Arsenal: Mesut Ozils don’t exist anymore
Mesut Ozil is a highly divisive and much-maligned individual. Some see him as misunderstood; others see him as a fraud. But there is a problem at the heart of the Arsenal midfielder’s troubles: Mesut Ozils don’t exist anymore.
Mesut Ozil has been at Arsenal for five years. I still remember when the club first signed him. I woke up the next morning, the morning after deadline day, thinking that I’d had this strange dream that Arsenal had signed Mesut Ozil. And then I realised. They actually had. It was no dream. That illustrates the size, significance and quality of the signing.
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But since that time, while I would still bullishly defend the natural ability of the midfielder, it is fair to criticise the actual impact he has had on the team and the production that he has brought to the squad. For a player of his skill set and resource, he should have achieved and provided more.
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That, I believe, is why Ozil is such a divisive figure in the modern media. On the one hand, here we have a player of inordinate quality, capable of truly breathtaking, rare, precious moment that few others in the world can even conceive of, nevermind successfully attempt them; and on the other, a languid, lacklustre style that invites critique; the drooped shoulders, the sluggish slump off the pitch after yet another anonymous away performance.
Ozil, in and of himself, is an enigma. He is both brilliant and bemusing, both utterly wonderful and outlandishly bemusing, both the beating heart of the team and so often resigned to the peripheries. The problem of Mesut Ozil is one that he defines himself. And in the modern game, this oxymoronic state, this juxtaposing definition is only becoming more accentuated. You see, Mesut Ozils don’t really exist anymore.
Ozil is a creative midfielder. Those comparable to his numbers in assists and chances created in the Premier League are players like Christian Eriksen, Kevin de Bruyne and Cesc Fabregas. But there is a clear distinction between those players and Ozil. Eriksen and de Bruyne have the athletic and mental traits to partake in pressing, something that Ozil is notoriously ineffective at and impact the game as much with the ground they cover off the ball as with their ingenuity on it.
Fabregas, meanwhile, is a deeper-lying midfielder, spraying longer passes as he picks up the ball from his defenders with time to survey the field. He does not push into the final third like the others, but he dictates far more akin to a quarterback. Ozil tries to play in a similar manner, but do so in the final third, where space is tight and tackles are snappy.
Ozil falls between these three players. He plays far more like Fabregas, but in the positions that de Bruyne and Eriksen tend to occupy. In the modern game, however, where pressing is king and creative midfielders must do more than just create, that no longer cuts it. More is required. Ozil can’t provide it.
Unfortunately, Mesut Ozils don’t exist anymore. That does not mean that Arsenal cannot succeed with him in the team. But they have to do so much to accommodate him that there comes a point where his contributions are not worth the team-contortion cost. They might just be reaching that point.