Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness welcomed Mesut Ozil’s international retirement as long overdue in an extraordinary attack on the midfielder’s performances for Germany.
Arsenal star Ozil cited a “feeling of racism and disrespect” as the motivation for his decision to step down from the national team, which he confirmed on Sunday in a series of statements posted on social media.
The 29-year-old claimed the media and German Football Federation (DFB) president Reinhard Grindel made him a scapegoat for Germany’s poor World Cup displays as part of a wider agenda against his Turkish roots.
Ozil had received criticism for posing in a photo with Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdogan shortly before the World Cup.
But former West Germany forward Hoeness believes the former Real Madrid player is using the incident to deflect scrutiny away from his efforts on the pitch.
“The last duel he won on the pitch was before the 2014 World Cup. Now he’s hiding himself and his c***py performances behind this photo.”
Hoeness went on to claim that Bundesliga side Bayern had targeted the playmaker in their matches against Arsenal.
“Whenever we played against Arsenal we played over him because we knew that was the weak point,” he said.
“His 35 million followers – that don’t exist in the real world – are convinced he has played sublimely when he completes a cross pass.
“The development in our country is a catastrophe. You have to go back to what it is: sport. And, from a sporting point of view, Ozil had no place in the national team for years.”
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.
Germany were knocked out of the World cup in the group stages for the first time since 1938.