To be honest, this is one of the reasons for the forum going a bit worse. It was much more fun and exciting when less civil.Its not bad at all. Its makes this forum a great forum. We just have to work a little better to be respectful and civil to each other(Im guilty here too but once you go cat you cant get back)!
Majestic against farmers and shoe menders... I think Emery takes all the plaudits on that one. Wait, a worldie against Ludogeretetzetsz as well...There's a pattern emerging here.
Makes you wonder how many players make up a squad.
You know full well one player can change the dynamics of a club, like Bergkamp.... or Özil.
Özil didn't have anywhere near the sort of impact Bergkamp did. You'll say he did, but you'd be in the tiniest of minorities. Man's finished at 30 ffs, and he doesn't even play for his NT anymore. Embarrassing end to a career.
Actually Emery can consider himself lucky that Özil isn‘t a piece of **** like Pogba and turn the squad against him. Emery would be gone now if Özil really wanted to.
Özil is quite because he understands very well that he is stealing a living here. He is done with his football career and there is 3 more years to milk the club with his contract and giving nothing in return. He is smart enough to understand that everyone would be more than happy to get rid of him. Pogba is in a better position there, kind of a leader and really big football name.
If believing that makes you happy then sure... just so you know though... Emery had no other choice but to turn to Özil and has been starting him as regularly as all the other top players since thenÖzil doesnt have the balls or the influence to force emery out.
If believing that makes you happy then sure... just so you know though... Emery had no other choice but to turn to Özil and has been starting him as regularly as all the other top players since then
I think someone who has received so much backclash for meeting with Erdogan wouldn‘t meet him publicly AGAIN, if he was afraid of confrontation or likes to avoid conflicts. He could‘ve easily turned the squad against Emery if he really wanted to but thankfully that‘s not the kind of person he is. Instead he proved his worth on the pitch (and the results without him were mediocre), which made Emery make him a regular again.
Mesut Özil – did he fail us or did we fail him?
The Arsenal midfielder has never quite been loved in England and has polarised Germany. How did a player once regarded as a beacon turn into a distress flare? James Gheerbrant explains
The life of Mesut Özil has been defined by separation. It is both his greatest gift and his greatest curse. As a child growing up in the hardscrabble industrial city of Gelsenkirchen in western Germany, he was excluded by several local clubs. As a star player for Germany, Real Madrid and Arsenal, his brilliance has been underpinned by his extrasensory ability to flit into areas of the pitch where he is most distant from opponents, and therefore able to cause maximum damage. Latterly, he has chosen to exile himself from the German national team. In 2016, a picture emerged of Özil making his religious pilgrimage to Mecca. “Even at the world’s most crowded holy site, he’s still managed to find space,” the sportswriter Jonathan Liew quipped.
But on the evening of July 13 2014, for once Özil was in the thick of it, enmeshed in the jubilant celebrations that followed Germany’s 1-0 win over Argentina in the World Cup final. This triumph looked and felt quite different from the three previous wins by West Germany: for only the second time, after the 1998 France team, this was a world-champion squad that reflected the diverse reality of a modern European nation, with six players of immigrant heritage.
At the centre of it was Özil, whose status as a third-generation Turkish-German and a Muslim made him at that moment, as the confetti settled on the Maracanã, arguably the most socially important footballer in the world. So different was he from the blond, macho heroes of previous Germany teams, so eloquently did his feet speak, that the German philosopher Martin Gessmann christened him “Kafka on the grass”.
Now, at 30 and in the final act of his career, Özil is isolated once more. At Arsenal, before the Europa League final, he is no longer an integral figure. In England, he has never quite been loved like other foreign stars of the Premier League era. And in Germany, his spectacular public withdrawal from Die Mannschaft, alleging racism in football, politics and the media, has polarised his team and his country. How did a player who was once regarded as a beacon turn into a distress flare? Did we fail Mesut Özil, or did he fail us?
When Özil joined Arsenal in summer 2013, he was still a year away from winning the World Cup, but already a player of considerable social significance. The Germany team which went to the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012 — including Özil, Sami Khedira, Jérôme Boateng and Lukas Podolski — not only attracted attention on the world stage for their youth and vibrant attacking football, but were also, as the first truly multicultural team to represent Germany, seen as an emblem of successful integration.
“It was very important for the atmosphere within Germany, as well as the perception of the country abroad, to see that the integration of the children of foreign immigrants, the second or third generation, could be very successful,” says Lars Wallrodt, sports editor of Bild am Sonntag. “And to see that a German national team could be made up of Khediras, Boatengs and Özils and not only Müllers and Maiers.”
Özil, the team’s star player, had an especially totemic role. “The stars of previous generations had been Fritz Walter in the 50s, Uwe Seeler in the 60s, Franz Beckenbauer in the 70s, Karl-Heinz Rümmenigge in the 80s, and in the 90s [Lothar] Matthäus or Jürgen Kohler. So it was the first time that the national team’s star player had been of immigrant heritage,” Wallrodt explains.
For Turkish-Germans, the country’s largest ethnic-minority group, who make up over 3 per cent of the German population, the emergence of Özil was a transformative moment. “He was more than a football player for us,” the Turkish-German footballer Samet Balaban told Die Welt last year. “One of us was now part of the national team. We belonged.”
