The Pope now supports Ozil’s position ................................ on the Uighurs. https://smartnews.link/w/PMkr
Thankful for Mesut. He came in and ended our trophy drought. I still remember the day he signed for us. best of luck to him
Rory Smith’s piece today reflecting on the Ozil era at Arsenal… https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/...hce-arsenal.html?referringSource=articleShare
Yeah I know, but the NYT historically has allowed everyone to read X articles per day/week without a subscription. Don't know if they still do. Anyway, if I were force do summarize it I would quote just one word from the last paragraph: "anticlimax". But instead of doing that, let me just copy & paste what he wrote. And it was kinda fun to see Arseblog quoted in this prestigious rag! Edit: Apparently my original post/citation was "cleaned up" by moderation. Thanks everyone for looking after my legal liability.
Those moments are exactly why I’ve defended Özil. He is one of then prime practitioners of the beautiful game.
Also, gotta say that if your takeaway from that article was ‘anticlimax’, as was that of @NorthBank, you’d have a very strange perspective.
If you view it from the perspective that Arteta and Arsenal bare at least some responsibility the disappointment that the end Ozil’s Arsenal career became, then it makes more sense. I’m convinced that Ozil Could have offered more, maybe much more, during the first half of the season than Willian did.
I just took Smith’s comments about the moments of magic out of the piece, that’s all I referenced in my original response to the article. So when you commented on the use of the word anticlimax in reference to Ozil’s Arsenal career I offered an alternative explanation for the anticlimax. Clearly the last two and a half years were an anticlimax, a disappointment, but not entirely of Ozil’s making. I read an article recently where Arsène said Özil is a player that needs to feel appreciated, he needs an arm on his shoulder. There are plenty of players who play better when they feel appreciated. After his break with the German National Team, Ozil probable needed that arm on his shoulder more than at any other time in his career, instead he got Emery and then Arteta. Neither of whom have demonstrated the man managements that Wenger has.
Yeah I was being a little careless I guess. Being as they allow 5 free reads per week from what i know. I guess i should just quote some excerpts rather than the whole piece?
That was one of the themes, and I’ll go out on a limb by saying that’s why he chose to use the word “anticlimax“ in his concluding paragraph. (obviously the other big theme, perhaps the main one, was how he produced moments of joy... no doubt about that!) But with Mezut, I’ll admit to being predisposed towards this feeling of anticlimax. Of missed opportunity. Of disappointing level if impact. As I suspect many others are too. Think about How great we all felt when Ozil was signed, and for those first matches he played for us. Then contrast that to how we felt during the final months and years of his tenure with us.
Now that we have lots of years of data to look at, it's pretty clear the final Wenger peak was 2013-15 and then as a group, they went into steep decline. Of course it is no surprise that this period includes the best years of Santi, Alexis, Ozil, Kos, Per, Ramsey in the spine and a reasonable supporting cast. For me the end of his career was more of a waste - that is his peak was spent at a club that was going into reverse, just as we tended to believe we were about to find the missing parts To me in hindsight the bitter truth is that under a failing management and archaic talent acquisition, the team would have collapsed sooner if not for the attacking quality of Alexis, Ozil and Giroud What is annoying is by 2014, having just won the world cup at 25, - Ozil was coming into what should have been his peak as his next 2 seasons were good - but sadly - just 3 years later - in what should have been the years when he really could have used his experience to run a midfield, we just sucked and kept getting worse But unfortunately by 17-18 the team was just bad
The back problems in his later years at Arsenal, under Wenger, Emery, and Arteta, questioned as an excuse by many, have now been confirmed, Ozil has undergone successful back surgery. I suspect the surgery will end his career. I have always wondered whether the weight training he did to adapt to the Premier League triggered his back problems. As Jitty has often pointed out he went from a sprint monster before he came to Arsenal to lower sprint numbers at Arsenal. This may be an object lesson for Arsenal as they set up a training program to help Vieira adapt to the league.
It could just be miles on the clock from a teenage prodigy We've become used to players lasting into their early to mid 30s, but it is certainly not the case for all players.
