Spotlight on: Mesut Özil

By: Jamie | September 9th, 2009

So we’ve made it through the international break unscathed, it seems. On Saturday, the Werder lads did well in their matches – Pasanen scored the winning goal in a qualifier for Finland, and Özil got his first goal for Germany. He was also the star of match. (Also, I was WAY off on my predictions – both Özil and Marin did start and big Per wasn’t even in the squad!) His fantastic display over the weekend and his amazing performance at the European Under-21s have already stirred up transfer speculation and hype in the media.

I think a lot of people have been wondering just how much the Green-Whites will miss Diego. Diego has already dazzled at Juventus and some are calling him the best catch of the transfer window. But with the way Özil has been playing, I definitely think he’s capable of stepping up and filling the playmaker role vacated by Diego…. actually, I think he has already shown he is capable of doing that in the few Bundesliga games that have already been played.

But we don’t want to get carried away with the praise of young Özil – you can hype a player up so much and then he may fail to deliver under the pressure (Podolski springs to mind, though it’d be nice to see him pick up his game again). We certainly hope this won’t be the case with Mesut. He’s garnered praise from his fellow Germany teammates but Mertesacker in particular understands the danger of putting too much weight on his shoulders:

“It would be, I believe, wrong and still to early to push him into the leading role. He has only just come on the scene and needs his freedom. He absolutely has to preserve his carefree nature.”

Mertesacker is, though, fully aware of the qualities Ozil brings to the national team.

He added: “He came as a small, shy kid from Schalke to Werder. At the time we were well blessed in the position with Diego (now at Juventus). With his formidable strengths he quickly came through. He has a incredible speed on the ball and is technically strong.”

Schaaf keeps a cool head about the newest German star as well:

“That was all not a big surprise for us. You could see the development over the last few months,” said Schaaf. But the coach will not change his behaviour in dealing with Özil in light of the new hype. “Until now he has dealt very well with the situation. And I am not worried about it at all as long as the reporting remains reasonable. The headlines are in order if they are backed with this kind of performance.”

Now there will be a lot of expectation still on Özil’s shoulders when he returns with Werder this weekend. I hope he just takes it in his stride like he has so far.

And now – back to club football!