For his part, Özil never wanted to be a poster boy; he was most comfortable in the collective. The team that was now being invested with a global significance was, to him, something entirely normal and local. He had been part of the same victorious 2009 Under-21 Euros squad as Khedira, Boateng and Mats Hummels, and even went to the same school — Gesamtschule Berger Feld in Gelsenkirchen — as Manuel Neuer. The symbolic burden shouldered by Özil was not one he chose, or was even particularly well-suited for; it was mostly something foisted upon him.
In October 2010, Özil was whistled by German-born Turkey fans during a Euro qualifier between the countries at Berlin’s Olympiastadion; afterwards, Angela Merkel’s office issued a picture of her shaking Özil’s hand in the changing room. The following month, Özil was given a prize at Germany’s prestigious media awards ceremony, the Bambis, in a new, specially created category: Integration. He assumed the mantle dutifully, but the reality was more complex.
“I’m not sure he was the right recipient,” Wallrodt says. “Özil seldom spoke German as a child, because his family would speak Turkish at home. I think that was something he struggled to shake off: he was never the most sure-footed German-speaker; he always had a very strong connection to his Turkish roots, his Turkish friends. So he was never a shining example of a perfectly integrated immigrant in the same way that Khedira and Boateng were.”
Yet the Bambi, though arguably misguided, speaks to something crucial about Özil: he became a symbol not through his own actions, but because “people project on to him a kind of hope and desire”, says Laurent Dubois, an expert in the socio-political context of football. He likens Özil to Zinédine Zidane: “Neither of them take on a very open political stance, and neither of them are very public about their [beliefs]. They operate as symbols partly because in some ways they’re very laconic.”
In other words, Özil is a vessel. Look at him before each Arsenal game and you’ll see him perform the dua, the Muslim prayer, head bowed, palms turned upward to the sky in a gesture of openness. Even as a player, he is more of a conduit — patiently channelling his inspiration in the service of others rather than seizing the platform for himself. He doesn’t play football in a German way, summoning the forces of Sturm und Drang. Instead, he lets the game flow through him like a prayer.
That partly explains why the German public’s attitude to Özil the player was always more ambiguous than to others. “I don’t think he was ever a German national hero — at least, not inasmuch as he embodied classically German qualities,” Wallrodt says. “Podolski was someone who fought, wore his heart on his sleeve, sung along with the national anthem. Özil was always admired for his beautiful playing style, but also criticised for this perceived apathy, this tendency to go missing. He didn’t really embody that passion for the German cause, which of course is entirely OK — but fans tend to take to those players who really fight for the shirt and kiss the crest and all that, which was never Özil’s way. And because he was never openly patriotic, I think Özil was always regarded with a certain . . . mistrust isn’t the right word, but a certain resentment.”
It’s sometimes forgotten that even during the victorious 2014 World Cup campaign, Özil was often singled out for criticism. Paul Breitner, the 1974 World Cup winner, called for him to be dropped, saying: “Nine men are torturing themselves for 90 minutes and he’s going for a walk.”
“There was always an undercurrent,” says Musa Okwonga, a poet and social commentator who lives in Berlin. “In German society, in some quarters, there’s always been a slight suspicion about Özil’s manner, his body language. Not only is he of Turkish heritage, but also he didn’t compensate for that heritage . . . he’s quite effete, slight, cultured, very antithetical to a lot of [German] stereotypes.”
The catalyst for Özil’s bitter divorce from the national team were the events of May 13 last year in a side room at the Four Seasons hotel in London. There, in the aftermath of a charity function, Özil — as well as Manchester City’s Ilkay Gündogan, and Everton’s Cenk Tosun — posed for photographs with Turkey’s authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, smiling and holding an Arsenal shirt.
The players did not share the photos on social media, but they were published the following day by Erdogan’s party, AKP, as part of his re-election campaign. Condemnation of Özil and the other players was swift. For some, it was a loyalty issue — a German national-team player should not pose with another country’s president — but most were angry that they had allowed themselves to be used as a propaganda tool by an autocrat. “The players certainly haven’t helped the DFB’s integration activities,” Reinhard Grindel, the president of the German FA (DFB), tweeted.
Gündogan swiftly issued an explanatory statement, acknowledging that many Germans would not approve, but adding: “We never said Ms Merkel wasn’t our chancellor.” By contrast, Özil and his agent Erkut Sögüt decided not to publicly address the controversy. They felt he had nothing to apologise for. Both have subsequently stuck to the explanation that Özil was merely honouring the highest office of his homeland and not making a political gesture.
That explanation seems at best naive; at worst disingenuous. Relations within the Germany squad were soured, meanwhile, when Özil recused himself from the media day during the pre-tournament training camp, leaving other players on the hook to explain the photos.
Perhaps “Erdogate” would have died down if Germany had performed well at the World Cup. But their calamitous group-stage exit brought the bitter wind of public discontent into contact with the still-glowing embers of the controversy, with incendiary results. Mario Basler, the former Germany international, likened Özil to a “dead frog”. Matthäus suggested Özil “did not feel comfortable in the Germany shirt”. Bernd Holzhauer, a social-democratic politician, called him a “goat-f***er”.
