Emmanuel Adebayor Adebayor was also eligible to play for Nigeria but chose to represent the country of his birth, Togo. Adebayor helped Togo qualify for the 2006 Africa Cup of Nations after scoring 11 goals in the qualifiers, more than any other player in the African qualifiers. On 10 February 2009, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) picked Adebayor as the African Footballer of the Year for 2008 at an awards ceremony held in Lagos, Nigeria. Adebayor beat final nominees Mohamed Aboutrika of Egypt and Ghana's Michael Essien in a vote that involved the national team coaches of CAF's 54 member-nations. It
Michael Essien he would be released from his contract. His termination by the club was confirmed almost three months later, after the two parties reached a mutual agreement over his release. After the agreement was reached and Essien was released from his contract, the club failed to remit the money owed to him and Essien appealed to the competent court for football affairs in Greece, which ordered Panathinaikos to pay him the outstanding sum of about thirty-six thousand euros or face the deduction of three points in the coming 2018/19 competition. Essien rejected an offer from Australian A-League club Melbourne Victory in