Caught In A Political Storm

Midfielder quits national team in racism row

- Nick Bidwell

A long-term fixture for Germany and very much the personification of the imaginative play that Bundestrainer Joachim Low insists on, Mesut Ozil has stirred up a hornet’s nest with his decision to quit the Nationalmannschaft.

In an eloquent, elaborate three-part announcement on social media, the 29-year-old pulled no punches, forcibly arguing that his German-Turk background had rendered him a target for “racism and disrespect”.

Ozil feels he was singled out as the patsy for Germany’s World Cup debacle this summer and is particularly resentful at the way his springtime photo shoot with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was portrayed in the media, with the controversy never dying down and some fans of the opinion he was not committed to the cause.