The Importance Of Mesut Ozil For Arsenal
This is a follow on from my Tomas Rosicky post about the importance of some players in a team. With the arrival of Mesut Ozil I feel that his importance off the pitch could be just as important as on it. When you pay over £40 million for a player you expect to get your money’s worth, and with Ozil you definitely get your money’s worth.
Ozil’s a player that has topped the assits chart in La Liga for the past five seasons and has just generally been a brilliantly creative player.
When you have players at his former club publicly outraged at his departure, rival players that talk only good of him, a Premier League rival refusing to sell a player to you because in their eyes they see the signing Ozil as the catalyst for success in the league, managers and coaches from around Europe baffled by the sale – you know that you have a very special player on your hands. At 24 years of age, this is an extremely rare case.
Anyway, on to why he’s such an important player off the pitch… Mesut Ozil represents a change in Arsenal’s future transfer dealings. A top quality player at a top price proves exactly why I say that. Players at various clubs around the world will obviously be interested in a move to Arsenal but the quality brought in perhaps hasn’t quite met the standards of these players or at least not the price tags.
However, with Ozil signing for £42 million it shows these players that Arsenal are willing to spend big if you’re available and good enough. Maybe now we’ll start to see more and more top quality players arrive. Early reports suggest the Gunners are after Marco Reus, Lars Bender and Ilkay Gundogan, all of whom are fantastic players.
There lies the next point, what do those three players have in common with each other? That’s right, they’re all German. Ozil’s German, Mertesacker, Podolski, Thomas Eisfeld, Serge Ganbry and Gedion Zelalem are all German as well. This shows that Arsenal are building a solid core of German players, and with Germany perhaps being the best country in Europe in producing young talent, it’s a very wise move for Wenger to continue buying players from that country and top quality as well.
But what does Ozil’s signing mean for the players and the fans? For the players it’s a chance to play alongside one of the best players in the world all season, which can only bring added excitement and could mean them playing even better because confidence levels have raised. For the fans, it’s a chance to watch one of the best players in the world week in, week out which can only improve ticket sales which means added money for the club.
After reading this piece I hope you realise how important Ozil’s arrival is, if you didn’t already.
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