Essien, Michael

Michael Essien, byname the Bison, (born December 3, 1982, Accra, Ghana), Ghanaian professional football (soccer) player who rose to international stardom as a midfielder for the English football club Chelsea FC in the 2000s.

Essien was raised in Awutu Breku, a small town in central Ghana, where his interest in football was sparked, in part, by his father, who was a former local professional player. At age 12 the younger Essien relocated to Accra with his mother and siblings, and two years later he won a football scholarship to a secondary school in Cape Coast. After graduation Essien played with a Ghanaian club called Liberty Professionals before joining SC Bastia, in France’s top division, in 2000.

Originally a defender at Bastia, Essien—who was nicknamed “the Bison” for his powerful and fearless play—was moved to the midfield, where he flourished. Variously playing as an offensive or defensive midfielder, he demonstrated versatility and stellar overall play, drawing the attention of the major European football clubs, and in 2003 Essien transferred to Olympique Lyonnais in Lyon, France. He helped lead the team to league championships in both the 2003–04 and 2004–05 seasons, and in 2005 he was named France’s Player of the Year. Essien’s continued progression made him one of the most-coveted players in the world, and in 2005 he moved to Chelsea for a then club-record transfer fee. There he was a part of two Premier League championships (2006 and 2010) and three FA Cup titles (2007, 2009, and 2010). Playing in the high-profile Premier League helped make Essien one of the sport’s biggest names. In August 2012 he was loaned to Spain’s Real Madrid for the entire 2012–13 football season. In 2014 he signed with the Italian club AC Milan. Essien signed with Greece’s Panathinaikos FC after two seasons in Milan in which he played sparingly and failed to record a goal. Essien was released after one season with Panathinaikos, and in March 2017 he joined Indonesia’s Persib Bandung but played only one season before again being released. In 2019 he signed with Azerbaijan’s Sabail.

Essien was a mainstay on Ghanaian national football teams from an early age. He played on the Ghana squads that finished third at the 1999 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Under-17 World Championship and second at the 2001 FIFA World Youth Championship. Essien played his first match with Ghana’s senior team at the 2002 African Cup of Nations and was a key component in Ghana’s surprising run in the 2006 World Cup, where the team advanced to the second round in its first-ever appearance in the World Cup finals. Essien led Ghana to a third-place finish at the 2008 Cup of Nations, but a knee injury he suffered during the early stages of the 2010 Cup of Nations competition kept him from making a significant contribution to Ghana’s second-place finish in that event. His injury was so severe that he was later ruled out for the 2010 World Cup. Essien then stepped away from the national team for three years to focus on his club career. He returned in 2013 to help the team qualify for the 2014 World Cup, where he played in just one of Ghana’s three games.