{"id":10170,"date":"2014-09-18T11:17:52","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T11:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2014\/09\/18\/nicolas-anelka-joins-mumbai-city-fc\/"},"modified":"2014-09-18T11:17:52","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T11:17:52","slug":"nicolas-anelka-joins-mumbai-city-fc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2014\/09\/18\/nicolas-anelka-joins-mumbai-city-fc\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicolas Anelka Joins Mumbai City FC"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Hero Indian Super League has one more high-profile player to add to its list of international stars. Nicolas Anelka, who has played for many of the top clubs in Europe, was announced today as Mumbai City FC\u2019s latest signing.<\/div>\n

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The Frenchman adds vast experience to the Mumbai City FC squad, having played at the first-team level for nearly 20 years. Much of this time has been spent at the biggest European clubs, including Paris Saint-Germain, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Liverpool, and Juventus. He also had a successful spell at Chelsea and prolific stints at Manchester City and Bolton. Anelka achieved the Premier League and FA Cup \u2018double\u2019 at both Arsenal (1997-98) and Chelsea (2009-10), and helped Real Madrid win the 1999-00 UEFA Champions League. He has also played for English club West Bromwich Albion and even spent a short while in China, playing for Shanghai Shenhua. At the international level, Anelka has earned 69 senior caps for France, scoring 14 times and helping \u2018Les Bleus\u2019 win the 2000 UEFA European Championship.<\/div>\n

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Anelka has also garnered several personal accolades throughout his career, winning the PFA (the Professional Footballers\u2019 Association in England) Young Player of the Year award in 1997-98 as an Arsenal player and the Premier League Golden Boot for Chelsea in 2008-09. He was in the Premier League\u2019s Team of the Year in 1998-99 and repeated the feat ten seasons later, and was frequently the top scorer for his club, wherever he was playing.<\/div>\n

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This prolific record will bolster his new team, Mumbai City FC, and his signing further boosts the profile of the ISL. Anelka joins Alessandro Del Piero (Delhi Dynamos FC), Luis Garc\u00eda (Atl\u00e9tico de Kolkata), Joan Capdevila (NorthEast United FC), David James (Kerala Blasters FC), and David Trezeguet (FC Pune City) as a celebrated and recognisable international footballer playing in India\u2019s new league.<\/div>\n

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Commenting on his signing, Anelka said he is \u201cpleased to join Mumbai City FC, and through it, participate in the exciting Indian Super League\u201d. He paid tribute to his fellow star internationals and the overall quality of the league, enthusing that \u201ctalented international players and top Indian talent will make matches thrilling affairs\u201d. The striker is looking forward to donning his new team\u2019s colours, promising that he will be \u201cusing my ability to do well for my team in the matches we play\u201d.<\/div>\n

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The club are equally excited with the prospect of Anelka playing for them. Team owner Ranbir Kapoor was \u201cdelighted to announce the signing\u201d, and \u201cthrilled that a player with a stunning pedigree such as his is part of our team.\u201d Kapoor welcomed Anelka to the Mumbai City FC squad by saying \u201chis abilities and experience are known the world over, and I am certain his presence will give us the firepower required upfront\u201d.\u00a0<\/div>\n

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The striker himself had a simple message for fans. He tweeted: \u201cAre you ready, Mumbai City FC? Here I come!\u201d Fans in India will be relishing the thought of seeing him turn out in the ISL.<\/div>\n

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One More High-Profile Player The Hero Indian Super League has one more high-profile player to add to its list of international stars. Nicolas Anelka, who has played for many of the top clubs in Europe, was announced today as Mumbai City FC\u2019s latest signing. \u00a0 The Frenchman adds vast experience to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}