After a seemingly never ending standoff, Mesut Ozil is finally on his way out of Arsenal to join Fenerbahce.
Mesut Ozil’s playing style has had many a writer flicking through the pages of the footballing hipster’s thesaurus. Mercurial. Enigmatic. Capricious. Paradoxical.
Inconsistent.
A truly unique player of immense talent, nobody plays like Mesut Ozil. With 360 degree vision, he glides around the pitch looking for space, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Lauded by fans and teammates alike for greasing the wheels and facilitating other players, Ozil’s genius works best when it flies under the radar.
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However, the glorious moments worthy of his creative brilliance became increasingly few and far between. As a result many have questioned whether he deserves his status. Like some sort of athletic trickster, fooling us all into thinking he is good at football.
The Ozil debate has raged on ever since he joined Arsenal for a club record £42.5 million in 2013. It’s flames have been stoked by his relative decline, fall from grace and eventual exile from the team.
Ozil arrived in North London as a saviour. Arsenal, who had until then spent frugally, were in decline. That they splashed out on one of the best creative players in the world was a real statement.
It cannot be forgotten that he lit up stadiums and captured imaginations in the few years of his Gunners tenure. But his time at Arsenal can be divided into two distinct acts.
After he became the club’s highest ever earner with a £350,000-a-week contract in 2018, he fell off a cliff.
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It’s likely we will never know the full details of Ozil’s last three Arsenal years. What we do know is he was frozen out by two successive coaches, refused a pay cut and became embroiled in off pitch controversies rather than playing.
Ultimately, he became an incredibly expensive appendix for Arsenal. Over the weekend, news broke that he agreed to forgo a portion of the remaining £7m of his contract in order to leave.
A German of Turkish descent, he joins Fenerbahce, the team he supported as a child. Many Arsenal fans will have been left with a bitter taste in their mouths over Ozil. However, there is nobody who wouldn’t like to see this fallen giant rediscover his form.
