Mesut Özil is one of the best players in his position. He knows it, I know it, many others know it. Then why is he subject to that much criticism? Mostly likely, both elements are strongly linked and you will always get the one with the other.
The better you become as a footballer, the more people expect from you. The term world class does not apply to players who managed to score five goals in a game on a singular occasion, but rather to players who maintained their level for season after season at the highest level. Once reached, world class is not only a term ascribed to your quality, but it is also promise to deliver – consistently.
Which brings us back to the level of expectation. The better you are, the more people expect from you – so much is true. However it is also true that the better you are, the less amount of change people are willing to accept. Take a good player. Simple, average, good. Since you don’t expect much of him, you won’t be disappointed. He might even get away with bad games. With world class players, the same amount of leeway is not granted. It happens to all of them. Take Özil, Ronaldo, Messi or any other at that level. Whenever they fail to meet the requirements – which admittedly isn’t very often – of scoring, assisting or showing their brilliance, the analysis rarely actually bothers whether they had a good or truly bad game. Since they did not show what they are capable of, they ‘were hiding’, ‘were on the fringes’ or simply ‘not good enough’.
Özil is an interesting case as exactly that happened. Not only at the start of the season with Arsenal, but also with Germany at the World Cup. Pundits and newspapers did not rate his performances and awarded him bad grades, disgruntled fans claimed playing with Özil was like ‘playing with 10 men’. However, looking only at the German NT, Özil created the most chances, completed the most dribbles and passes in the final third. He also scored one and made one. How do these stats compare to the criticism he received? And most importantly, would fans and pundits have rated his performances had Müller, Schürrle, Klose or Lahm finished one of the countless chances Özil created? Probably. Which brings us back to the start. Level of expectation. Özil was the stand-out player in Germany’s route to the World Cup and. 8 goals and 5 assists in just 10 games. No comparison to the 1 goal and 1 assist in 7 at the World Cup. Still, while the end product was missing, the level of performance was almost the same, yet resulted in completely different forms of criticism.
The issue may also be connected to Özil’s style of play. I sometimes like to compare him to a striker. A lot of strikers are passive for most of the game, have a couple of good touches and passes until they get that one chance and win the game. If a striker wins you the game, it does not matter what he did the rest of the game. Özil, in a lot of games, is similar to that. He is always involved, does not hide and makes clever runs, but does not scream ‘danger’. Yet, like a striker gets chances to score, Özil gets opportunities to kill the opponent with the deadly ball. Which he usually does. He does not have the industry or desire to constantly make stuff happen and he does not need to. Rather, he drifts in and out of games, waits for his chance and then creates the winner. Just like a striker would. And that’s why he is one of the best in his position.
