career | |||
| 1985–1997 | Ghana | 59 | (29) |
| * Club domestic league appearances and goals | |||
Anthony Yeboah (born 6 June 1966) is a Ghanaian former professionalfootballer who played as astriker.
He is considered one of the most prominent and prolific goal scorers in Ghanaian and African football history and gained a reputation for scoring spectacular goals which often featured inGoal of the Month orGoal of the Season competitions in the 1990s.[2]
Yeboah is most noted for his time at European clubs1. FC Saarbrücken,Eintracht Frankfurt,Leeds United andHamburger SV. He also played forAsante Kotoko,Cornerstones Kumasi,Okwawu United andAl-Ittihad Doha. He was capped 59 times byGhana, scoring 29 goals. He now runs an internationalsports agency and a chain of hotels in Ghana. He won the Bundesliga golden boot on two occasions,1992–93 and1993–94, playing forEintracht Frankfurt.[3]
Yeboah was born inKumasi, Ghana.[1] After spending his youth in Kumasi, Yeboah joined German club1. FC Saarbrücken in 1988. This move was of some historical significance, because Yeboah became one of the first black players to appear in theBundesliga. Yeboah had a slow first year, but then scored 17 league goals in his second Saarbrücken year.[4]
Yeboah moved toEintracht 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.[5] In the Hesse metropolis, Yeboah quickly established himself and became the first African Bundesliga club captain.[6] He was the top Bundesliga scorer twice with Eintracht, in 1993 and 1994.[7]
In December 1994 Eintracht's new managerJupp Heynckes ordered extra training for Yeboah,Jay Jay Okocha andMaurizio Gaudino, who subsequently made themselves unavailable for the next fixture and were then suspended indefinitely by the club. Heynckes had also removed thecaptaincy from Yeboah, whom he considered to be three kilos overweight.[8] Yeboah later attributed a racist motive to Heynckes and was also unhappy at Eintracht blocking his prospective transfer toBayern Munich.[9][10]
Yeboah joined English clubLeeds United from Eintracht Frankfurt in January 1995, initially onloan but with an option to sign permanently for £3.4 million.[11] He scored 12 times in 21 league appearances as Leeds finished fifth in theFA Premier League and qualified for theUEFA Cup. In his second season atElland Road, he was votedPlayer of the Year.[12] Yeboah scored a total of 32 goals for Leeds United in 66 appearances, and is still revered as a cult hero for theYorkshire club due to a series of memorable goals he scored. His volley againstLiverpool and his strike versusWimbledon in the1995–96 season were among his most notable goals, and he was a regular feature in Goal of the Month in thePremier League.[13] He told Newstalk's Team 33 in 2014 that his favourite goal was the one he scored against Liverpool.[14] The goal against Wimbledon was awardedGoal of the Season in 1995–96.[13] UntilGareth Bale equalled the feat in 2013, Yeboah was the only player ever to win successive BBCMatch of the DayGoal of the Month competitions, doing so in September and October 1995.[15]
He also scored three hat-tricks for Leeds; the first againstIpswich Town in the Premier League at Elland Road on 5 April 1995, which made him only the third foreign player to score a league hat-trick for Leeds (Cantona v Tottenham in August 1992 was the first, andPhil Masinga three months earlier in anFA Cup tie).[16] Yeboah's second hat-trick came againstMonaco in the1995–96 UEFA Cup on 12 September 1995, and the third 11 days later in the Premier League match against Wimbledon atSelhurst Park which included the aforementioned Goal of the Season.[17] A video was released named ‘Yeboah – Shoot to Kill’ while he was at Leeds.[18]
Injuries (several picked up while on international duty) restricted his game when he played and kept him out of the Leeds side on several occasions.[13] He also developed a well-documented fondness forYorkshire pudding.[19] A knee injury curtailed his appearances at the end of1995–96 and he underwent surgery in August 1996.[20] WhenGeorge Graham took over as Leeds manager in September 1996 he used Yeboah sparingly, considering him to be unfit.[21] This brought about a rift between player and coach, which culminated in Yeboah throwing his shirt in the direction of the bench after beingsubstituted in a 1–0 defeat byTottenham Hotspur in March 1997.[22]
Yeboah failed to report back for pre-season training ahead of1997–98, hoping to force a transfer.[23] He was sold toHamburger SV in September 1997 for a fee of around £1 million,[24] having played just six times in the1996–97 season under Graham.[13]
