Emmanuel Latte Lath: From Ivory Coast to European Football Stardom

Emmanuel Latte Lath still remembers the first jolt of his new life.

He was eight, high above the Mediterranean, leaving Ivory Coast for Italy. "I started to realise when I was on the plane and I saw people different than me, I was a bit scared," he recalls.

That fear was wrapped around something else: a reunion. The move to Europe meant finally joining his father, who had left years earlier to try to build a better life. Latte Lath had been six when he was told he would be moving. It took two more years for the plan to become real.

"It was important because when I was born, it wasn't that close," he says of their relationship. "He went to Italy to find a better life, so it wasn't that easy talking with him every time by phone. I was missing this part from my father.

"When I saw him, it was kind of a new life, new motivation to stay close to my father, and then everything started again. It looks like I had two lives."

Two lives, one ball

The first life was in Ivory Coast, where the streets were his academy and the pitch was wherever he and his friends decided it should be.

"Me and my five friends, we just built our team and we would go to play against another city, there was like no pressure, nothing," he says.

"It was just funny moments, enjoying football there, and it was quite competitive because it was almost every time finishing in some fights, so it was street rules. I was one of the most competitive.

"I missed it. Always together, being with my friends. It was really, really fun."

Those chaotic, joyful games mattered. They hardened his competitive edge and gave him a relationship with the ball that no coach could script. When he finally landed in Italy, those afternoons in the dust became his anchor.

He had never worn boots. He had never played for an official team. That changed quickly.

"It was exciting to learn and to show my potential," the Union Berlin forward says. "It was difficult in the beginning because I didn't know the language, but I had a really good person who helped me.

"It was important for me because I didn't have too many friends there. But I was just there to play football and after go home, I know timing will come."

Timing did come.

La Dea and a night against Juventus

His progress took him to one of Italy's most respected finishing schools: Atalanta's academy. He joined in 2015 and, two years later, found himself on a stage many Italian kids only dream of.

In his third appearance for the senior side, in the Coppa Italia, he scored against Juventus.

"It's unbelievable, it's unforgettable. The emotion I had there, it's still the same when I'm thinking about it now," he says.

"The week before I was home with my family, we were just laughing and they were saying, 'imagine if I go, imagine,' and one week after that it happened."

It should have been the beginning of a long run in black and blue. Instead, it was both a high point and an ending. That goal would be his only one for Atalanta and the last time he wore the shirt competitively.

From there, his career turned into a tour of Europe. Eight loan spells in five years. Different cities, different systems, the same question hanging over him: would he ever be allowed to settle?

"I think Italian football has always been one of the difficult football environments because it's a lot of tactics, a lot of rules also," he says.

"So it doesn't let you express yourself because you have to play with too many or a lot of rules.

"So it was difficult also to make a step, but it was also difficult to maybe keep going with the steps I made, but this gave me power to make a different choice."

That choice came after a prolific loan spell with St. Gallen in Switzerland. Goals there finally nudged open a door elsewhere.

A new home in the north east

Middlesbrough called. The Championship, with its relentlessness and physicality, can break forwards. It can also make them.

Latte Lath arrived in 2023 and found what every striker craves: trust.

"I found a good coach and a good person. It gave me straight away confidence," he says of then-head coach Michael Carrick.

"He was a calm person, a calm coach, maybe sometimes too much, but it was needed for us. He knew always when and what he should say to you in the difficult moment or in the good moment.

"So for me, I think in that point of my life, it was really important."

The calm worked. With Carrick’s backing, Latte Lath turned into one of the Championship’s most dangerous forwards, scoring 29 goals in 67 games. The numbers carried him across another ocean.

Atlanta and back again

Major League Soccer’s Atlanta United made him the most expensive signing in the league’s history at the time. It was a statement move, the kind that usually comes with bright lights and bold expectations.

The reality was more muted. The American chapter never quite matched the billing, and by the summer he was on the move again, back to Europe, this time on loan to Union Berlin.

If Atlanta had been about scale and hype, Berlin offered something else: edge, noise, and a culture that suits a player who grew up under street rules.

"I arrived here and I am surprised because the fans' passion is crazy. This is something new for me. It gives me an extra muscle, another power to do well," he says.

"Berlin is huge, I love different cultures, and you can find different cultures and people. I think I can fit in because I grew up with different friends and cultures."

From the streets of Ivory Coast to the tactical maze of Italy, from Teesside to MLS and now to the roar of Union Berlin’s support, Latte Lath has lived those “two lives” several times over.

The next one is already underway.