Title shy, but sexy: A goal machine that aged backwards | OneFootball

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.

There are strikers who have a crazy shot. Header monsters who convert every cross. And those who sense free spaces before the defense even checks what's happening. But then there are the exceptional strikers.

They're so sexy that they can do several things exceptionally well in front of goal. Don't believe it? Then you've never heard of Anthony Yeboah.

"Tony was a complete striker, he had everything. His dynamics and heading game were outstanding. He was incredibly strong in one-on-ones, could also cleverly use his body at high speed. In addition, he was very team-oriented, never wanted to head through the wall," Ralf Weber once explained to Eintracht Frankfurt, referring to his former teammate.

Weber must know. After all, he played with Yeboah at Eintracht from 1990 to 1995. In the best time of his career, the striker became the absolute crowd favorite and at the same time a pioneer for all of Africa.

Yeboah was to make history for his home continent in two ways. On the one hand, he became the first African to lead a team onto the pitch as captain in Bundesliga history.

But that's not all: As if it were the most normal thing in the world, he grabbed the Bundesliga top scorer cannon in both the 1992/93 and 1993/94 seasons. A masterpiece that no African has achieved in the German football top division before or after Yeboah. Especially in the second cannon year, Frankfurt was quasi completely dependent on its current club legend. In eleven games that Yeboah missed due to a sprained ankle, the SGE only managed three wins.

Now back to his masterpieces. The striker also managed to become two years younger at Eintracht during a winter break. No joke. In 1992, doubts about the real age of the now 58-year-old suddenly arose. Could Yeboah not only play football damn well, but also steal the Philosopher's Stone from Harry Potter? Unfortunately, we have to deny the latter.

Yeboah's rejuvenation was a small trick that he himself only revealed in 2012:

"When I came to Germany, I had a passport that said 1964 as my birth year. The secret was: as a 17-year-old, I wouldn't have been allowed to play for the men in Ghana. So my birth year was changed to 1964," confirmed the obviously cunning striker, who secretly played in the first Ghanaian league at the age of 15 - and also won the top scorer cannon there twice.

Okay, the career sounds like a fat strip from Hollywood. But for the perfect blockbuster, Steven Spielberg and Co. would have had to falsify the script a bit. Because despite his exceptional class, Yeboah never won a club title. After his time at Frankfurt, he went to Leeds United and HSV, among others. Above all in England, the two-footed midfielder continued to shine in front of goal.

📸 Thomas Lohnes - 2017 Getty Images

For the then Premier League club, Yeboah scored 32 goals in 66 games and was voted Leeds Player of the Season in 1996.

While only die-hard Yeboah fans are likely to remember this, he remains unforgettable in Frankfurt to this day. In the financial hub, the adopted Frankfurter stands as a symbol of diversity - and if you ask an older SGE fan how sexy Anthony Yeboah was at playing football, we can assure you: he won't stop smiling.

📸 Beate Mueller - Bongarts