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Midfielder Mesut Özil announced Sunday that he was leaving Germany a month and a half after triggering controversy for posing on a photo with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and after having criticized the actions of the media. and the federation in this controversy.
Özil, 29 years old and up to now a centerpiece in the group that trains Joachim Löw, announced this decision through his Twitter account, hours after that also by this means he explained why the controversial photo was made with the Turkish leader.
He decided to take this picture because, if he had refused, it would have been interpreted as "a lack of respect" towards his "Turkish roots", said Özil, adding that he " would get "this" photo "to deal with this situation. . "For me, taking a photo with President Erdogan has nothing to do with politics or elections, but with respect for the highest position in my family's country," he says.
It was the first time that the player, born in Gelsenkirchen (West Germany) and son of immigrants, was talking about the photo made last June with Erdogan and accompanied by the 39, German-Turkish Ilkay Gündogan.
The image was interpreted as an explicit support for the campaign for the re-election of the Turkish president, who has a more than tense relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The coach, Joachim Löw, decided to keep Gündogan and him in the national team and Merkel herself at one point expressed her desire that fans stop booing whenever they jumped in the field. Özil is considered a key player in the selection and also the image of the integration in Germany of the largest group of citizens of foreign origin, the Germans-Turks, with three and a half million people , half of which retain their right to vote in Turkey.
Controversy accompanied both internationals throughout the World Cup and persisted after the premature elimination of the German team, which defended the title, in the group stage of Russia . The manager of the selection, Oliver Bierhoff, and the president of the German Football Federation (DFB), Reinhard Grindel, came to criticize them later that they had not explained their behavior before the world, which was interpreted as a way to launch blame for the elimination.
Özil now explains that this photo would have been taken with a Turkish president regardless of who he was and that he is simply a football player, not a politician. He further baderts that with Erdogan they spoke "exclusively of football" and he remembers that the only time he had met with the Turkish president before was precisely with Merkel, when he was in charge. a match between the German and Turkish national teams.
At these explanations on the photo followed a second statement, in which the player, 29, severely criticized the media lawsuit in this scandal and the lack of support from the DFB. The series of statements closed the mystery about the future of the player in the selection, a problem that was waiting for Löw's next call.
Germany has its first commitments before the elimination of the World Cup on September 6 and 9, the first against the new world champion, France, and the second against Peru. On 29 August, Löw announces the list of those summoned.
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