Two brothers playing in a World Cup is an amazing achievement. Two brothers facing each other in a World Cup is a migrational miracle. It’s what we’ll see tonight, when Boateng brothers Jerome and Kevin-Prince don their respective German and Ghanaian jerseys.
Their father Kevin, a child of cocoa farmers, left Ghana in 1981, hoping to study business administration in Germany. It didn’t work out, though. He ended up working odd jobs and fathering two brilliant footballers (to different German mothers).
Kevin’s story made me wonder how things have developed since he tried studying in Germany. How open is Germany to foreign students from developing countries? How do people with immigrant backgrounds fare in German schools? And how do foreign footballers fare in the German Bundesliga?
I’ll look into some of these questions in the coming days. To get started and help you prepare for tonight’s game, here is a little fact sheet.
By the way, if you’re struggling with your next maths exam, remember that Jerome Boateng did so too. Despite his mother Martina’s efforts, he dropped out of school in tenth grade to pursue his footballing career. Here’s what she has to say about that: “At the time, I didn’t recognize how determined Jerome was. Today I have to say: Kudos!”
Let the best Boateng win !
glObal golazO 