Mesut Özil, the playmaker who spoke out when football stayed silent | Football

Last Sunday the legions of Premier League followers in China were denied the opportunity to watch Arsenal’s midfield maestro Mesut Özil’s early substitution in the 3-0 defeat to Manchester City. In what was perhaps his most conspicuous contribution to the game, Özil slowly trudged to the touchline and then made a show of kicking his discarded gloves in anger.

This minor act of either defiance or self-chastisement went unseen in the People’s Republic of China because the authorities deemed the match to be too politically sensitive to be screened. The reason for this decision was that two days earlier Özil, a Turkish-origin German and practising Muslim, had posted a message in Turkish on Twitter in which he condemned China’s widely reported mistreatment of Uighur Muslims.

It is said that up to a million Uighurs have been forced into prison camps in Xinjiang province in west China, or what Özil referred to as East Turkistan. China insists the camps are voluntary “vocational training centres”, though leaked official documents detail a system of incarceration, indoctrination and punishment. Describing the Uighurs as “warriors who resist persecution”, the Arsenal player went on to say that the Chinese authorities had burned Qurans, closed down mosques and killed religious scholars. “Despite all this,” he wrote, “Muslims stay quiet.”

Özil is said to have more than 4 million followers on the Chinese social media site Weibo, or at least he did until last Friday when his account was blocked and his 30,000-strong fanclub closed down. The Chinese government did not appreciate Özil’s contribution to the debate. The foreign ministry accused him of having been “deceived by fake news”, and behind the scenes the anti-Özil campaign went into overdrive.

The Chinese Football Association said his comments were unacceptable. Özil was removed from the Chinese versions of Fifa and the Pro Evolution Soccer 2020 video games. The company that runs the Chinese franchise for PES put out a statement saying that Özil’s speech “hurt the feelings of Chinese fans and violated the sports spirit of love and peace. We do not understand, accept or forgive this.”

So far, so typical for a regime that is not renowned for its ease with criticism. But what is more noteworthy is football’s response to Özil. His club moved swiftly to distance itself from his comments, stating that they were his personal view and that Arsenal “is always apolitical as an organisation”. The club has reportedly been warned that a Chinese media blackout could be maintained if tit does not apologise. Oddly, Arsenal felt no need to publicly assert their apolitical neutrality when, the day before Özil’s message, their vice-captain Héctor Bellerín put out a tweet on the morning of the general election with the hashtag “FuckBoris”.

Former Arsenal manager and now Fifa’s chief of global football development Arsène Wenger, while defending Özil’s freedom of speech, said the player’s comments were about himself, not Arsenal, and he was individually responsible. Wenger argued that Özil had to “accept the consequences” of his statement. Finally, celebrated former Barcelona and Man City player and fellow Muslim Yaya Touré, who has long campaigned against racism in football, advised Özil that he was “wrong” and should stick to football.

In other words, Özil had spoken out on what is unquestionably the largest, most systematic and flagrant case of religious persecution in the world, and the reaction of his sport was to push him away, as though he were a reckless troublemaker. Cynics might conclude that Özil’s isolation is not entirely unrelated to China’s growing importance to English football, having recently signed a £540m broadcast deal with the Premier League, and Chinese investors have put a similar amount into Man City, Southampton and Wolverhampton Wanderers.

But football is not alone. Very few voices are prepared to confront China, the economic superpower whose influence extends across the globe. The kind of people who can detail every infringement of Palestinian rights committed by Israel have managed to stay largely tight-lipped about the internment of one million Muslims in China. Very few Muslim countries have spoken out against China’s actions, and many, including Saudi Arabia, have backed Beijing’s crackdown as an “anti-terrorist” measure. Even Özil’s great political hero, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, was mute on the subject on a visit to Beijing in July – perhaps because he was seeking investment from his hosts.

Özil’s stand comes at a strange time in the mercurial midfielder’s illustrious yet sometimes frustrating career. Among the highest-paid footballers in the UK, said to be on £350,000 a week, Özil has been a largely spectral figure on the pitch this season and for much of the previous one – “a ghost,” as the writer Janan Ganesh put it, “among machines”. Sublimely gifted, he has made more audacious passes in his career than anyone bar, perhaps, Warren Beatty. But in recent times he has looked a troubled soul: static, ineffectual, disengaged.

He was clearly affected when in July this year he and Arsenal teammate Sead Kolašinac were attacked in the street by armed robbers. Kolašinac fought back before Özil drove the pair away in a car that also contained Özil’s wife. Yet his disquiet goes back further than that, at least to May 2018 when he was photographed with the autocratic Erdoğan in the runup to the Turkish general election.

The photo was seen in Germany as an endorsement of Erdoğan, who has purged large numbers of Turkish officials and has attacked Kurd militias in Syria. Having been the poster boy for German multiculturalism when Germany won the World Cup in 2014, Özil came in for some stinging criticism. A month later, after Germany had crashed out of the 2018 World Cup, the playmaker announced his retirement from international football, disillusioned with what he saw as a campaign of authorised racism. “I am German when we win,” he said, “an immigrant when we lose.”

He also defended the photo with Erdoğan, claiming that he was simply paying respect to his ancestral homeland, and had only discussed football with the president. That explanation did not age well when in June this year Özil married his fiancee, former Miss Turkey Amine Gülșe, in Istanbul, and Erdoğan was his best man. In Germany it was seen as further evidence that Özil had embraced his Turkish identity at the expense of his German one. The German chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff said that Özil’s relationship with Erdoğan “makes one sad”.

Özil was born in a Turkish enclave in the city of Gelsenkirchen, not far from Dortmund. His grandparents, miners from Zonguldak in Turkey, had moved to the Ruhr coalfields as guestworkers in the 1960s. Both his parents were born in West Germany. For decades the West German and then German national football teams had been symbols of a certain vision of German society: white, ethnically German, powerful but not blessed with great style or subtlety.

That changed with Özil’s generation, when the side began to reflect a more modern and diverse country. The team that won the 2014 World Cup played with breathtaking panache, and no one represented that change more than Özil, who was named German player of the year (an accolade he earned five times in six years).

That summer he had completed his first year at Arsenal, having moved from Real Madrid for a club record transfer fee, and had led the Gunners to their first trophy in nine seasons. At 25, he was a young man with the world at his feet, playing as if he could see the future, such was his uncanny ability to anticipate the flow of the game.

Slowly, that future seems to have slipped behind him. It’s hard to know whether his decline can be attributed to tensions off the field or the increase in coaching tactics that leave little room for Özil’s languid creativity. Either way the result is an alienated player, and it’s to Özil’s credit that he has directed his angst outwards and brought attention to the miserable plight of the Uighurs.

However it has left his club with a problem. Do Arsenal bow to Chinese pressure and make contrite noises or further distance themselves from Özil? What seems obvious is that they can’t sell the player. No club in Europe will want to match the German’s wages, given his indifferent form. And the only other place in the world that could afford him is … China.

But just for the moment, we can overlook his current performances. On the issue of the Uighurs Özil deserves the support of not just Arsenal fans but the world at large.