Essien loses €500,000 at Panathinaikos

Michael Essien will not receive his bonus of €500,000 at Greek side Panathinaikos because he will be unable to play the matches required to earn the bumper sum, GHANAsoccernet.com can exclusively reveal.

The Ghanaian midfielder's contract with the top-flight stipulates that he will earn €700,000 in bonuses if the club excels in the league at the end of the season.

It also provides an extra bonus of €500,000 for the Ghana international midfielder if he plays 65% of Panathinakos' official matches.

However, the Ghanaian will not been able to play 65% of the matches of the club by the end of the season which means he will lose the €500,000.

Essien has so far played 38.2% of Panathinaikos officials matches which is 13 appearances in 34 games and this means he will not be able to reach the quota by the end of the season.

Even if he plays all of the remaining seven matches in the normal season and six in the play-offs, the former Chelsea and AC Milan star will be unable to reach the target for the money to hit his bank account.

The maximum that Essien could reach 55.3%, which means that the player will only take a little more than €700,000 and won't reach the maximum of €1.2m.