⚽ Football in October: the toffees come unstuck

(and understandably, in fairness)

Nah, fair play to him for sacrificing his career in an attempt to highlight and disincentivise the sportswashing of Human Rights abuses

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He was played consistently for months after he made that statement. It’s nothing to do with that.

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If you say so

Erdogan was literally his best man.

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I totally understand why Arteta didn’t want him in the squad tbh - every time we lost a game and Ozil didn’t play, or wasn’t in the squad, he came up afterwards and it caused a big row about whether he should be starting etc. The reality is he’s not the same player anymore that he used to be - he can retain the ball and recycle it in advanced positions, which is pretty useful, but he has none of the incisiveness of a few years ago.

This whole thing about ‘why didn’t Arsenal just register him??’ ignores the fact that if we registered Ozil we’d have to leave out someone else. Given we were restricted by home-grown rules I really can’t think who we would have excluded without leaving our squad a bit exposed (especially as we have some centre-backs out and are having issues with Saliba. Othewise you could’ve said Mustafi, but…)

Which everybody handled very reasonably

Sport and politics is a fucked up juncture and Ozil is just one individual in the whole shebang - being angry at him for taking the stubborn position is nuts in the grand scheme of things

It was and continues to be a very messy situation. He is friends with a horrible dictator yes, but there’s no denying his scapegoating was about race, as much as white Germany (and beyond) pretended otherwise. There was a pretty horrible double standard at play which was specifically targeted at him where other footballers endorsed by or friendly with (centre)-right wing politics get off scot free. Erdogan is a bit more an extreme example as a figure head but the whole thing heightened tensions between Germany’s large Turkish population and its white one.

In terms of since then, while I think Arsenal’s exclusion is largely about other things as @still_here says I wouldn’t completely count it out as a factor. The “taking a stand” thing doesn’t wash at Arsenal when it was a Germany problem, not Arsenal, but as I said before, I think the whole ordeal made him completely disillusioned with football as a whole, and he was already getting years of shit from Arsenal and Germany fans alike because of a perceived “laziness” or “bad attitude” despite the fact he was often quietly still both those squad’s best players, which makes the race issue even more apparent when he was literally an instrumental figure in bringing the world cup to Germany four years earlier.

There’s the larger dismay that Germany were so shit at the last world cup, but that does not rest on Özil’s shoulders when basically everyone bar Kroos & Brandt played like absolute hundscheisse. There was a whole world of problems with that squad (a naïve assumption that playing such a high line was fine because of the deep squad they had, never figuring out who the best players for those positions were, etc.) and exponentially far more to do with Germany’s downfall than what was going on with Özil.

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I mean I don’t blame him at all for doing what he’s doing, it’s Arsenal’s own fault for handing him such a stupid contract. I just don’t really buy the telling of this tale as Ozil the hero and Arsenal the bad guys, it’s a more muddled picture than that at the very least.

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This point has already been made

Let’s not forget how many hundreds of millions of euros are pumped into Erdogan’s regime by EU govts in order to keep Frontex intact and keep Syrian & Palestinian refugees out of Europe

He’s an individual caught in a system who is made to play the villain while we all but ignore the system

I’m not saying he’s a hero - he’s caught between two (or three) fucked up worlds. I’m saying that thinking the individual is the problem is missing the point

You’re in your job, being paid to do nothing/bare minimum
  • I would move house and leave the city I like for no change in salary but to do more work
  • Nah, I’m good actually

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winston bogarde basically had a perfect career didn’t he

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If I was on his salary I’d probably move to Madrid or Barcelona

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What if that’s where you already are?

You’re in a city you like, and are settled. I didn’t specify London.

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its similar to Bale at Madrid. Ozil wasn’t left on the bench for no reason - he was playing like pony for a long time. maybe he didn’t fit the system, but the point remains. Same with Bale - he wasn’t benched because of his golf thing - he was benched because he was lazy, bad in training and wasn’t performing aside from in a few cup finals where he scored screamers.

His career is not over. Currently assistant-manager at Ajax. Popped up on Tuesday sorting out the subs.

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Having not thought of him for years until last night I’ve just seen that Ebbe Skovdahl has died. :slightly_frowning_face: