Unai Emery has said that everybody at Arsenal Football Club stands behind Mesut Ozil, after the player was once again singled out for criticism by the Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness.
Ozil retired from international duty for Germany following their World Cup exit, citing “racism and disrespect” following the fallout from a photograph with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a key factor in his decision.
Immediately after announcing his decision Hoeness attacked Ozil for “playing shit for years”, while earlier this week he doubled down on his criticism by describing the World Cup winner as “a well-marketed product whose image is a lot better than he is.”
Hoeness added: “It is a miracle that he is now captain at Arsenal.”
Speaking ahead of tomorrow’s London derby against West Ham, Emery dismissed the criticism, stressing that it was the club’s responsibility to help Ozil through a difficult period.
“We are here to help him,” Emery said.
“We are his family and it is his home. We are used to being criticised but we are professional. In our careers, as coaches and players, we are going to receive criticism.
“When we do well, they are going to speak about us well. We need to live with this. Here, we need and we want to help him.”
Emery is not the only Premier League manager to throw his support behind Ozil. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has also backed the player, describing the repeated criticism of his decision to retire from international football as “hypocritical”.
“This is a classic example of absolute misinformation and, of course, complete nonsense,” Klopp said in an interview with German TV station Sport 1. “This photo was used - first by Erdogan, then by many other people.
“In politics, little things have always been blown up and big things pushed away in order to continue. Normally intelligent people tend to hold back because it is not easy to say the right thing. I would count myself too. All those who have no idea are very loud in the consideration.
“I know Ilkay Gundogan very well, I know Emre Can and Nuri Sahin very well. I do not know Mesut so well, but I would like to take him home. I do not doubt these guys at least about their loyalty to our homeland.
“The difference is that they just have diversity. Where is the problem? That's beautiful. Cultural diversity, we all thought it was really cool around the 2006 World Cup. I saw these fantastic commercials where the parents of Gerald Asamoah and Mario Gomez had a barbecue party together.
“We all sighed for how great that works. And now two guys are seduced by a politically quite intelligent people to a photo, and then have relatively few opportunities to say the one hundred percent right. That's why I find this discussion hypocritical. Bad things happened because people were not informed properly.”
