Gunning for Greatness: My Life: With an introduction by Jose Mourinho

by Mesut Özil

  From the corner of my eye I could see the Real bosses watching me. I’d have liked to have played cooler, looked more laid-back as I walked past the plates, cups and glass sculptures, but I couldn’t disguise my enthusiasm. The trophies were glittering and I was beaming.

  When I visited Barcelona shortly afterwards, all that was missing. No tour through the Camp Nou, the Catalans’ stadium. No display of their victories, which had given me goose bumps in Madrid. Unlike Real Madrid, Barcelona had no emotional impact on me. They didn’t show me their stadium. I wasn’t taken to the training ground. The entire visit was less cordial, although I was inspired by their style of play.

  But most disappointing of all was the fact that the manager of Real’s great Spanish rival didn’t take the time to meet me personally.

  Even before I actually went to Barcelona I was convinced that was where I’d be transferring to. Or at least that was my preference. At the time no team in the world played better football. It was a real pleasure to watch the magic of their combination play. They’d pass the ball amongst themselves 20 or 30 times, with the lightness and precision of a well-rehearsed piece of choreography.

  But I was puzzled by the absence of Pep Guardiola. When Reza and I flew back from Barcelona I kept asking the question, ‘Why wasn’t the manager there?’ His answer was always the same: ‘He’s on holiday.’ Guardiola didn’t ring me over the next few days either. Not even a text message. He gave no signal that he wanted me. And so my enthusiasm for Barcelona steadily declined.

  After I’d been to see both major clubs I sat back down with my agent. ‘Mesut,’ he said, ‘these are your options. These are the five doors you can go through.’ Then we wrote a list of pros and cons. Classic, just like at school.

  For example, on the pro-Barça side, it said ‘great football’. Or: ‘teammates: Xavi, Iniesta, Messi.’ All in all I must have written down ten points in favour of the Catalans. But the single point that I jotted down on the con side was enough to eliminate Barça as a potential future club for me. ‘Pep Guardiola – does he even want me? Am I his man?’ My scepticism prevailed.

  Ultimately I didn’t want to go to Barcelona because of Guardiola’s behaviour. But also because Mourinho was fighting so hard to get me. Was so convincing. So warm. So keen. He was the complete opposite of the Barcelona coach. So I plumped for José Mourinho and Real Madrid.

  For the man who at this very moment is tearing strips off me. Ten minutes of the half-time break are over. And Mourinho still isn’t finished with his bollocking. I’ve had enough now.

  ‘What do you actually want from me?’ I snap back at him. Then, more softly, I say to Ramos, ‘He’s making me mad. He ought to shut his trap. He’s never content.’

  ‘I want you to play as well as you can,’ Mourinho yells. ‘I want you to go into tackles like a man. Do you know what it looks like when you tackle? No? Let me show you.’

  Mourinho stands on tiptoes, thrusts his arms down by his sides, purses his lips and minces around the dressing room. ‘That’s how you tackle. Ooh, I mustn’t get hurt. And absolutely mustn’t get dirty,’ he shouts while repeating his Özil tackle parody.

  He gets more and more fixated. His heart rate is probably 180. Mine’s 200 for sure. Then I’ve really had enough. I can’t hold back any longer. My southern temperament is overwhelming me. ‘If you’re so great, why don’t you get out there and play yourself?’ I scream now, ripping off my jersey and hurling it at his feet. ‘Here. Put it on. Off you go.’

  Mourinho just laughs spitefully. ‘Oh, are you giving up now?’ he asks. ‘What a coward,’ he says harshly, moving to within just a few centimetres of me. ‘What do you want? To crawl under a nice, warm shower? Shampoo your hair? Be on your own? Or do you want to show your teammates, the fans out there and me what you’re capable of?’

  Now Mourinho’s talking very calmly. He’s no longer hot-tempered and loud, but controlled, which makes me even madder. How can he compose himself while I’m on the verge of losing it? I’m so pissed off. I’d love to chuck my boots at his head. I want him to stop. To leave me in peace finally.

