Arsenal

[fortworthspur]

I dont doubt Ozil is correct, but this is why you should leave politics out of football. It never works out well. Same with American Football and the national anthem. If they never played that song there wouldnt be an issue.

 

[Maxtremist]

Ozil tearing things up in qualifying and in the early rounds of the tournaments is consistent with what I said. Of course he's been good for Germany overall, he's one of the most talented playmakers on the planet. But in the later rounds he's always gone missing. The 2010 semi against Spain, the 2012 semi against Italy, the 2016 semi against France...when have you ever said "he didn't deserve to be on the losing side" about Ozil? Even in 2014, he did fuck all in the QF against France, fuck all in the final, and even when they beat Brazil 7-1 he didn't do much apart from miss an absolute sitter to make it 8-0. When have you ever seen him drag his team out of the shit when his team mates are having a mare? Kroos had a pretty crap World Cup this year as well but at least he got that absolute screamer to equalise in the last minute Vs Sweden.

Ozil chokes for Arsenal more often because they play a few big games every season, whereas Germany do every couple of summers. But the big game choker thing is a tag that he's had for his entire career - Real discarded him because he would tear things up in La Liga but never turned up in the Champions League or in El Clasico - as soon as they got rid of him they won 4 out of 5 Champions Leagues and that's not a coincidence.

Kroos 'got away with it' in some regards because he got the screamer but he was poor throughout the tournament. As I showed Ozil created the most chances on average of any player in the world cup this year, not his fault that his teammates didn't score. It's not his fault that Hummels didn't put away that guilt edge header V South Korea for example. This year pretty much none of the German team showed up and the brunt of the criticism etc... was seemingly put on Ozil by fans and the media alike even though there were many others worse than him.

I'm not trying to say Ozil is the best player ever or anything like that, more the idea that at least for Germany it does seem like he takes the brunt of the criticism unfairly. It's a valid criticism to say he's not the kind of player to take the game by the scruff of its neck but that's never been his style so it feels odd to keep asking him to do that. He creates chances for his team mates and picks the pass. He's consistently had one of the highest pass rates and number of chances created, even this year in a poor Germany showing. He kept creating chances his team didn't finish.

 

[Maxtremist]

I dont doubt Ozil is correct, but this is why you should leave politics out of football. It never works out well. Same with American Football and the national anthem. If they never played that song there wouldnt be an issue.

I get what you're saying and I hate playing this card if you will but that seems to be a luxury he (and many others) don't have. As a German-Turk no matter what he actively does, he's sadly gonna be involved in some level of politics. Same for other players. It's like the French team, whilst nothing major came of it, them winning the world cup brought up a lot of dialogue about their African ancestral routes. As idealistic as it would be to want to have Football or any sport separate from politics that's not gonna happen.

It's why I'm glad Ozil is using that to highlight some of the issues rooted in the German system and hope this level of profile means other nations and organisations keep an eye on what they're doing/change accordingly.

 

[fortworthspur]

I get what you're saying and I hate playing this card if you will but that seems to be a luxury he (and many others) don't have. As a German-Turk no matter what he actively does, he's sadly gonna be involved in some level of politics. Same for other players. It's like the French team, whilst nothing major came of it, them winning the world cup brought up a lot of dialogue about their African ancestral routes. As idealistic as it would be to want to have Football or any sport separate from politics that's not gonna happen.

It's why I'm glad Ozil is using that to highlight some of the issues rooted in the German system and hope this level of profile means other nations and organisations keep an eye on what they're doing/change accordingly.

he didnt have to meet with Erdogan a few months after a high profile diplomatic row between Turkey and Germany. free speech isnt freedom from consequences. if he wants to meet Erdogan thats up to him, if it angers German fans thats up to them. Pop culture, by its nature, is fickle. And Im not saying that justifies any truly racist insults hurled at him. this happens all the time in the States. like I said, take the NFL - I personally dont have a problem with NFL players taking a knee during the anthem. If the NFL is going to conflate patriotism and football they open the door to protest. but the bottom line is it definitely hurt attendance and TV ratings last season and thats why they all got together and made an agreement to end it this year.

 

[Mullers]

I dont doubt Ozil is correct, but this is why you should leave politics out of football. It never works out well. Same with American Football and the national anthem. If they never played that song there wouldnt be an issue.

Society brings politics into sport and it is right that sport deals with it. Otherwise there would be no consequences for teams like South Africa under apartheid.

 

[Maxtremist]

he didnt have to meet with Erdogan a few months after a high profile diplomatic row between Turkey and Germany. free speech isnt freedom from consequences. if he wants to meet Erdogan thats up to him, if it angers German fans thats up to them. Pop culture, by its nature, is fickle. And Im not saying that justifies any truly racist insults hurled at him. this happens all the time in the States. like I said, take the NFL - I personally dont have a problem with NFL players taking a knee during the anthem. If the NFL is going to conflate patriotism and football they open the door to protest. but the bottom line is it definitely hurt attendance and TV ratings last season and thats why they all got together and made an agreement to end it this year.

