#no glaringly stupid mistakes by any of the major players

[an-asuryampasya]

vikram: hitlist is so good what the fuck

also villians who care for their henchmen like family is SUCH a delicious trope :')

[hannobehrens]

Concerning the completely messed up debate surrounding Özil’s resignation:

Everybody’s losing

Mesut Özil resigns with a bang - and mere minutes afterwards two camps are forming in Germany. A really stupid reaction. Unfortunately one that fits the debating culture of this year 2018 all too well.

Yesterday Mesut Özil set off a bang. People in Germany had been waiting for it, Özil’s critics as well as his fans, you just like me, and Özil delivered in a manner that we wouldn’t have expected of him, whose public persona had always been rather restrained and taciturn: elaborate, well thought out and extremely belligerent.

In three texts spread out throughout the day he initially and for the first time spoke out about meeting the Turkish president Erdogan, went on to criticise - without giving any names - German media and DFB sponsors and eventually declared his resignation from the German national team. One reason being that, according to Özil, DFB president Reinhard Grindel had acted in a racist and amateurish manner.

Three texts we could have great discussions about. Texts in which Özil brings up issues that concern not only us - media, experts, fans - in our football bubble. They concern this heated country as a whole. What’s German at all? Do people with a German passport and Turkish roots still live here on probation? What does identification mean? And can a political office really be separated as unscrupulously from the person serving that office as Özil claims in the case of Erdogan? There are no easy answers to any of these questions. And yet - just about nine seconds after the publication of each text - a thousand easy answers were given.

If you want to gauge where the debate surrounding the ex-NT player - as so many other debates these days - is going so glaringly wrong you just have to take a closer look at the responses to Özil’s first statement. Yesterday around 1pm, under the header „I/III Meeting President Erdogan,“ Özil published a text in English language, in which for the first time he spoke himself about meeting and taking a photo with Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 



In it, among other things, Özil writes: „I get that this may be hard to understand, as in most cultures the political leader cannot be thought of as being separate from the person. But in this case, it is different. Whatever the out-come would’ve been in this previous election, or the election before that, I would have still taken the picture.“ At 1:12 pm news service “SID” published the following “breaking news”: “Özil: Would take photo with Erdogan again”. Another ten minutes later this sentence, that Özil never wrote, was circulating on the internet. In the comment sections underneath: chaos.

Anger flaring up in people who either didn’t make the effort or were just simply incapable of reading the original text. Expectable hate from trolls who wouldn’t have even needed the mistranslation to let off their opinions. Which in turn led to the immediate formation of #TeamÖzil on the other side. In-between? Barely anything.

And of course you have to criticise this mistranslation by a big German news agency. And question why other publishers just took it on like that. And yet you also have to criticise that first statement that Özil fired off into the internet yesterday around 1pm. Can a 29-year-old man, who was born and went to school in Gelsenkirchen, really not care whether he’s meeting Frank-Walter Steinmeier or a president like Erdogan, who’s imprisoning journalists, teachers, judges and students by the thousands and without trial? Can a 29-year-old man who’s signing contracts over millions of Euros really be that naive? Can a footballer absolve himself of all things political because he’s talking to a campaigning president only about football? No. Absolutely not.

And yet the majority of people pounced on this one false quote. Which poisoned the debate before it could even begin to get substantial at all. Which will, in turn, probably prompt Özil and his fans, not few of whom have a similar family background as the football star himself, to retreat further into the wagon circle [(?) (stronghold?! I have no idea how to translate that! „Wagenburg“. Like in the ‘wild west‘…?)] A disastrous development.

And there definitely are reasons for Özil, and those who stand by him unconditionally, to retreat into the Wagenburg. As Özil describes impressively and aptly in his second and third statement. Because of course the tide turned against him and of course - as opposed to “Bild’s” claims - it is unbelievably racist when an SPD(!) politician like Bernd Holzhauer refers to Mesut Özil and Ilkay Gündogan as “two goatfuckers”.

And of course DFB and its president failed to take a clear stand against these racist sentiments. Quite the opposite: By giving two authorised, meaning: proof-read interviews right after dropping out of the world cup - like Oliver Bierhoff and Grindel did - in which Mesut Özil is portrayed as the person mainly at fault for the embarrassing sporting display, they put grist to the mill of all those who had long been publicly defaming Özil out of purely xenophobic motives. Who unacceptably mingled their hate with the sport and were just waiting for an opportunity to piss on somebody like Özil.

Even though, from a purely sporting perspective, for nearly ten years Özil has constantly been one of the best five German footballers. He plays efficiently, assists goals, creates chances and regularly scores himself. He makes his teammates better, he won the FA cup three times with Arsenal, with Germany he won the world cup. And yet even as a footballer he’s been polarising opinions for years.

Some love him for his brilliant passes and the effortlessness he radiates even in the most densely crowded opponent’s box, others accuse him of always disappearing in important matches and drooping his shoulders too easily. Somebody completely neutral on Özil? Barely existed even before the Erdogan photo, actually even throughout his entire career. Everybody’s always had an opinion about him, from “alibi footballer” to “genius”, the whole spectrum covered, “comedians” like Oliver Pocher mocked his appearance, English fans payed tribute to him with special chants/songs. You were either for him, or against him.

Now all that is repeated. In favour or against, one side or the other, good or bad. Unfortunately though with this issue there is no good side. Only one thing on all sides: losers. Özil because he’s reviewing his own behaviour without a spark of self-criticism. Grindel and Bierhoff because they’ve been kicking a player already down on the ground just to save their own skins. German football because perhaps the most talented player of an entire generation doesn’t want to and won’t help it anymore. And all the yahoos preferring to charge forward blindly onto a minefield rather than avoiding all the explosives with care. Which is extremely infuriating. Because, after all, a little care could actually help this discussion which has so far been just completely messed up.

[Disclaimer: This article was written by Max Dinkelaker of German football magazine 11Freunde on 23 July 2018. (It’s still on their homepage in this form now on 25 July at 9:30pm CET). This is a translation by me - I’m not affiliated with 11Freunde in any way beyond being a quite regular reader - and it’s probably full of mistakes, sorry. Char made me do it. (I wish there was a way to turn this into small print.)]

(Translation by @ohneweiterebedeutung)