Arsenal defender backs Ozil’s move

Hector Bellerin has praised Arsenal team-mate Mesut Ozil for speaking out about the issues that prompted his international retirement.

Ozil ended his Germany career on Sunday, confirming his decision in a series of social media statements that criticised the media and German FA president Reinhard Grindel.

The playmaker, who has been at the centre of a storm surrounding the photo he took with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May, claimed he was made a scapegoat for his country’s poor World Cup performance due to his Turkish roots.

His comments received support from Spanish full-back Bellerin, who posted a message of solidarity on Twitter.

“Well done Mesut Ozil for standing up to this behaviour!”

Bayern Munich defender Jerome Boateng, who debuted for Germany in the same year as Ozil, shared a photo of the two together, adding: “It was a pleasure Abi”, with ‘Abi’ the Turkish word for brother.

In his statement, Ozil called out the DFB( Germany’s FA) Reinhard Grindel in particular, saying:

I will no longer stand for being a scapegoat for his incompetence and inability to do his job properly. I know that he wanted me out the team after the picture, and publicised his view on Twitter without any thinking or consultation, but Joachim Low and Oliver Bierhoff stood up for me and backed me. In the eyes of Grindel and his supporters, I am German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose. This is because despite paying taxes in Germany, donating facilities to German schools and winning the World Cup with Germany in 2014, I am still not accepted into society. I am treated as being ‘different.

Citing examples of abuse and the treatment he’s had from politicians and some German football fans he goes on to say he will no longer play for the national side as long as he feels this discrimination:

I don’t want to even discuss the hate mail, threatening phone calls and comments on social media that my family and I have received. They all represent a Germany of the past, a Germany not open to new cultures, and a Germany that I am not proud of. I am confident that many proud Germans who embrace an open society would agree with me.

The treatment I have received from the DFB and many others makes me no longer want to wear the German national team shirt. I feel unwanted and think that what I have achieved since my international debut in 2009 has been forgotten. People with racially discriminative backgrounds should not be allowed to work in the largest football federation in the world that has many players from dual-heritage families. Attitudes like theirs simply do not reflect the players they supposedly represent.

It is with a heavy heart and after much consideration that because of recent events, I will no longer be playing for Germany at international level whilst I have this feeling of racism and disrespect. I used to wear the German shirt with such pride and excitement, but now I don’t.

This decision has been extremely difficult to make because I have always given everything for my teammates, the coaching staff and the good people of Germany. But when high-ranking DFB officials treat me as they did, disrespect my Turkish roots and selfishly turn me into political propaganda, then enough is enough. That is not why I play football, and I will not sit back and do nothing about it.

Racism should never, ever be accepted.

Ozil won the 2014 World Cup with Germany.

 

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