by Mesut Özil
‘Who’s going to win?’ Prince Ali asked.
As quick as a shot I obviously answered, ‘Arsenal!’
Over the course of the evening we got on well and started to discuss more interesting matters. And our discussion gave birth to an idea. Prince Ali told me about children in a refugee camp in Jordan who had experienced the war in Syria at first hand, and had had to leave their home country in fear of their lives. Small children, who might never have a real chance in life, just because they had the misfortune to be born at the wrong time in the wrong part of the world. ‘For many people life really isn’t fair,’ Prince Ali said. Together with his foundation he had set up children’s football pitches so that they could entertain themselves for a few hours a day by playing football.
That evening we hatched our plan to visit the refugee camp together. Arsenal had already asked me once to fly out to Dubai with our club sponsor Emirates. The previous year I’d had to decline. But next year, I told Prince Ali, I could fly to Dubai and then on to Jordan, thereby linking both events. And so we gradually planned a week-long tour of the Middle East, which would take place at the end of the 2015–16 season.
I’d have preferred to undertake the trip privately without any press. But that was impossible because Arsenal were on board and Prince Ali was firmly of the belief that my visit to the refugee camp was giving out an important message. He was right, of course. So I allowed myself to be persuaded to have some photos taken, but declined all interview questions about the matter. After it had come out that I’d visited a refugee camp in Jordan, some members of the media wanted statements from me. ‘You could say something like, all European countries must look after refugees,’ was a suggestion from one journalist. But that’s exactly what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to create any headlines; I just wanted to help those young children through their difficult times. It was perfectly fine, I thought, to draw attention to the issue with photos.
I went to Jordan via Dubai and Abu Dhabi with my team – that’s to say Serdar, Ramazan, Erjan, Erdal and Erkut – and we spent a day in the camp. A bumpy road leads to Zaatari, the biggest refugee camp in the Arab world. Around 85,000 people live here. Every day children are born as refugees in this gigantic temporary home with its seemingly endless rows of white tents and containers.
The camp was opened in 2012. Fenced in behind barbed wire, it’s just a few kilometres from the Syrian border crossing at Jaber. ‘Zaatari,’ one of the workers for the refugee aid organisation UNHCR told me, ‘is deliberately meant not to look like a city, so there are no proper houses here. The idea mustn’t take root that this is here for ever. We don’t want to create the impression that this is a final destination.’
Fifty per cent of the inhabitants of Zaatari are minors. The children are, at least, able to go to school, but many of them sleep badly. At night time they try to avoid falling asleep for fear that there’ll be another explosion the minute they close their eyes. ‘There’s very little that’s beautiful in Zaatari,’ the man from the aid organisation told me. ‘But there’s food and most of all there’s security,’ the most important thing for children.
When I got out of the car a young boy came running up to me straight away. He looked about ten. And he was wearing a football shirt that was very familiar – a Real Madrid one with the number 10 and my name on the back. ‘I’m a mini you,’ the boy said proudly, and from then on he wouldn’t leave my side. When I put my arm around him he pressed himself close to me and smiled. ‘Come on, I’ll show you where we play football,’ he said, tugging my hand.
It was a moment I’ll never forget. I know that this is a well-worn phrase, a cliché that people just come out with. But I mean it in all seriousness, even though I find it hard to describe the emotion of this moment with real words. I know that this little boy had experienced things in his life that would stay with him for ever. That images of war, which many adults would have trouble coming to terms with, were burned in his mind. Up till now this mini-Mesut hadn’t had much to laugh about in life. But on this day there was a broad grin across his face. As we walked over to the pitch his eyes were beaming and radiating an incredible and infectious joie de vivre. He didn’t want to let me go.
I didn’t have much when I was small. But compared to these children I can look back on a golden childhood. I never had to fear for my life. I never had to hide from soldiers. I was able to play football and, unlike these poor things, I had a real chance to make something of my life.
