{"id":1399,"date":"2018-02-16T11:32:47","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T11:32:47","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2018-02-16T11:32:47","modified_gmt":"2018-02-16T11:32:47","slug":"this-is-why-australian-footballing-star-mark-milligan-has-left-his-australian-club-and-joined-al-ahli-in-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lovin.co\/riyadh\/en\/lifestyle\/this-is-why-australian-footballing-star-mark-milligan-has-left-his-australian-club-and-joined-al-ahli-in-saudi-arabia\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is Why Australian Footballing Star Mark Milligan Has Left His Australian Club And Joined Al Ahli In Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Melbourne Victory was initially hesitant to sell their star player, Mark Milligan, but Saudi club Al Ahli made an offer that they couldn\u2019t refuse. The clubs reasons aside, Mark Milligan himself has spoken on why he made the move to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

According to the football news website Goal<\/a><\/em>, apart from the money involved the main reason was the size of Al Ahli.<\/p>\n

Speaking to The Asian Game\u00a0podcast Milligan said: “I choose to take the move to Al Ahli obviously because of the size of the club.”<\/h3>\n

He adds “In negotiations, they were very keen on acquiring my services and I think when a club is pushing that hard you know you\u2019re going to play a role in what they\u2019re trying to achieve.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Milligan was the captain of Australian football club Melbourne Victory who are widely considered to be the most successful club in the Australian football league. But in January the Australian club allowed the transfer of Milligan to Al Ahli considering the offer made by the Saudi club.<\/p>\n

Goal reports that the sum paid by Al Ahli for Milligan is expected to be somewhere near one million dollars.<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

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Soon after joining Al Ahli, Milligan made his debut in one of the most highly anticipated matches in the country which was against another Jeddah-based club Al Ittihad.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The match ended in a draw and Milligan got firsthand experience on what football means to Saudis.<\/h3>\n

“The fans there are fanatical,” said Milligan. “I was fortunate enough to play my first game in the derby against Al Ittihad and there were 62,000 fans there…it was unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melbourne Victory was initially hesitant to sell their star player, Mark Milligan, but Saudi club Al Ahli made an offer that they couldn\u2019t refuse. The clubs reasons aside, Mark Milligan himself has spoken on why he made the move to Saudi Arabia. According to the football news website Goal, apart from the money involved the … ","protected":false},"author":402,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-sports"],"acf":{"legacy_image":"https:\/\/cloud.lovinsaudi.com\/images\/_relatedEntryImage2x\/Mark_Milligan_01.jpg?mtime=20180216112849","legacy_full_image":"https:\/\/cloud.lovinsaudi.com\/images\/_featuredImage\/Mark_Milligan_01.jpg?mtime=20180216112849 880w","legacy_meta_tags":"This Is Why Australian Footballing Star Mark Milligan Has Left His Australian Club And Joined Al Ahli In Saudi Arabia - Lovin Saudi<\/title><meta name=\"description\" content=\"Melbourne Victory was initially hesitant to sell their star player, Mark Milligan, but Saudi club Al Ahli made an offer that they couldn\u2019t refuse. The clubs reasons aside, Mark Milligan himself has spoken on why he made the move to Saudi Arabia.\">\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/lovinsaudi.com\/lifestyle\/sports\/this-is-why-australian-footballing-star-mark-milligan-has-left-his-australian-club-and-joined-al-ahli-in-saudi-arabia\">\n<!-- <link rel=\"amphtml\" href=\"https:\/\/lovinsaudi.com\/lifestyle\/sports\/this-is-why-australian-footballing-star-mark-milligan-has-left-his-australian-club-and-joined-al-ahli-in-saudi-arabia\/amp\">\n --><meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Is Why Australian Footballing Star Mark Milligan Has Left His Australian Club And Joined Al Ahli In Saudi Arabia\">\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\">\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/lovinsaudi.com\/lifestyle\/sports\/this-is-why-australian-footballing-star-mark-milligan-has-left-his-australian-club-and-joined-al-ahli-in-saudi-arabia\">\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\">\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cloud.lovinsaudi.com\/images\/Mark_Milligan_01.jpg?mtime=20180216112849\">\n<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\">\n<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\">\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"photo\">\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"lovinsaudi\">\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"This Is Why Australian Footballing Star Mark Milligan Has Left His Australian Club And Joined Al Ahli In Saudi Arabia\">\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"\">\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\" Melbourne Victory was initially hesitant to sell their star player, Mark Milligan, but Saudi club Al Ahli made an offer that they couldn\u2019t refuse. The clubs reasons aside, Mark Milligan himself has spoken on why he made the move to Saudi Arabia.\n\">\n<meta name=\"twitter:url\" content=\"https:\/\/lovinsaudi.com\/lifestyle\/sports\/this-is-why-australian-footballing-star-mark-milligan-has-left-his-australian-club-and-joined-al-ahli-in-saudi-arabia\">\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cloud.lovinsaudi.com\/images\/Mark_Milligan_01.jpg?mtime=20180216112849\">\n"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovin.co\/riyadh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovin.co\/riyadh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovin.co\/riyadh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovin.co\/riyadh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/402"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovin.co\/riyadh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lovin.co\/riyadh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovin.co\/riyadh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovin.co\/riyadh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovin.co\/riyadh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}