  ‘Do you know what, Mesut?’ Mourinho says, louder now so that everyone can hear. ‘Cry if you like! Sob away! You’re such a baby. Go and take a shower. We don’t need you.’

  Slowly I get up, slip out of my boots, grab my towel and walk silently past the manager to the showers, without dignifying him with so much as a glance. Instead he lobs one final provocation in my direction. ‘You’re not Zinédine Zidane, you know. No! Never! You’re not even in the same league!’

  I feel my throat constricting. Those last words of his are like a stab to the heart. Mourinho knows exactly what he’s saying. He knows how much I admire that player. He knows the Frenchman is the only footballer I truly look up to.

  ‘You’re not Zidane!’ Mourinho’s words resound in my head for long afterwards. I’m now on my own in the dressing room. The team is back on the pitch. Kaká has been brought on for me. I don’t find this out till later, but Sergio Ramos has nabbed my jersey and put it on underneath his. The black digits of my number 10 shimmer beneath his own shirt.

  Pepe and Ronaldo both score in the second half to make it 5–1 against Deportivo, while I stand in the shower, lost in thought. I’ve never been bollocked like that by a coach before. I’ve never been so shaken in my conviction about what’s right and wrong. What has happened here? Why did Mourinho, this great manager, make me look such a fool? What was he trying to tell me?

  That evening, on 30 September 2012, just before 9 p.m., I started posing myself major questions like I’d never done before. The argument was on my mind for weeks. Who was I? And where did I want to go? To answer these questions I began to look back on my life.

  1

  My Embarrassing Home

  What family ties can achieve

  I’m standing on the top step of the staircase that leads down into the cellar, staring into the darkness. Ever since I can remember, the light switch above the banister has been broken. Like so much in this building on Bornstrasse in the Bulmke-Hüllen district of Gelsenkirchen – my home.

  For example, the front door is so warped that we children, at least, have to launch our whole bodyweight against the thing to open it. Each time the metal strip at the bottom scrapes the floor, which is now full of scratches. The grey metal letterboxes are battered.

  We don’t even have a proper house number outside. Someone probably nicked the numbers at some point. Or, after decades of being exposed to the wind and rain, they just fell off and nobody bothered to put them up again. At any rate someone has sprayed 30 – our house number – in green on the white façade.

  I want to go down into the cellar to get my bike. But I don’t dare do it on my own. None of us children dares enter this spooky place alone. The stench is so bad you need to hold your breath, then go down and back up as quickly as you can. Most of all it smells of urine, although I don’t know if some of our neighbours just pee down there or if the pong comes from the rats that live in their dozens in the cellar.

  Yes, large, revolting rats have taken over the cellar and they’re increasing in number by the year. The older children have told us of neighbours who’ve been badly injured by the rats. They’ve drummed it into us that the rodents will attack you and can give you nasty bites if you invade their territory.

  But we can’t leave our bicycles outside the house. They’d be stolen straight away. And my bike is like gold to me. I don’t have many valuable things. My parents had to work very hard and save up for ages to buy the bike. So there’s nothing for it but to charge into the scary cellar with the scary rats each time. Even when there’s two of us we don’t have the nerve to go down the steep, worn concrete steps. Only when my elder brother, Mutlu, accompanies us do we dare enter that cellar. But mostly it’s five children going down there together, shouting at the tops of our voices and stamping our feet to frighten the rodents.

  I live with my family on the fourth floor of the h
ouse, right at the top. It’s a small flat. My sisters Nese and Dugyu share a bedroom. I sleep with my brother Mutlu in another. He’s got a bed, but I just have a mattress that we move in the mornings so we’ve got a bit more room to play. There’s no privacy here.

  But in fact I like our flat. In spite of the scary cellar. My parents have tried to make it look as nice as possible.

