Status: 22.03.2023 2:19 p.m
Former national soccer player Mesut Özil, world champion of 2014, has announced the end of his career.
The 34-year-old published a farewell message on social networks on Wednesday. His contract with the Turkish first division club Basaksehir FK is valid until the summer of 2023.
“After careful consideration, I declare my immediate retirement from professional football,” wrote Mesut Ozil in English. “Over the past few weeks and months, and I’ve also suffered from a number of injuries, it’s become clearer and clearer that it’s time to leave the big football stage.”
Thanks to the clubs, not to the DFB
Özil ended his 17-year career in Turkey, first with Fenerbahce and then with Basaksehir. Before that, the native of Gelsenkirchen played for Schalke 04 and Werder Bremen in the Bundesliga. He celebrated his greatest successes in club football at Real Madrid and Arsenal FC. Özil thanked his clubs and “the coaches who supported me and the teammates who became friends.”
With Germany he became world champion in Brazil in 2014, played 92 international matches, mostly as a central game designer. However, he did not mention the national team or the German Football Association in his farewell message. During his noisy resignation from the national team following the preliminary round at the 2018 World Cup, he massively criticized the DFB leadership. Before the finals, Özil himself had been criticized for his photos with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
National coach Hansi Flick praised Özil in the highest tones following the end of his career: “Mesut Özil was one of our outstanding national players,” said Flick on the website of the German Football Association (DFB): “He helped shape the national team for almost a decade, the highlight was winning the world championship title in 2014, to which he also made a decisive contribution.”
He really enjoyed working with Özil, “he had extraordinary skills, his technique and game vision were outstanding,” emphasized the national coach, adding that “in his most successful time” Özil was one of the “best football players in the world”. “All of us at the national team wish him and his family all the best for the post-career period.”
Those: sportschau.de
