Tony Yeboah

Club career

Ghana Yeboah was born in Kumasi, Ghana. 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. For Okwawu United, Tony Yeboah scored: No less than 40 goals in 1986. 35 goals in 35 matches in 1987.

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 was also unhappy at Eintracht blocking his prospective transfer to Bayern Munich.

Leeds United Yeboah joined English club Leeds United from Eintracht Frankfurt in January 1995, initially on loan but with an option to sign permanently for £3.4 million. He scored 12 times in 21 league appearances as Leeds finished fifth in the FA Premier League and qualified for the UEFA Cup. In his second season at Elland Road, he was voted Player of the Year. Yeboah scored a total of 32 goals for Leeds United in 66 appearances, and is still revered as a cult hero for the Yorkshire club due to a series of memorable goals he scored. His volley against Liverpool and his strike versus Wimbledon in the 1995–96 season were among his most notable goals, and he was a regular feature in Goal of the Month in the Premier League. He told Newstalk's Team 33 in 2014 that his favourite goal was the one he scored against Liverpool. The goal against Wimbledon was awarded Goal of the Season in 1995–96.

He also scored three hat-tricks for Leeds; the first against Ipswich 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, and Phil Masinga three months earlier in an FA Cup tie). Yeboah's second hat-trick came against Monaco in the 1995–96 UEFA Cup on 12 September 1995, and the third 11 days later in the Premier League match against Wimbledon at Selhurst Park which included the aforementioned Goal of the Season. A video was released named ‘Yeboah – Shoot to Kill’ while he was at Leeds.

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. A knee injury curtailed his appearances at the end of 1995–96 and he underwent surgery in August 1996. When George Graham took over as Leeds manager in September 1996 he used Yeboah sparingly, considering him to be unfit. This brought about a rift between player and coach, which culminated in Yeboah throwing his shirt in the direction of the bench after being substituted in a 1–0 defeat by Tottenham Hotspur in March 1997.

Yeboah failed to report back for pre-season training ahead of 1997–98, hoping to force a transfer. He was sold to Hamburger SV in September 1997 for a fee of around £1 million, having played just six times in the 1996–97 season under Graham. In January 2001 he was convicted on tax evasion charges relating to a signing on fee he had received when extending his Eintracht Frankfurt contract in 1993. 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. After making just five appearances in the 2001–02 Hamburger SV season, he began negotiating a release from the final months of his contract in November 2001.

Al Ittihad He left in order to join Al Ittihad of the Qatar Stars League in December 2001, where he played under Austrian coach Josef Hickersberger. He scored five goals for the club and retired in 2002. 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.

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

Personal life 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.

Career statistics Club + Appearances and goals by club, season and competition

Asante Kotoko Ghana Premier League: 1981, 1982, 1983

Al Ittihad Qatar Stars League: 2001–02 Emir of Qatar Cup: 2001–02 Qatar Cup runner-up: 2001–02

Ghana African Cup of Nations runner-up: 1992 West African Nations Cup – SCSA Zone III: 1982, 1983, 1984

Individual Ghana Premier League top scorer: 1986, 1987 African Footballer of the Year third: 1992; second: 1993 FIFA World Player of the Year ninth: 1993 Leeds United Player of the Year: 1996 Ghana Footballer of the Year: 1997 Premier League Player of the Month: March 1995, September 1995