  When I later play for Rot-Weiss Essen, however, and there’s a shuttle service that picks us kids up from the surrounding area, I feel ashamed of my home. Some of the other children live in unbelievably nice places; they have smart detached houses with their own garden. I’m so embarrassed by where I live that I give the club’s shuttle service a different house number. Instead of being picked up from Bornstrasse 30, I walk a few metres down the road and stand on the opposite side of the street, in front of a building that at least doesn’t have any broken windows.

  But there’s no way we could ever get a larger flat, where each child would have their own room and in a house that’s not so run-down.

  My mum’s already working like mad. She’s a cleaner in a school and does double shifts. The first is from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., the second from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. She’s breaking her back for us children. Although I never hear her complain, I can see how exhausted she is. Sometimes, when she thinks no one is looking, she holds her overworked back, arches it and has a good stretch.

  She’s sacrificing herself for us. She cleans and cleans and cleans. Her life revolves around providing for her family and she doesn’t seem to care that she’s neglecting her own life in the process. Mum has no time for hobbies. And because she always has to work she’s got no time for us either. When I get home from school there’s no cooked lunch waiting on the table for me. I don’t have a mum who opens the door with a smile, strokes my hair and asks me how my day was. She isn’t there when I’ve got questions about my homework either.

  My grandparents took my mother out of school after the ninth year. After that she had to work to earn money for the family. Neither my grandparents nor parents could afford the luxury of a good education, and we children suffered from the shortage of money too. That’s why I didn’t go to kindergarten. My parents simply couldn’t afford a place for me. Just as, later on, they couldn’t hire a private tutor for me or my siblings.

  When I came home from school I was responsible for looking after myself. Nobody made sure I was doing my homework and there weren’t any bedtime stories either. My father had to struggle for every cent too. To begin with he worked in a leather factory. Then he ran a tea-room for a while, and later a kiosk. After that he opened a billiard hall before going to work at the Opel factory. Time and again he reinvented himself to give his family a good life. He was unemployed several times between jobs, but he always fought to get back into working life.

  A total of ten families lived in our house. Nine of them came from abroad. In the whole of Bornstrasse there were practically no Germans. We foreigners – that’s how I saw myself as a child – lived pretty much amongst ourselves. It wasn’t so much a case of us foreigners living together with the Germans as living separate lives.

  Until I was four I spoke nothing but Turkish. At home we always spoke it anyway. But even outside our flat I didn’t have any contact with the German language. Because I didn’t go to kindergarten I was never in a position where I had to learn it.

  So for me the cellar was called ‘bodrum’. It wasn’t dark, but ‘karanlık’. And it filled me with ‘korku’ rather than fear. Especially because of the ‘sıçan’, the rats. Instead of ‘Good morning’ I’d say ‘Günaydın’ when I came into the kitchen in the mornings. The Lebanese kids we played football with on the rec integrated with us Turks – we were in the majority – and learned our language too.

  Before going to school I spent a year in pre-school, which is supposed to facilitate the transition from kindergarten to primary school. But first and foremost it helps those children who are not ready for school proper.

  Ninety-nine per cent of the pupils there were foreigners. And although we were taught in German in the classroom, nobody of course spoke it at break time in the playground or on the way home. Which means I almost never had to speak German. Except when the teacher asked me to. I learned the language of my country of birth at a snail’s pace. The four hours of German I had during a school day were counterbalanced by three times as many in Turkish.

  Besides, this German sounded so funny, so coarse, so harsh. The inflection and intonation were very different from Turkish. I was also confused by the fact that certain letters were pronounced differently. For example, in Turkish the ‘Z’ is pronounced like an ‘S’.

  My grammar was appalling; in fact I’d go as far as to say that it was a disaster. For a long time I wrote my compositions without any punctuation. When my work came back corrected I always felt frustrated – red circles everywhere, so many words underlined and endless marks in the margin referring to my mistakes. The same with dictation. It took me ages to work out what articles were. Only much later did I come to know whether the German word for dog was masculine, feminine or neuter.