I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong for him to have met with Erdogan, more just that it's hard/near impossible to remove politics from sports or anything along those lines.

There's always been a political bent to sports, you can look at extreme examples like the Olympics and Jesse Owens to nowadays and the Qatar world cup. The two are linked for better or for worse. You then get the politics that effect every day life that interfere with it, like the whole Kick Racism out of Football campaigns etc... Point is politics is a part of sports, not the focal point but a part of it. In a case like this, I'm happy Ozil is using his platform to talk about it and try to deal with it/expose it.

 

[fortworthspur]

I guess, but there are plenty of athletes who manage to avoid controversy their entire careers. Politicians, papers and fans may want to inject it but when a player does it it usually turns out bad.

the funny thing is, if you read the tweets coming from Turkish govt this morning Ozil got played. He may not have realized what he was doing but Erdogan did.

 

[Maxtremist]

I guess, but there are plenty of athletes who manage to avoid controversy their entire careers. Politicians, papers and fans may want to inject it but when a player does it it usually turns out bad.

the funny thing is, if you read the tweets coming from Turkish govt this morning Ozil got played. He may not have realized what he was doing but Erdogan did.

Politics =/= Controversy.
A lot can avoid it, but there's a certain privilege to that.

I don't know enough about the political climate there to say whether Ozil got played or to what degree, but from his statement and all that, whilst it was a factor it wasn't the only factor. It wasn't like all was perfect then this Erdogan stuff happened.

 

[allatsea]

Uli Hoeness hasn't reacted too well to it - http://www.skysports.com/football/n...ears-says-bayern-munich-president-uli-hoeness


"I'm glad it is over. He's been playing dirt for years.

"He last won a tackle before the 2014 World Cup. And now he hides himself and his c*** performance behind this photo.

"His 35 million follower boys, who of course do not exist in the real world, think he has played excellently if he plays a cross to a man."

"Whenever we played against Arsenal, we played over him, because we know he's the weak point",






Savage.

Why was it necessary for Hoeness to say anything ? If Ozil, and I am no fan of him as a player, was so bad why did he keep getting selected ?

 

[SUIYHA]

Ozil's agent with an utterly savage response

 

[Marty]

Ozil's agent with an utterly savage response

The more I read about it and the more fallout there is, the more I side with Özil.

 

[SUIYHA]

And some more interesting news....looks as though Usmanov is looking to sell his stake in Arsenal after accepting that Kroenke is never going to sell his.

https://www.ft.com/content/8221a448-8e8d-11e8-bb8f-a6a2f7bca546

 

[TheChosenOne]

And some more interesting news....looks as though Usmanov is looking to sell his stake in Arsenal after accepting that Kroenke is never going to sell his.

https://www.ft.com/content/8221a448-8e8d-11e8-bb8f-a6a2f7bca546

That's behind a paywall Sooey !

It's my guess it will be good for Everton or maybe Usmanov is running tight for cash ?

 

[spursfan77]

Usmanov leaving Arsenal is the stuff of dreams. Him being there is the only thing that is stopping Arsenal fans being hopefully that Kronke won't have complete control. That will only be bad for them if you check out his other teams, who I'm led to believe aren't very good.

 

[Shadydan]

This Ozil situation is ugly and that statement from Hoeness was just classless and unnecessary/inflammatory, he should have be respected in whatever his decision and just left at that.

 

[Marty]

This Ozil situation is ugly and that statement from Hoeness was just classless and unnecessary/inflammatory, he should have be respected in whatever his decision and just left at that.

Hoeness didn't have to say a damn thing, he isn't involved in the DFB other than as a Bayern representative. Completely unnecessary and just makes Özil's decision look more and more correct if more people at the top of DFB hold views like Hoeness.

 

[ERO]

This Ozil situation is ugly

FYP

 

[DJS]

It's a strange one as Mo Salah got caught in similar situation before World Cup.

Maybe there needs to be legislation in place preventing footballers from meeting with political people? (if that could actually be done mind).

It would then save a lot of hassle.

 

[Maxtremist]

It's a strange one as Mo Salah got caught in similar situation before World Cup.

Maybe there needs to be legislation in place preventing footballers from meeting with political people? (if that could actually be done mind).

It would then save a lot of hassle.

Pretty much never gonna happen. The two are so far linked it's unreal, especially at international level. I mean look at the world cup, there was the directors box which had Putin or whatever countries elected officials watching the match from Macron to Croatia's Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović there for the presentation of the Golden ball and the world cup medals.

Even looking at England we have the Prime Minister who's often gone to meet the team whilst they're training. I don't know if May has but Cameron has, the royal family have too.

Think idealistically we'd all love football to just be football and separate from everything else but in practice it just doesn't work. Normally it's fine. Like most days/most games it's not an issue... but then like this it can be.

Like it wasn't an issue when Merkel celebrated with the German team when they won in 2014. It wasn't an issue when Pogba was showing Macron how to dab. Sometimes though it is an issue. It sadly just happens

 

[nipponyid]

Only if you ask nicely...