In an interview with GRANDIOS magazine, the former German and internationally famous professional footballer Kevin Prince Boateng spoke about his career, his childhood in Berlin and his encounter with God.
Despite his sporting successes in clubs such as AC Milan and FC Barcelona, he said that for a long time he could not find inner peace. Only his encounter with Jesus Christ and the support of his fiancée Marsi radically changed his life.
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Boateng, who grew up in the Berlin neighborhood of Wedding, remembers the harsh circumstances of his childhood: “We were five children in a one-room apartment. My mother did everything she could to raise us. There wasn’t much money. Sometimes there wasn’t even enough food in the refrigerator. “Sometimes I had to go out to eat with friends because there was nothing at home.” But he described how he did not miss anything despite these hardships: “We didn’t have a full refrigerator, we didn’t have vacations. And that’s why it was normal for me.”
These difficult circumstances shaped Boateng’s personality and prepared him for a successful, if also turbulent, career in professional football. He debuted with Hertha BSC Berlin when he was only 18 years old: “It is every footballer’s dream. Debuting as a professional in the club that is close to your heart is something special. To say in retrospect, ‘Okay, that wasn’t that bad,’ makes me proud.”
But despite his success at clubs such as AC Milan, FC Barcelona and Besiktas Istanbul, Boateng felt something crucial was missing.
After years of success, fame and prosperity, Boateng plunged into a deep personal crisis: “At the age of 20 he was already a millionaire. He had seen it all, bought it all, had it all, and been through all the phases of life. Addiction to alcohol, pills, depression, addiction to sleeping pills and painkillers, everything you can imagine.”
“I spent a month in bed with depression, a month without showering and hearing voices. “I made a playlist with the songs I wanted to listen to when I committed suicide,” he confessed.
For Boateng, this time also had a spiritual dimension: “You want to stay in this state. It’s the devil telling you all the time that you have to stay there, lying in the dark, without showering and without eating. “You want that suffering.” Only when he sought professional help did he begin to recover little by little. But the real turning point in his life would come when he met God.
The moment that fundamentally changed her life came in 2023, when Boateng traveled to Sydney to work on the Women’s World Cup. There he met Marsi—his current fiancée—a woman who had introduced him to the Christian faith five years earlier in long phone calls. But at that time he did not understand the meaning that faith could have for his life.
“So I would make jokes about it and I would always think to myself, ‘What are you worshiping?’” Boateng recalled of his previous attitude toward believers. But when he reunited with Marsi in Sydney, his life was in turmoil: “I had just been relegated with Hertha BSC Berlin, I had split up, I wasn’t a good father, so I was depressed again.”
In this phase of desperation, he began to truly hear for the first time Marsi’s words about God and Jesus: “I had nothing left to lose. Anyway, my life was a mess. I had no peace. “I wasn’t doing well.”
Marsi prayed for him and Boateng described the profound situation that happened to him next: “At that moment, it was like an electric shock throughout my body. I had my eyes closed and I saw all my sins like flashes in my head. God showed me all my sins, over and over again. “I had never cried like that and I said in my head the whole time, ‘I’m sorry.'”
This moment marked the beginning of a profound change in his life. A few days later, on August 23, 2023, Boateng entered a church for the first time: “I entered the church, right at the back, in the corner on the right, a little hidden and I just said: ‘I’m going to listen, to see what happens’. After five minutes, I stood there crying, closed my eyes, cried and showed remorse. I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve tried for 36 years. You do it. I will give you my life.’ Since that day, my life has completely changed.”
In his relationship with his fiancée Marsi, Boateng lives strictly according to Christian values and emphasizes how important it was for him to abstain from sexual relations before marriage: “We live according to the Bible. We don’t live together either, we haven’t kissed yet,” Boateng explained. For him, abstaining from physical intimacy before marriage is an expression of deep reverence for God and the sanctity of marriage.
“This marriage covenant is so important in the Bible because it is a covenant with God. With God and with your partner. This ‘and they will be one flesh’. Nowadays, people often get married because: You can get divorced again anyway. Divorces have unfortunately become so easy. But you can’t get a divorce,” he said, and underlined the peace and hope that waiting gives Marsi and him.
With his new faith in Jesus Christ, Boateng has not only found inner peace, but also the courage to reconcile with people with whom he had conflicts in the past, including his half-brother Jérôme Boateng, also an internationally famous professional player.
“I realized that I had to forgive. I sat down with him and said, ‘I’m sorry. I was jealous of you at some points in your career. I was jealous of him. I didn’t want it because I didn’t want my brother to succeed, to be better or bigger than me,” he explained. Thanks to faith, Boateng found the strength to leave that jealousy behind and make peace with his brother. For Boateng, it is now clear: “Only through forgiveness can our hearts become pure.”
“Give your life to God, give your life to Jesus. Trust that God has a plan for you,” is his message to others who, like him, have been searching for inner peace for a long time. He has left behind his old life, characterized by excesses and insecurities: “Humans trust Google. So, why don’t we trust the one who created us?” he asks in conclusion.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA GermanGerman-language news agency of EWTN News.
Alexander Folz
Alexander Folz works as a freelancer for CNA Deutsch. He grew up in the Saarland in the early 2000s and studies Economics at the Leibniz University of Hannover. Alexander Folz is interested in Catholic social doctrine, the link between Catholicism and economics. In the private sphere he participates in a Catholic youth movement and in a pro-life campaign.