  Having to pick up a book and read out loud to the class was pure torture. I found books really hard going. These days I think that’s such a shame. For now I know how essential education is. I’ve always impressed on my little sister Dugyu how important it is that she sits her school-leaving exams – the first member of our family to do so. And not only that. I’ve told her repeatedly, ‘These days just doing your school exams isn’t enough. You’ve got to be one of the best in your class. You have to study. You have to throw yourself into it.’

  I sincerely hope that Dugyu will go on to college one day and of course I’ll pay for her studies. That’s why I’ve asked my current agent, Dr Erkut Sögüt, who represents me alongside my brother Mutlu, to talk to her seriously too and tell her how important it is to study. Explain how much fun student life can be. I can’t rave about it to her myself. How can I appear as a credible advocate of university when I’ve never even seen the inside of a lecture theatre? But Erkut can. He worked his way up from a very modest background, studied law and is now a renowned lawyer. If he tries to persuade Dugyu it will have far more weight than if I just blather on.

  I also regret now that my parents didn’t speak German to us when we were little. I’m not criticising them for their decision to speak Turkish at home, because there was nothing malicious behind it. They weren’t trying to disadvantage us. After all, Turkish has always been the language they’ve felt comfortable in. The one they use to chat to friends and neighbours. The one they can best express themselves in. But most of all Turkish was the language of their parents. They themselves grew up with Turkish.

  Both of my grandfathers came to Germany in the mid-1960s. They were miners in Zonguldak, a town on the Turkish Black Sea coast. They worked for little money, and only when they were needed. Back then employment was hard to come by, especially in the more rural areas. When Germany sent out an appeal for guest workers and concluded an agreement with Turkey, by which several hundred thousand Turks were authorised to come over, my grandfathers too were enticed by the promise of a better life. Almanya. Land of work. Land of riches. Land of improvement. The Germans wanted my grandfathers and so they embarked on the journey into the unknown, leaving their wives and children behind, which was terribly hard for them. Work, save money, come back rich – that was the plan. They were even given a sort of instruction manual so that they wouldn’t make mistakes in this country that was so alien to them. Işçi olarak Almanya’ ya nasıl gidilir? (How to be a worker in Germany) was the title of the brochure published by the Turkish authorities. It said, ‘Work hard and learn quickly anything you don’t know. Strictly observe the regulations of your workplace. Arrive punctually. Never take days off sick unless it is absolutely unavoidable.’

  My grandfathers took these guidelines to heart. They worked conscientiously. Industriously. Hard. Without complaining. They did contract work, often wi
th colds and backaches. Every pfennig earned (the euro didn’t exist back then) was saved. For the family and the dream of a better life. Although Germany was advertising for guest workers it didn’t pay for them to have language tuition, at least not my grandfathers. To understand instructions within the business there were interpreters who explained the tasks to them. My grandfathers never saw the need to invest in a language course themselves. After all, it wasn’t their plan to stay in Germany in the long term. For them what was most important was to earn money for a better life in Turkey and not spend any of it.

  Later both grandfathers sent for their wives. And the wives brought their children: my mother and my father, who was two at the time.

  My grandparents missed the sound of the sea outside their front door, the beaches of Kapuz and Uzunkum, their walks to the stalactite caves of Gökgöl Mağararsi. They missed the tooting of the ships’ horns as they sailed into port. The screeching of the gulls. Fresh fish that my grandfather caught himself from the harbour wall. They missed their old friends. Their familiar life. But the security that their hard-earned marks offered was more important than giving in to their yearning.

  So my grandparents remained in Germany with their children. And when my father and mother were old enough they married each other, as my grandfathers had once arranged. My parents weren’t lucky enough to just meet each other in the normal way. They didn’t have any first dates. My father didn’t have to charm Mum to win her. They were designated for each other as was the tradition back then. Having said that, it seemed to me that my parents were always very loving and intimate with each other.

  My mother and father had each other and their parents. They had Turkish friends and Turkish neighbours. Whenever they went out, they were with Turks. And so they needed almost no German to get by. For this reason they probably imagined that we – my brother Mutlu, my sisters Nese and Dugyu, and I – didn’t need German either.