The Sports Buff ⚽️ ⚾️ 🏈

In his prime, he was the standard bearer, he was Mr Assist like many see Belgian Kevin De Bruyne. I am of course referring to the German legend Mesut Ozil.

Ozil formerly of Real Madrid and Arsenal amongst other clubs was a one-in-a-generation kind of football player. It’s a really bad cliché, but the 34-year-old who started his career in Gelsenkirchen with Schalke made everything in slow motion.

Mesut was one of those players who made you fall in love with football. In an orchestra at the Opera House, the musicians are seen as the ones who help put the musical masterpieces together.

Of course a musical is nothing without the conductor, that’s like the teams that Ozil played in, he was the heartbeat of the team, and he helped knit everything together.

Critics would accuse Mesut Ozil, of being too laid back, and too casual, but in an era of stats, they would dispel this myth. The former Fenerbahce man is doing the hard yards, the tracking back.

What went against the 34-year-old Ozil is his championing of human rights causes. Not popular with the mainstream narrative, Mesut Ozil’s off-field activities marred his on-field achievements.

The plight of Uhyghur Muslims is a human rights issue, but as this wasn’t the politically hot topic, Mesut Ozil was arguably cast as someone who was out of touch.

Although football wouldn’t want to admit this, Ozil helped football talk about world issues. Although I disagree with politics and football mixing, football has been a spokesperson for peace in such conflicts.

A World Cup winner with his native Germany, an FA Cup winner with Arsenal, a La Liga, the Copa del Rey and a Spanish Super Cup winner with Real, Mesut Ozil won pretty much all that club football had to offer to win.

It will remain such a shame that Ozil’s time at the top of World football was cut short due to issues off the pitch. For the German national team, the 34-year-old cited racism, as the reason he quit the national team.

At club level, Arsenal didn’t back a player, who was merely just highlighting the plight of human beings who were suffering at the hands of another. There was me thinking that football was all for supporting their fellow man.

Mesut Ozil, you will be missed. Football will rue your absence.

Hey! You can use my code DWBBTHECAPTAIN at checkout to get 15% off your entire purchase at Daniel Wellington! danielwellington.com
Here at the-sports-buff.com, we have enjoyed serving you the readers. Thank you for your support and your feedback. We are aiming to grow, and we need your help.

We please need your support as we look to grow and improve our site. With as little or as much as you can do to our site to grow, so it be one of the pioneers of sports that we know it can be, we appreciate if you can donate, as much or as little as you can. With your donation, we are determined to donate part of it to a local sports community centre.

Nothing is quite as powerful as sport is. Thank you.