{"id":52442,"date":"2023-11-23T18:49:20","date_gmt":"2023-11-23T18:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family"},"modified":"2023-11-23T19:18:22","modified_gmt":"2023-11-23T19:18:22","slug":"they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family","title":{"rendered":"They give birth and expect you take care of them \u2013 Mikel Obi laments pressure from family"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Zambia. <\/strong><\/span>Former Super Eagles midfielder, John Obi Mikel, has highlighted the pressure most African footballers face after their breakthrough. Mikel explains that when a footballer makes money, the family assumes ownership and entitlement of the success as they believe he owes it to them.<\/p>\n<p>He said extended family members pop up from nowhere looking to be taken care of by the player. Narrating a worst-case scenario on Vibe with FIVE podcast, he said the player\u2019s sisters marry opportunists and go on to give birth to many kids, expecting the player will take of the children.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we come from Africa, and this is something that I don\u2019t think we speak a lot about. When you make money, it\u2019s not your money. You have all these relatives, cousins&#8230;whatever you call it. And your sisters, they get married to some guy who just wants to get married into the John Obi Mikel\u2019s family because then \u201cmy life is sorted\u201d. You send money to your sister, the money goes to him, and he does whatever he does with it. This is something nobody knows about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo you get your salary, you say okay, now I\u2019m going to put this aside for this person, put this aside for that person, put this for mum and dad. Before you know it, where is it? You get nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd they keep having so many kids and so many kids and you look at it&#8230;Okay, you are having this much kids who is going to look after them? It\u2019s you. They look out to you for you to look after the kids, husband, and the husband\u2019s family. And it becomes really and absolutely crazy. For them, you owe them that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mikel revealed that he was in the same position until he decided to bring it to a halt about five years ago. \u201cSo sometimes you have to be strong and say you know what guys enough is enough. I don\u2019t care. For me that was five years ago, I said F it, no more. Because I\u2019ve been doing this since I started playing football.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reaction is you become the bad guy. They stop answering your phone calls,\u201d he added. He indicated that his agent advised him to stop giving more than he should to the family.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy agent told me \u2018Mikel you can\u2019t be doing this. You killing yourself and you killing them. Because all you do is give them and they get so comfortable that they expect you to do that for the rest of your life. And I came to that point five years ago Where I stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Chelsea legend added that, when the players have the guts to say they have had enough, the family threatens to go to the media. \u201cThey will give you this thing whereby if you don\u2019t do it we going go to the press. What? After all that I\u2019ve done for you guys?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>John Mikel Obi made the statement while discussing money management as an African footballer, who is often focused on family, notably extended family.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\">Zambia<\/a> Follow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Zambia. Former Super Eagles midfielder, John Obi Mikel, has highlighted the pressure most African footballers face after their breakthrough. Mikel explains that when a footballer makes money, the family assumes ownership and entitlement of the success as they believe he owes it to them. He said extended family members pop up from nowhere [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":52440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,17],"tags":[234,235,233],"class_list":["post-52442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-sport","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-zambia","tag-zambia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>They give birth and expect you take care of them \u2013 Mikel Obi laments pressure from family - Zambia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former Super Eagles midfielder, John Obi Mikel, has highlighted the pressure most African footballers face after their b ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"They give birth and expect you take care of them \u2013 Mikel Obi laments pressure from family\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former Super Eagles midfielder, John Obi Mikel, has highlighted the pressure most African footballers face after their b ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Zambia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-11-23T18:49:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-11-23T19:18:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/zambia\/sites\/35\/2023\/11\/sm_1700754290.158558.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"467\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"They give birth and expect you take care of them \u2013 Mikel Obi laments pressure from family\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-11-23T18:49:20+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-11-23T19:18:22+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family\"},\"wordCount\":550,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/zambia\/sites\/35\/2023\/11\/sm_1700754290.158558.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Zambia\",\"Zambia\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"sport\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/they-give-birth-and-expect-you-take-care-of-them-mikel-obi-laments-pressure-from-family\",\"name\":\"They give birth and expect you take care of them \u2013 Mikel Obi laments pressure from family - 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