{"id":1507,"date":"2014-02-06T19:22:33","date_gmt":"2014-02-06T19:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=1507"},"modified":"2014-02-06T19:23:41","modified_gmt":"2014-02-06T19:23:41","slug":"dortmund-striker-says-mate-tried-to-lure-him-to-the-emirates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/dortmund-striker-says-mate-tried-to-lure-him-to-the-emirates\/","title":{"rendered":"Dortmund Striker Says Mate Tried To Lure Him To The Emirates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p itemprop=\"description\"><strong>Borussia Dortmund striker Robert Lewandowski has revealed that Poland team-mate Wojciech Szczesny tried to talk him into joining Arsenal.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lewandowski will head to Bayern Munich at the end of the season after a deal was agreed at the start of January, following months of speculation about his future.<\/p>\n<p>Bayern were always the favourites to secure Lewandowski&#8217;s signature but there was interest from many other clubs, with Arsenal keeping a close eye on his situation.<\/p>\n<p>Arsene Wenger has previously admitted that he considered a move, while goalkeeper Szczesny also did his best to sway the striker towards the Emirates Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can confirm that Wojciech Szczesny tried to convince me to join Arsenal,&#8221; Lewandowski told Polish tabloid Fakt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We had several talks about this. It was him who did most of the talking, how the club looks inside, what Arsene Wenger thinks of me.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When we trained before the Champions League games at Colney, there were important people from Arsenal at our sessions as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lewandowski is happy to have finally sorted out his long-term future, but for now he is staying focused on doing as well as he can for Dortmund.<\/p>\n<p>He explained: &#8220;I just lived with it. Straight after signing the deal with Bayern, I released the statement where I committed myself to Borussia for the final six months.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not thinking about all this, and what will happen, it&#8217;s not the right time.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Borussia Dortmund striker Robert Lewandowski has revealed that Poland team-mate Wojciech Szczesny tried to talk him into joining Arsenal. Lewandowski will head to Bayern Munich at the end of the season after a deal was agreed at the start of January, following months of speculation about his future. Bayern were always the favourites to secure [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[115,60],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1509,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions\/1509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}