{"id":121487,"date":"2015-06-03T10:18:47","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T10:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=121487"},"modified":"2015-06-03T10:40:19","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T10:40:19","slug":"michael-essien-joins-greek-club-panathinaikos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=121487","title":{"rendered":"Michael Essien joins Greek club Panathinaikos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ghanaian international Michael Essien has signed for Greek club Panithanaikos.<\/p>\n<p>The 32-year-old\u00a0\u00a0joined Italian club, AC Milan in 2014 but has now signed a two-year deal with Panathinaikos.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-121702\" src=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/es415.gif\" alt=\"es415\" width=\"410\" height=\"285\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Speaking to the club&#8217;s website after the deal was announced Essien said :<span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">\u00a0\u201cI am very happy that I am here and that I will continue my career in Panathinaikos, I am looking forward to meet my new team and win trophies with my new team-mates. I want to give back the love that everyone has shown me and to thank the fans that welcomed me so warmly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>His arrival in Athens on Monday for a medical was witnessed by a massive group of the club&#8217;s fans who came out to applaud and cheer him.<\/p>\n<p>Essien has enjoyed a stellar career, winning league titles in France with Lyon and in England with Chelsea, where he won 3 Premier League titles and the 2012 Champions League with the West London club.<\/p>\n<p>His final years at Chelsea were blighted by injury and loss of form and he earned a move to Italian giants, AC Milan in January 2014.<\/p>\n<p>His time at Milan, however, was not the most prolific of his career, making only 22 appearances for the club, failing to score a goal.<\/p>\n<p>Essien also had a loan spell at Spanish club Real Madrid, where he scored 2 goals in 20 appearances for the club.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>By: Edwin Kwakofi\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<br \/>\n<a class=\"twitter-follow-button\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EdKwakofi\" data-show-count=\"false\">Follow @EdKwakofi<\/a><br \/>\n<script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=\/^http:\/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+':\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ghanaian international Michael Essien has signed for Greek club Panithanaikos. The 32-year-old\u00a0\u00a0joined Italian club, AC Milan in 2014 but has now signed a two-year deal with Panathinaikos. Speaking to the club&#8217;s website after the deal was announced Essien said :\u00a0\u201cI am very happy that I am here and that I will continue my career in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":121698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[29,3],"class_list":["post-121487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-dr-mahamudu-bawumia","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/121698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}