Mesut Ozil gets a significant amount of criticism for a perceived lack of work rate but he’s now resorted to the pursuit du jour of the dossers of the world, professional eSports.
The World Cup winner posted a thank you message to the streaming service Twitch, which allows players to earn revenue by streaming themselves playing games such as FIFA, for setting up his account yesterday. He has announced that his team is to be called ‘#teamozil’ and that it will compete ‘In all major national and international EA FIFA competitions’.
While this may sound like a teenage pipedream, cooked up while high on cheetos and a chronic lack of sleep, it’s actually an incredibly lucrative business and, with an abundant social following like his, the Arsenal playmaker already has a captive audience to kickstart this new venture.
To that end he has been busy assembling a crack team of disaffected youths, including the FIFA World Cup Champion Fatih ‘Üstun’ Üstun and Brazilian Pedro ‘PResende97’ Resende.
He’s also hot on the tail, reportedly, of the eWorld Cup champion Mossad ‘MSDossary’ Aldossary, who one can only assume should be easily locatable in his mother’s attic.
Ozil, who has posted pictures to his social media accounts of him playing games on his rather luxurious home cinema system, is following in the footsteps of the Reading midfielder David Meyler, who has carved out a niche for himself as a FIFA streamer.
To coincide with the release of the latest edition of the footballing game FIFA 19, EA Sports have announced that there are to be more professional tournaments than ever this year.
The winner of the last eWorld Cup champion, Aldossary, landed himself a cool quarter of a million US dollars.