“Of course, the Özil-Erdogan affair was the cause of a lot of unrest, but that would hardly be the first time there’s been unrest on the eve of a major tournament,” says Wallrodt. “Normally the national team is very good at blocking out the outside noise. So it wouldn’t be fair to lay all the blame at Özil’s door. But that’s what happened. It was exploited, by fans who weren’t well disposed towards Özil, and by politicians.”
Previously, the DFB had leapt to Özil’s defence. This time, there was no united front. Instead, Oliver Bierhoff, the Germany technical director, said they should have considered leaving Özil out of the squad.
“When a player is being condemned, you expect the football authorities to at least close ranks in public, but they threw him to the wolves,” Okwonga says. “A lot of my German friends here of migration backgrounds have said what a terrible message that sends to players of migration backgrounds, who are [now thinking] ‘Is this Germany really for us?’ Because the second you do something wrong, they absolutely leap on us.”
This predatory dimension is something that is familiar from the many critiques of Özil’s on-field performances, and not only in Germany. It’s true that Özil is a hard player to appraise, due to his effortless style and ancillary role in a team’s attack. Is he just languid, or not trying hard enough? Is he ineffective, or does he contribute in ways that are inconspicuous, or obscured by his team-mates’ failings? In the 2017-18 season, Özil was second only to Kevin de Bruyne in the Premier League for expected assists per 90 minutes, a measure of the quality of chances a player creates. But in the ranking for actual assists, while De Bruyne was top, Özil was 11th.
Often, the criticism of Özil settles on the idea that he doesn’t care enough. But I wonder if there’s a fundamental misconception of Özil’s flaw. What if it’s not that he doesn’t care, but that he cares too much? What looks through one lens like a player drifting through games lackadaisically may actually be a player freighted with the cares of the world. Last year Buzzfeed published a viral article about millennial burnout. The central thesis was that what appears to older generations as a sort of pathetic listlessness is in fact a form of paralysis triggered by the overwhelming multitude of tasks millennials are faced with. I wonder if something similar applies to Özil, who not only has to cope with shouldering the creative burden for Arsenal and Germany, but is also expected to discharge his media obligations with a smile, be endlessly available for charitable requests (something he does with unparalleled generosity), cultivate a personal brand on social media, and be an icon of integration.
It was on his social-media channels that, last July, Özil published his explosive withdrawal statement in three parts. He made allegations of discrimination against the media and DFB, and Grindel in particular, and said that he no longer felt able to wear the Germany shirt. Perhaps the most memorable line was his contention that he was always treated as “German when we win, Turkish when we lose”.
Özil’s intervention split his team-mates and compatriots. Some Germany players, like Boateng and Julian Draxler, publicly supported him. Others reacted dismissively. Thomas Müller rubbished the idea of racism in football, while Toni Kroos called Özil’s statement “nonsense”. Among Germans, his withdrawal was not seen as a straightforward martyrdom — although some agreed with him, many who were previously sympathetic felt his inflammatory statement overstepped the mark.
“The majority public opinion was that Özil was wrong, and that he wronged the fans,” Wallrodt says. “He had been revered for a long time as a shining example of good integration. People felt it was unjust because there was no evidence for it; no one ever said, ‘We lost because of that Turk Özil’.
“[The statement] broke everything. As we say in Germany, it cut the tablecloth in two. There’s no repairing that relationship.”
Perhaps it is fitting that such an enigmatic player will not see out his career in black and white. But at Arsenal, the same oscillation between totem and outsider persists. On one hand, last year Özil signed a new contract, tying him to the club until 2021 and making him the highest-paid player in the club’s history. He has worn the captain’s armband on several occasions this season and features prominently on the club’s social media, the face Arsenal presents to the world. On the other hand, he has spent much of this season outside Unai Emery’s first-choice XI, including for one game against Bournemouth when Emery publicly suggested he was unsuited for a “demanding match with physicality and intensity”. No one’s really sure if he figures in the club’s long-term plans.
One thing that is striking about Özil is how his journey — from neat parable to complicated pariah — has echoed the wider trajectory of Europe over the last decade, from optimism to division. “There’s definitely a symbiosis between these things,” Dubois says. “The players on the German team are situated in German society and they’re absorbing the language, and what’s happening. What’s really striking about the German case is how stark that is, how you can really see them mirror one another.”
“I think the saga exposes faults on both sides,” says Wallrodt. “On the German side, that there are still certain reservations about children with immigrant roots, and a tendency to clutch at these roots for explanation; and on Özil’s side, that his integration was never quite fully realised.
“It shows how thin the ice sometimes is on which integration rests. The great sadness for us is that it’s Özil; it’s in the case of someone in whom so much goodwill was invested where things have gone so badly wrong. Ultimately, it’s a tragedy for both sides.”
To be fair mate we also dropped out of top 4 which is something we hadn't done for 20 odd years. I know he's been poverty this season but there seems to be a misconception that he hasn't had long periods of poor form previous to this season.
Poverty post.
