Why is Mesut Ozil not playing for Arsenal? Playmaker’s omission from squad explained as transfer exit beckons
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In 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2016, Mesut Ozil was named Germany’s national team Player of the Year. In 2020, he was left out of Arsenal‘s 25-man Premier League squad.
Naturally, the attributes that make certain footballers great gradually diminish over time, their powers begin to subside in their early to mid-30s.
Now 32, Ozil doesn’t possess the burst of acceleration that so humiliated Gareth Barry in Bloemfontein a decade ago, nor the consistency to orchestrate matches with that wand of a left foot as he did during his Real Madrid pomp.
Yet surely Ozil’s playmaking and physical powers haven’t diminished to the point that he is no longer viewed as a viable option for Mikel Arteta? So ostracised has Ozil become at Arsenal that the club decided to leave three slots available in their 25-man Premier League squad, rather than include him on the off chance that he could force his way back into first-team contention.
It seems remarkable to consider that Petr Cech, who retired from football 16 months ago and has more recently been seen donning the goalkeeper pads for Guildford Phoenix in the National Ice Hockey League, has a greater chance of playing Premier League football than Ozil – with Chelsea naming Cech in their squad as goalkeeper cover at the start of the campaign.
It is equally staggering that most of the football world merely shrugged its shoulders at Arsenal’s decision to exclude their highest-earning player from duty. It was entirely predictable. Ozil has not played a single minute of football for Arsenal post-pandemic and was similarly cut from Arsenal’s Europa League squad submitted earlier this season.
Indeed, one could argue that the writing has been on the wall for Ozil ever since Arsene Wenger, the manager who signed him, left the club 29 months ago. Wenger’s successor Unai Emery appeared distrustful of Ozil from the outset and less than a month after his departure last November questioned whether he had the qualities to apply “aggressive pressure” in matches.
In May last year, Emery went a couple of steps further in his unflattering assessment of Ozil, saying “he has to be self‑critical too, analyse his attitude and commitment.”
While there are legitimate arguments that a player with Ozil’s deficiencies in both a tactical and physical sense were ill-suited to Emery’s ideas and likewise for Arteta’s gameplan, it increasingly looks as though there are politics at play behind the scenes.
In the final line of a statement posted to social media on Wednesday afternoon, Ozil said: “I will continue to train as best as I can and wherever possible use my voice against inhumanity and for justice.”
In December 2019, Ozil, a devout Muslim, spoke out against China’s persecution of the Uighur people in Xinjiang and criticised the Muslim community for not doing more to highlight and publicise the plight of the people there. In an Instagram post, Ozil said: “Don’t they know that giving consent for persecution is persecution itself?”
Arsenal moved quickly to distance themselves of Ozil’s comments, saying in a statement: “Regarding the comments made by Mesut Ozil on social media, Arsenal must make a clear statement. The content published is Ozil’s personal opinion. As a football club, Arsenal has always adhered to the principle of not involving itself in politics.”
Shortly after Ozil’s statement was released, “Muslims in China” began trending on Twitter in the UK.
Ozil’s association with the controversial President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is also likely to have caused unease at Arsenal. Ozil and Manchester City midfielder Ilkay Gundogan faced criticism from Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, on the eve of the 2018 World Cup for posing for pictures with President Erdogan due to frayed diplomatic relations between Turkey and Germany. Erdogan was the best man at Ozil’s wedding two years ago.
If those incidents planted the seeds of dispute between player and club, Ozil’s refusal to take a wage cut during the pandemic led to full germination. Ozil, who reportedly earns £350,000 per week, was criticised over his actions but he countered that the players had not received sufficient detail from Arsenal about where their wages would be diverted to.
Ozil is likely to have felt vindicated in his position when Arsenal announced 55 staff redundancies in August, shortly before signing Willian on a six-figure weekly salary, tying Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to an even more lucrative contract and spending a combined £70m on Thomas Partey, Gabriel Magalhaes and Alex Runarsson in the transfer window.
Perhaps the final nail was hammered into the coffin when Ozil announced that he would personally pay the salary of the club’s long-serving mascot Jerry Quy – the man inside the Gunnersaurus costume – until the end of his contract after he too was let go by the club. A career in public relations awaits Ozil once he’s finished with football.
Few transfers involving incoming Premier League signings have generated quite as much feverish excitement as the £43.5m deal which saw Ozil join Arsenal from Real Madrid on deadline day in 2013. Ozil’s teammate at the Bernabeu, Cristiano Ronaldo, publicly expressed his anger that the club had moved him on in order to accommodate Gareth Bale, a testament to the esteem with which Ozil was held at the time.
Nobody could have predicted then that Ozil’s Arsenal career would end in such acrimonious circumstances. There may still be six months remaining on his huge contract, but the prospect of Ozil pulling on the Arsenal shirt in a competitive setting now look slim to none.
Transfer links to Turkey and the MLS persist, but unless a compromise can be reached between Ozil and Arsenal, any move will have to wait until the ties are officially severed in the summer.
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