It took seven-and-a-half years for Mesut Ozil’s Arsenal career to decline from his potentially game-changing arrival to its nightmarish conclusion, but for much of the 12 months since, his supposed dream move to Fenerbahce has seemed destined to follow a similar course.
A year ago today, Ozil ended a spell of exile that had seen him go the best part of a year without a first-team appearance at Arsenal, swapping north London for Istanbul and the club he had supported as a boy growing up within the Turkish diaspora in the German city of Gelsenkirchen.
A descendant of Turkish immigrants, Ozil’s arrival was hailed as a homecoming of sorts, met by Fenerbahce fans with the same gleeful sense of possibility that engulfed Arsenal on deadline day in the summer of 2013, except - because this is Turkish football we’re talking about - with added hysteria.
Much of it ought to have been tempered by the German’s lack of recent football and the fact that his form even prior to that had been on the wane for some time, the feeling that, in the Premier League at least, the evolution of football had left the role of free-spirited No10 behind.
By the end of his first half-campaign in Turkey, Ozil had made just ten league appearances for his new club, missing almost two months after suffering ankle ligament damage, and was still yet to score his first goal, but that did not stop him being handed the captaincy by new coach Vitor Pereira last summer.
The pair shared a fractious relationship, the embattled Pereira struggling to coax the best from his most high-profile player and, for a spell in the autumn, struggling to find a place for him at all. There was talk of Ozil’s growing frustration; the 33-year-old appeared to toss a bib in the direction of his coach after being left as an unused substitute for a league game in October and the incident was predictably analysed and overblown. It would not have made a top-ten of Cristiano Ronaldo’s biggest strops of the month so far, but discontent was clearly bubbling behind the scenes. Fenerbahce president Ali Koc then took it public as - in a refrain more often employed by Tory MPs - he told Ozil he ought to focus on his football a bit more.
By late November, however, Ozil was back in the side and embarking on his best spell of form in years, scoring five times in seven league games in the build-up to Christmas, a run during which, with Fenerbahce showing no signs of challenging for a first title since 2014, Pereira, who has this week been interviewed for the Everton job, was shown the door.
Thanks to that upturn, in footballing terms it would be reasonable to suggest that the jury remains out. Fenerbahce, who are languishing in sixth, were never likely to see the best of a player now well into his thirties and even at the peak of the hysteria around his signing, they surely never expected to.
But when it comes to Mesut Ozil, the purest of footballers, it is rare that anything is purely about football.
That is especially true in relation to his Turkish heritage. As a teenager, Ozil was lambasted by staff at the Turkish consulate in Germany as he arrived to surrender his passport in order to qualify to represent the country of his birth. After doing so with distinction and delivering the World Cup in 2014, a controversial photograph with Turkish leader Recip Tayyip Erdogan started a series of events that ultimately led to his premature international retirement, Ozil professing to feel “German when we win, but an immigrant when we lose”.
It is no surprise, then, that his presence in Turkey has been politicised quite literally from the outset, with local reports claiming Ozil’s relationship with Erdogan - who was best man at the midfielder’s wedding in 2019 - played a significant role in his decision to choose the Turkish Super League over a move to MLS.
At his unveiling ceremony, Ozil was pictured holding up an Azerbaijan flag in a show of support for the country in its conflict with Armenia, a conflict which, Arsenal fans may recall, prevented Ozil’s Armenian teammate Henrikh Mkhitaryan from playing in the 2019 Europa League final in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.
And, almost immediately, he found himself in the midst of a bizarre dispute between Fenerbahce and Turkish football’s lead broadcaster beIN, the former accusing the latter of an orchestrated campaign against it, with allegations ranging from the manipulation of VAR footage (which the broadcaster does not actually control) to unfair distribution of TV rights money (which, you guessed it, the broadcaster does not actually control).
Fenerbahce’s players, including Ozil, have worn “beFAIR” campaign T-shirts in warm-ups and interviews but the club’s crusade is viewed as unwise, with the Turkish Super League’s broadcast tender about to come up for renewal. The country’s economic crisis and the crash of the Turkish Lira have seen the value of the existing deal plummet from $500m-per-year to $370m for the current season at a time when Turkish football is in dire financial straits, its biggest clubs, including Fenerbahce, riddled with debt.
Ozil’s signing was hailed as a boon for Turkish football as a whole but against that grim financial background it has increasingly been criticised as yet another example of excess in a league which has made a habit of offering lucrative paydays to ageing stars. Koc, ironically, vowed to put an end to such practice when running for president in 2018, but was instrumental in pushing through the crowd-pleasing Ozil deal six months before his uncontested re-election.
Speaking to Forbes last year, one of Turkey’s leading football economists, Tugrul Aksar, said the transfer defied logic and must have taken “extraordinary management” and restructuring of club debt. Even having taken a major pay-cut from the astronomical £350-000-per-week salary he was reported to earn at Arsenal, Ozil’s contract - worth $11.5m and running until the summer of 2024 - represents a major cash commitment for a club without any.
Unless he can replicate the form of his one purple patch so far - and with his side in danger of missing out on European football - the club’s poster boy could become a financial burden too great to bear. Now where have we heard that before…