When we got to the pitch I suddenly saw the children laugh. I heard cheerful cries, giggles of happiness. I saw how carefree they were when they played with or against me. I know that my visit didn’t make the world a better place, and it would be naïve to think so. But I’m proud to have given those children a brief moment of happiness. And I’m pleased to have seen with my own eyes how hard other people in the world have to struggle. Anybody who’s been to Zaatari knows how minuscule and insignificant their own problems are.
The next and final stop on our Middle Eastern trip was the aforementioned visit to the Kaaba in Mecca, the most important building in the world for we Muslims. It’s in the inner courtyard of al-Haram Mosque (the Great Mosque), and in our faith it is the first house of God on earth. In my childhood I kept hearing about Mecca and the Kaaba. From my parents at home and especially when we went to the mosque. Once in a lifetime every Muslim who is able to should make the pilgrimage there as a reminder of God, his commandments and his love for mankind. I’d already heard and read so much about Mecca – I simply felt the need to visit this place once in my life. To experience it myself. To see it and soak up all the impressions. My going to Mecca is comparable to devout Catholics visiting the Vatican.
More than two million people liked my photo in front of the Kaaba, which I’d intentionally accompanied only with the hashtags #Mecca #HolyCity #SaudiArabia #Islam #Pray. People there were queueing to have photos taken with me. Young people from Indonesia, in particular, were completely ecstatic to meet me there.
Stefan Kuzmany in Der Spiegel gave its opinion on my trip and my tweet, as follows:
Mesut Özil has never made a secret of his faith; he spoke about it publicly years ago. And yet the picture from Mecca gives a stronger message than the earlier interviews. It’s a proud acknowledgement. Because it’s so casual Özil’s photo is a powerful statement in the German debate about Islam. Because anyone who cheers him on – the key player, popular figure and World Champion of 2014 – is just as casually answering the question of whether Islam belongs as Özil does with his pilgrimage photo. Of course it belongs. It would be sad otherwise. If the World Champion Mesut Özil, a religious man, didn’t belong to Germany we wouldn’t be World Champions.
I was delighted to read this assessment, especially in Der Spiegel. The news magazine hadn’t been one of my greatest fans. During the 2014 World Cup it published a story about me that said I was a less than impressive public figure.
Der Tagesspiegel, for its part, called my tweet from Mecca ‘shocking in the best sense of the word’ and wrote: ‘Few people can be unmoved by the picture. It’s fascinating in a foreign, almost exotic way. Mesut Özil is posing as a pious, devout individual. This is unusual, bewildering, particularly in Germany and Europe, the religiously illiterate old continent [. . .] A picture like Özil’s just reminds us that, from a global perspective, faith is the norm and the lack of it a deviation.’
To be frank, I hadn’t meant to spark a debate with this picture. Nor did I ever ask myself whether my faith corresponded to a norm or not. It’s just part of my life. It gives me strength and direction. And it’s taught me to treat other people with respect and brotherly love, especially when they have less than I do. If my visit contributed to some sort of understanding then, of course, I’m delighted. For if there’s one thing I’ve learned, both in the Monkey Cage in Gelsenkirchen and on my trip to Jordan, it’s that most people are basically very similar, irrespective of what they believe in. They want a good life and the op
portunity to make their dreams come true.
9
Kung fu goalie
Team solidarity in stormy waters
After my involuntary hiatus at Werder, there were only more short outings to begin with. In one game, as I was about to take a free kick, the referee even came up to me and said, ‘Why doesn’t Schaaf play you more often?’ I thought I’d misheard him at first. Was the referee, an independent arbiter, expressing his surprise at the brevity of my appearances? Did he really ask that? When I looked at him, baffled, he expanded on what he said and now I realised I hadn’t misheard him: ‘Bremen plays differently with you in the side – better!’
This praise reinforced my conviction that I was correct to resist any demotion to the second team. I was on the right path. And although I was desperate to be in the starting line-up for every Werder game, I remained patient and from then on trusted all of Schaaf’s decisions. It would have been inappropriate for me to complain or bring more unrest into the team. The situation was difficult enough as it was.
After the first half of the season at the end of 2007, Bremen and Bayern Munich were equal on points at the top of the table, with 36 apiece. But Werder had scored 11 more goals. Arminia Bielefeld had been blown away in our 8–1 home victory. We’d put five past Bayer Leverkusen too. However, Schaaf’s squad had also conceded 16 more goals than the German championship record-holders.
