Former Barcelona star claims he 'had to lie' about love for Cristiano Ronaldo & Real Madrid after landing transfer to play alongside Lionel Messi

Boateng found that tough as he was a boyhood Blancos supporter. With colours being nailed to the Santiago Bernabeu mast, Ronaldo - as a five-time Ballon d’Or winner and the club’s all-time leading goalscorer - was held up as a source of inspiration.

Back in 2019, though, Catalunya was all about Messi. The Argentine GOAT was very much king at Camp Nou and nobody was allowed to question his authority. Boateng found that out the hard way when being readied for his first press conference.

He told Unscripted by Josh Mansour of the briefing that ruled any Ronaldo fandom out of the equation: “I always said I wanted to play for Real Madrid. I had to lie in a press conference because prior to that, two years before when I played in Las Palmas, they asked me who my favourite player was and I said Cristiano Ronaldo and I said my favourite team was Real Madrid!

“Signing for Barcelona, they said to me ‘your favourite team is Barcelona and the best player in the world is Lionel Messi’. They said ‘you have to otherwise you can’t play here, it is impossible’. I sat there in the press conference and the first question was who was the best player in the world and I said ‘Lionel Messi’.”

Boateng’s move to Barca only came about after Messi gave a green light to the deal. The South American superstar saw every transfer agreement run by him before everything was signed off.

Boateng, who joined the Blaugrana on loan from Italian outfit Sassuolo, said: “He had that power. I was going to sleep hoping that Leo likes me or sees me in the team. I was like tomorrow I can sign my shirt with Barcelona, but if Leo says ‘no’ I will not be going to sign the contract!”

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While remaining a big fan of Ronaldo, Boateng admits that witnessing Messi’s ability at close quarters left him questioning whether football was still the sport for him. He told DAZN in 2020: “Training with Messi left me speechless. I had always said that Cristiano Ronaldo was the best in the world, but Messi is something else. He's not normal. While training with him, I felt inadequate for the first time in my career. He was doing incredible things. I felt like saying, 'I'm done, I'm going to quit playing!'”

Not everything about Messi was positive, though, with Boateng telling Rio Ferdinand Presents: “So we come in the dressing room, he's just sitting there on his phone [and] gets a massage sitting down. Two minutes before we go out, he just stands up, closes his boots, and goes out. The warm up for the Champions League game against Liverpool, [we did the] crossbar challenge and then he goes back inside. [The] coach made the last adjustment, [Messi] is on the phone face-timing [and] 30 seconds before we go out he just comes and puts his jacket on and BOOM, goal, goal, goal.” 

He added on that approach being detrimental to some of the club’s younger stars: “That's what the young players did in Barcelona: Malcom, [Ousmane] Dembele, they looked at him and they didn't train so then going to the game, they got injured. He's the only one in the world that can do that.”

Boateng only made four appearances for Barcelona before returning to Italy. He retired from playing in 2023 having also represented the likes of Tottenham, Portsmouth, AC Milan, Fiorentina, Monza, Eintracht Frankfurt, Herta Berlin and Schalke over the course of a nomadic career.