SLEEP AND SOUR

MESUT OZIL is one of the world’s best, most famous and most successful footballers.

And now the ex-arsenal star (below), who moved to Fenerbahce in January, is about to launch his own new boot range.

Dr Erkut Sogut spoke well at the Soccerex conference about launching his own M10 brand and believes that is the way many players may go in the future.

Ozil’s profile and pulling power means it is certain to be a success.

SOCIAL media chiefs have been asked how they can sleep at night after turning a blind eye to abuse. The FA have sent a letter countersigned by the game’s major stakeholders urging social media chiefs to do more to stamp out racist and other forms of abuse aimed at players. FA equality director Edleen John said: “It makes me question how people can sleep at night. It’s fair to say that every single organisation that signed that letter was absolutely passionate in that we need to drive change in this area so a tipping point is a good way to put it.

“Let’s be clear: it’s not just a football issue, it’s a societal issue. We hear all the time about young people killing themselves because of abuse on social media, we hear other celebrities talk about abuse on social media, we’ve heard members of Parliament talk about abuse on social media.

“This is not a new thing, social media companies know what is happening. They know the role they play and haven’t done anything to drive a change.

“It’s about the desire to move it at pace and that’s not happening. We’ve been having these conversations for more than 18 months and yet we are still having them. It’s not enough.”

THE GAA will wait for the Irish Government to publish its latest ‘Living with Covid’ strategy before plotting out the 2021 season.

The document is due to be published at the end of the month and Irish Minister of

State for Sport Jack Chambers said yesterday that the Government will “look at sport and inter-county GAA” within the strategy.

On the whole, the GAA appears to have taken the Government’s decision to withdraw elite status for

Gaelic games in its stride, though president John Horan (left) did reject the minister’s assertion that there was “not a massive appetite to return in the medium term” among the GAA hierarchy.

“The GAA have an appetite to go back, of course,” Horan told RTE.

“Everybody within the GAA family would love to be back playing games and training in the morning but look, we’ve always acted with safety and responsibility as the key tenets of our decision-making