The squad had suffered a number of injuries in the first half of the season. Patrick Owomoyela was missing from mid-September to the end of January because of thigh problems, and was unable to play in 19 games. In the second half of the season the injury woes got even worse. Torsten Frings missed 12 games because of a torn ligament in the knee, and didn’t rejoin the squad until mid-March. A subsequent capsular injury then ruled him out of another game in April. Ivan Klasnić struggled with muscular problems, missing three weeks and four games in March. Diego missed two games, one because of a pubic bone stress injury and the other due to thigh discomfort. Per Mertesacker was absent for two games in mid-March after being sent off in the previous fixture against Stuttgart for a professional foul in the eighty-ninth minute. Our plague of injuries didn’t spare Daniel Jensen or Tim Borowski either.
Consequently we had a shaky start to the second half of the season. We lost against Bochum. Drew against Bayern. At the beginning of March we were hammered 6–3 by Stuttgart, lost 1–0 to Wolfsburg, drew 1–1 with Bielefeld, then were beaten 1–2 by Duisburg. After 17 weeks at second in the table, and breathing down Bayern’s neck, we suddenly plummeted to fifth.
‘Werder in ruins,’ was Bild’s accurate headline. The paper thought we lacked determination and discipline, which wasn’t altogether incorrect. When we were knocked out in the UEFA Cup last 16 by Glasgow Rangers, Diego and Aaron Hunt clashed in the dressing room. Personally I don’t find that such a bad thing. Players must be able to disagree at times – it shows that a team still has life and passion to it.
I would find it worse if players merely accepted defeats or poor performances without any discussion. If they happily came to terms with failure and were able to shuffle it off without any frustration. It’s important to shout sometimes, voice your dissatisfaction, argue about bad passes or stubbornness on the pitch. It can be liberating as long as such discussions don’t cross the line. It’s fine to hurl criticism at others, air your grievances, as long as you don’t say anything personal or insulting. The following day, when you next see that person, you need to be able to look them in the eye and still have mutual respect.
Completely out of order, however, are physical attacks on teammates. But that’s exactly what happened when I started with Bremen. In a practice match, while trying to bring the ball under control, Naldo kicked Boubacar Sanogo in the stomach. He crumpled to the ground in pain. I’m pretty sure the kick was unintentional, and all Naldo said was, ‘I didn’t see you.’ But he didn’t apologise.
Shortly afterwards it was Naldo who was on the ground. Just a few tackles later Sanogo had given him a rather nasty whack in the calf.
Just what the media had been waiting for. At the time I was impressed by how Thomas Schaaf and Klaus Allofs dealt with the situation. In public the manager defended his team. ‘I’m always combative. If anybody wants to pick a fight with me then be my guest. I’m here,’ Schaaf said, countering his critics and defending his work and players. He wasn’t going to give any of his players a public bollocking just so journalists had something to write about, he said, playing down Sanogo’s attack on Naldo.
He was given the same backing by the club that the manager had given us. Allofs said, ‘I don’t see the coach doing anything wrong, and I’m at training almost every day.’
Internally, however, there was a different take on matters. Schaaf got rid of our free Sundays and sometimes scheduled two training sessions per day. He made us sprint and do press-ups until our arms burned. He also impressed on us that ‘without team solidarity we don’t have a hope in future.’
The table football we used to amuse ourselves with in the dressing room disappeared too. In all honesty I have to say that I find this sort of punishment a bad idea. You don’t win and lose matches because of table football. It’s good for your mind without being physically strenuous. Playing two against two for 20 minutes doesn’t leave you exhausted. You might be able to punish kindergarten children by taking toys away, but not professional footballers.
Thomas Schaaf is an exceptional manager. A very good coach with an unbelievably high level of tactical understanding who was also very clear, like José Mourinho. He doesn’t laugh much. In fact, he doesn’t laugh at all, apart from when he’s nutmegged Sebastian Boenisch or me in the circle. You just have to accept that Schaaf’s not a smiley-face who runs around the field in an irresistibly good mood. But that’s not his job.