There have been a smattering of half decent Ozil obituaries appearing in the last week or so and it is interesting that from the perspective of 2023, some of them are finally noticing the sweeping tactical changes that took place between the first half of Ozil's career and the Arsenal part. However what they don't seem to comment on is most of this tactical failure was the fault of Wenger rather than any specific player. Cox writes in the Athletic ... Ultimately, we are left with a player of complete contradictions. Ozil was a modern playmaker who suddenly became yesterday’s man. He was a selfless footballer who wasn’t considered a team player. He was a speedy counter-attacker who got caught out by the speed of matches. He was a player whose assists tally was constantly referenced, but who also received the ‘You can’t appreciate him simply by looking at numbers’ treatment. He was the outstanding German talent of his era who got left behind by the emphasis on pressing which stemmed, in part, from German football. But all this made Ozil fascinating. An outsider, a misunderstood genius, perhaps unappreciated in his own time and sometimes in his own country too. Ozil was supposed to symbolise the direction of football in the 2010s. Ultimately he did, but not quite in the way we expected. https://theathletic.com/4335699/202...-career-of-brilliant-highs-and-tactical-lows/ To me the best unintentional obituary was still written by Rene Maric as an unknown tactical blogger in his bedroom. As Maric wrote all the way back in '14 Although Özil is a ten, he isn’t a playmaker in the literal sense. There were some games where he dropped back out of the central attack for buildup but then focused on making simple passes; he does not possess the strategic vein of a Xavi as he lacks the knowledge of the effects of certain shapes, positional movements, and the impact of certain passes in the six space. He is, however, outstanding in open space in the final third, at combining with direct flick-ons, receiving difficult to control balls, and playing killer passes. Ozil 09-13 was the modern german countering player and that turned out to be the peak of his career. When the tactical changes of the nu-skool began to arrive in the EPL (think Klopp, Poch, Guardiola) Ozil had never learned this system of play (Jose is a medium/low block manager). Critically Wenger was a failure at these aspects. Arsenal never got to grips with any of it until they finally hired a young manager who came up under Pep. Maric basically predicted the next 5 years of failure until Arteta arrived ... as long as the fundamental strategic and tactical problems are not resolved, there will be no long-term improvement at the highest level. The players, however, offer tremendous potential. How they are used is crucial. Even if this article seems very critical of Wenger, it is still a critique of him at the highest level. Wenger would be an asset for many or most of the teams in the world. He can play elegant football, has a good understanding of positional requirements, is a real football lover, displays integrity and loyalty, and knows how to keep spending within limits. Nevertheless, certain aspects must be critiqued; particularly the pressing and the buildup structures. The latter is almost paradoxical, because their position play and their basic playing techniques are worthy of all the honors of short passing football. So where I kind of differ from the obituaries is the idea Ozil could never have been good at these systems back in his 14/15/16 prime. Of course he could have learned them. They all could. We are talking about a group of some of the very best talents in football. Could he had adapted into a deeper midfield role like he did for Germany in 16/17 with Kroos? Of course! But how could he be good at them when Arsenal never had a central midfield or managerial competence? I think you see the same thing in other players like Ramsey. Someone who could have been an elite 8.5 but never learned a lot of things, and never spent years playing in a coherent system so you end up with a deeply flawed player. There is plenty of room for criticism of Ozil in his later years. i think chronic injury played a role. But by that time he was simply a big star on an increasingly poor side especially after Alexis left and Santi got laid low - Santi being the only guy who knew how to play central midfield properly because he learned it in Spain. What a waste.
Didn't have time to read your post (honestly)... except for the last line: What a waste. That's the overriding feeling I have about him. But frankly I moved on from him so many years ago, I have very little residual bad feeling. Especially when you look at the team we have now, crafted by Eduteta, and what they've been able to do so far.
i understand the argument about Ozil not being trained in a modern football system and I’m sure, as I believe you are, that had he been exposed to Arteta-ball at a younger age, he would have adapted. But I believe that chronic injury played a bigger role in the public perception of Ozil than the flaws of Wenger-ball. As I recall, during the last couple of years under Wenger Ozil was criticized in the media and on this forum for missing games with a “mysterious” back injury. Basically he was accused of being a malingerer, of choosing when he wanted to play and Wenger was accused of letting him get away with it. Well It turns out that the mysterious back injury wasn’t so mysterious, he had a back operation in the middle of this season and subsequently retired when he struggled to return after that operation. The evidence suggests he has had a chronic back problem for the last several years and chronic back problems as much as anything else would explain his decline in production. It is a shame (waste) because when feeling good he was still capable of dominating games, see Leicester City under Emery. I will remember him for his touch and his vision, they were second to none. I don’t really care about the rest.
I certainly don't disagree on that - there were only short periods when he appeared to be fit - ironically one of his best periods before the end was right before Corona when Arteta first arrived. There were a number of articles marvelling at his transformation under Arteta, with league leading pressures high up the pitch - the idea he couldn't do that stuff was silly.