Yeboah remained with his German club Hamburger SV until 2001, scoring 28 goals.[25] In January 2001 he was convicted ontax evasion charges relating to a signing on fee he had received when extending his Eintracht Frankfurt contract in 1993.[26] He was fined 360,000 marks by the court and then fell into another financial dispute with the lawyer who had defended him in the case.[27] After making just five appearances in the2001–02 Hamburger SV season, he began negotiating a release from the final months of his contract in November 2001.[28] He left in order to joinAl Ittihad of theQatar Stars League in December 2001, where he played under Austrian coachJosef Hickersberger.[29]
He was a member ofGhana's national team for over ten years, and represented his country at threeAfrica 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 behindAsamoah Gyan,Edward Acquah andKwasi Owusu.[30][31]RSSSF records credit Yeboah with 15 goals in 56caps.[32]
Yeboah featured for Ghana in their1992 African Cup of Nations final defeat, but the occasion was marred by a dispute over the team captaincy. WithAbedi Pele suspended, regular vice-captain Yeboah was controversially overlooked for the captaincy in favour ofAnthony Baffoe.[33]
On 3 November 2008, he was appointed as the new chairman of the newly promotedGhana Premier League clubBerekum Chelsea.[34]
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.[35][36]
Yeboah along with his cousin former Mainz playerMichael Osei runs an internationalsports agency calledAnthony Yeboah Sportpromotion and owns a chain of hotels in Ghana (Accra, Kumasi) calledYegoala.[37][38] He is married and has two children.[39]
His nephews,Kelvin and Obed Yeboah, are also professional footballers.[40][41]
| Club | Season | League | National cup | League cup | Continental | Other | Total | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Division | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | ||
| 1. FC Saarbrücken | 1988–89 | 2. Bundesliga | 28 | 9 | 2 | 0 | – | – | 2[a] | 2 | 32 | 11 | ||
| 1989–90 | 2. Bundesliga | 37 | 17 | 1 | 2 | – | – | 2[a] | 1 | 40 | 20 | |||
| Total | 65 | 26 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 72 | 31 | ||
| Eintracht Frankfurt | 1990–91 | Bundesliga | 26 | 8 | 6 | 2 | – | 1 | 1 | – | 33 | 11 | ||
| 1991–92 | Bundesliga | 34 | 15 | 1 | 0 | – | 3 | 2 | – | 38 | 17 | |||
| 1992–93 | Bundesliga | 27 | 20 | 6 | 5 | – | 4 | 5 | – | 37 | 30 | |||
| 1993–94 | Bundesliga | 22 | 18 | 2 | 1 | – | 3 | 1 | – | 27 | 20 | |||
| 1994–95 | Bundesliga | 14 | 7 | 2 | 1 | – | 5 | 3 | – | 21 | 11 | |||
| Total | 123 | 68 | 17 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 156 | 89 | ||
| Leeds United | 1994–95 | Premier League | 18 | 12 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | – | – | 20 | 13 | ||
| 1995–96 | Premier League | 22 | 12 | 6 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 3 | – | 39 | 19 | ||
| 1996–97 | Premier League | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | – | – | 7 | 0 | |||
| Total | 47 | 24 | 8 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 66 | 32 | ||
| Hamburger SV | 1997–98 | Bundesliga | 23 | 3 | 0 | 0 | – | 0 | 0 | – | 23 | 3 | ||
| 1998–99 | Bundesliga | 34 | 14 | 3 | 2 | – | – | – | 37 | 16 | ||||
| 1999–2000 | Bundesliga | 24 | 9 | 1 | 0 | – | 6 | 3 | – | 31 | 12 | |||
| 2000–01 | Bundesliga | 14 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 2 | – | 25 | 4 | ||
| 2001–02 | Bundesliga | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | – | – | – | 5 | 0 | ||||
| Total | 100 | 28 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 15 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 121 | 35 | ||
| Career total | 335 | 146 | 33 | 15 | 8 | 3 | 35 | 20 | 4 | 3 | 415 | 187 | ||
African Cup of Nations only.
| No. | Date | Venue | Opponent | Score | Result | Competition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 17 January 1992 | Stade Aline Sitoe Diatta,Ziguinchor, Senegal |  Egypt | 1–0 | 1–0 | 1992 African Cup of Nations |
| 2 | 20 January 1992 | Stade Leopold Senghor,Dakar, Senegal |  Congo | 1–0 | 2–1 | 1992 African Cup of Nations |
| 3 | 30 August 1992 | Accra Sports Stadium,Accra, Ghana |  Burkina Faso | 1–0 | 3–0 | 1994 African Cup of Nations Qualifier |
| 4 | 2–0 | |||||
| 5 | 25 July 1993 | Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex,Monrovia, Liberia |  Liberia | 2–0 | 2–0 | 1994 African Cup of Nations Qualifier |
| 6 | 23 April 1995 | Accra Sports Stadium, Accra, Ghana |  Niger | 1–0 | 1–0 | 1996 African Cup of Nations Qualifier |
| 7 | 14 January 1996 | EPRU Stadium,Port Elizabeth, South Africa |  Ivory Coast | 1–0 | 2–0 | 1996 African Cup of Nations |
| 8 | 28 January 1996 | EPRU Stadium, Port Elizabeth, South Africa |  Zaire | 1–0 | 1–0 | 1996 African Cup of Nations |
Asante Kotoko
Leeds United
Al Ittihad
Ghana
Individual
Ghana squads | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||||||