Ever since the beginning of my career I’ve tried to pick up and soak up the best qualities from each manager. What I certainly didn’t take from Schaaf was his way of punishing players. In this respect Mourinho is an outstanding coach. When I was at Real Madrid he never stopped us from going out to celebrate. He really didn’t have the slightest interest in what players got up to privately. Under Mourinho nothing was prohibited. He didn’t get irritated if we used our mobiles in the dressing room. We were allowed to text and even if we were called a minute before the start of training, he didn’t mind. I don’t know of any manager who is as relaxed as him. The only thing he demanded of us was 100 per cent commitment on the pitch. He wanted us to focus only on football and not get distracted by anything else.
If there was something he didn’t like, he’d let us know in a different way. His criticism was more subtle. For example, once I was tempted to smoke on holiday. A completely stupid idea, and not worthy of a football player. There’s no discussion needed. But somehow I just felt like it. We were on a yacht with friends. All season I had led an ascetic life, forgoing alcohol, sweets and unhealthy food. And all of a sudden there was this packet of cigarettes, the sun was shining and I fancied one.
Of course, a paparazzo caught me from his dinghy 100 metres away and took a photo of Özil puffing away. When we returned to Madrid ready for the first training sessions, Mourinho gave a brief speech beforehand. He welcomed us back and said what he expected of us. Then he took out a photo collage and held it up. One picture showed me looking cool on the yacht with a cigarette out of the corner of my mouth. Bare torso, sunglasses, blue sky and sea. In the other photo was my teammate, Fábio Coentrão, our left-back. He’d pulled his cap right down and was standing in a dark corner, puffing on a cigarette too. ‘There are two types of footballers,’ Mourinho said, still holding up the photos. ‘Footballers with class, like Mesut here. And footballers who have no class.’
Everybody laughed. But of course we’d all understood the actual message. Mourinho wanted us to know that if we behaved unprofessionally on holiday he’d get wind of it and wouldn’t be impressed. But for him it was enough to tell us in this way. He could have
easily had a fit and expressed his disgust at our lapse more directly, but he relied on our personal sense of responsibility.
In Bremen we gradually got back on track. We halted the plunge down the table and won against Berlin, Schalke and Rostock, scoring nine goals in total. Then came 26 April. We were playing Karlsruher SC in the Wildpark stadium. Sebastian Freis put the home side into the lead. Diego equalised. In the twenty-ninth minute Tim Borowski passed to me and I shot with my left foot. I didn’t strike the ball cleanly at all. From 20 metres it lolloped towards the goal. A really embarrassing strike that could at best be described as a back pass. I was waiting for their keeper to gather the ball with a smile and put it back into play. But all of a sudden the ball was in. In the goal. My limp shot put us into the lead because a small bump had made the ball change direction, giving Markus Miller a nasty surprise. My first goal in the Bundesliga! That made me Werder’s nineteenth scorer in the season – a record, as in the history of the competition to date no single club had had so many different players on the scoresheet.
I watched the goal countless times online on YouTube – I kept pressing Replay, to start the thirty- or forty-second clip yet again. Your first goal in the Bundesliga is just as exhilarating as your first Bundesliga appearance. It’s just that the feeling of happiness comes as a greater surprise. Before my first appearance I was ecstatic the night before. I felt the strongest emotions on the touchline just before the fourth official signalled I was coming on. Obviously, you can’t have these same feelings before a goal because, logically, you don’t know you’re about to score.
I saw the ball leave my foot and hobble towards Miller. How embarrassing, I thought. Then, when it was in the goal, I couldn’t take it in at first. And while I was pondering how the ball could have found its way into the back of the net I was already haring around the pitch in celebration. Without properly realising it. It wasn’t until I felt all those hands on my body, pulling me this way and that, ruffling my hair and slapping my shoulder, that I regained my senses. ‘I’ve scored a goal, I’ve scored a goal,’ I heard an inner voice say. I was grinning so broadly that my cheekbones were aching.