{"id":8612,"date":"2013-06-22T04:58:05","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T04:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/ghana-s-essien-says-it-s-unfair-to-tag-me\/"},"modified":"2013-06-22T04:58:47","modified_gmt":"2013-06-22T04:58:47","slug":"ghana-s-essien-says-it-s-unfair-to-tag-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/ghana-s-essien-says-it-s-unfair-to-tag-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghana’s Essien Says, ‘It\u2019s unfair to tag me \u2018unpatriotic\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

{{Ghana midfielder Michael Essien says he has always been committed to the cause of the Black Stars and does not expect people to tag him as unpatriotic.}}<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old, who was on loan at Real Madrid last season, has not played for the Black Stars since suffering serious knee injuries while playing for Ghana three years ago.<\/p>\n

He struggled to regain his top form since returning from injury, but only recently rediscovered his form after going on loan at the Santiago Bernabeu. <\/p>\n

Speaking to Accra-based TV 3, the Chelsea midfielder said he still remains committed to the Black Stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are very quick to judge we the players. I started playing for the national team when I was 17, so I don\u2019t think people should say that I am unpatriotic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always been there for the nation, so it\u2019s very unfair when they say that,\u201d The Chelsea midfielder said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

{myjoyonline}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{{Ghana midfielder Michael Essien says he has always been committed to the cause of the Black Stars and does not expect people to tag him as unpatriotic.}} The 30-year-old, who was on loan at Real Madrid last season, has not played for the Black Stars since suffering serious knee injuries while playing for Ghana three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8612"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8612"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}