During his playing career in Europe, Emmanuel Eboué had an annual salary of over $2.7 million. He bought a house in London and married a woman he thought he loved.
However, in 2017, he lost everything he earned after the woman he had spent more than ten years with divorced him, sold his properties, and left him homeless.
But did Emmanuel Eboué have children with his ex-wife?
Emmanuel Eboué married a Belgian citizen named Aurelie Bertrand before he joined Arsenal FC in 2004. The couple lived in London and welcomed three children.
Unfortunately, Emmanuel Eboué’s marriage did not work. Instead, it ended in a divorce that shocked many of Eboué’s fans worldwide.
Emmanuel Eboué had three children with ex-wife Aurelie Bertrand
Emmanuel Eboué married Aurelie Bertrand around 2003. The couple welcomed three children, two daughters and a son. His children are Clara Eboué, Maeva Eboué, and Mathis Eboué. Clara was born in 2003, Maeva was born in 2005, and Mathis was born in 2008.
In 2017, Emmanuel Eboué and his wife engaged in a bitter divorce. The court granted Emmanuel Eboué’s wife everything he owned. He surrendered his Enfield house, forcing him to live with friends.
Eboué’s divorce may have resulted from the bad advice he received. According to the Ivorian, people misadvised him to let his wife manage his finances.
And since he had little education, he sent the little money he earned to his wife and children. As a result, when the divorce was finalised, Aurelie Bertrand put Eboué’s house on sale.
Eboué’s son plays football
Emmanuel Eboué’s son, Mathis Eboué, is a football player. Mathis was born in London in 2006. In 2016, he joined the youth setup of English Premier League Club Arsenal FC.
Mathis Eboué joined Arsenal’s Hale End academy after snubbing the chance to play for Chelsea FC. He chose Arsenal because his father had played for the club for seven years between 2004 and 2011.
According to Emmanuel Eboué, Arsenal’s head coach at the time, Arsene Wenger, compared his son Mathis to Gilberto Silva. Gilberto played for Brazil and Arsenal as a defensive midfielder between 2002 and 2008.
But Mathis did not find everything welcoming at Arsenal FC’s youth academy. In 2017, his father revealed that kids bullied his son when they found out he was banned from football.
In 2016, Emmanuel Eboué served a one-year suspension from football imposed by FIFA. The football governing body banned Eboué for failure to pay his former agent Sebastien Boisseau close to €1 million.
When Mathis’ schoolmates discovered this ban, they ridiculed him and made attending school challenging.
Eboué was once estranged from his children
In 2017, Emmanuel Eboué told the Daily Mirror he could not see his children after his divorce from Aurelie Bertrand.
His two daughters had a phone they used to call him when he played for Galatasaray in Turkey while they lived in London. Unfortunately, they stopped contacting him after the divorce.
When he was suspended in 2016, Eboué lied to his children about his work. So, they often asked him why he was not playing football. But Eboué never told his children that FIFA banned him.
So, he got up every day in the morning pretending to go to work only to return home late in the night when they were already asleep.
The shame of not playing football got to his head. Initially, he trained alone in the morning. But since people took photos with him, he changed the routine and started training at night, even with no lights.
Emmanuel Eboué remarried
After two years of despair that almost saw him take antidepressants and contemplate suicide, Emmanuel Eboué married his high school sweetheart in Ivory Coast.
His new wife is Stephanie Boedé. The couple met around 2000 when Eboué was a young player at ASEC Mimosa youth academy in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Eboué and Stephanie wed in a discreet ceremony in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in 2019.
Have your say
Will Emmanuel Eboué return to his feet after losing almost everything to his wife through a divorce?
