MESUT’S CHARITABLE SIDE MUST BE REMEMBERED
From welcoming disabled fans to the Emirates and his home, to sending kit to supporters in Kenya, outside football, Ozil gives a lot of his time and money to charity work
A FOOTBALLER earning £350 000 a week refuses a 12.5% pay cut agreed by nearly all of his teammates during a global pandemic. Surely it’s as simple as that? Except, in the case of Mesut Ozil, it isn’t quite that straightforward.
Mikel Arteta has rallied all but three of the Arsenal playing squad into accepting cuts to help the club with cash-flow issues while the coronavirus pandemic keeps football halted indefinitely.
Ozil, Arsenal’s highest earner, is the one known name who has refused to lower his wage, as it stands, while he surveys the true impact of the virus upon the game.
“The fact the highest paid player hasn’t done it… the rest of the squad has agreed it, you’ve got to go with the rest of the players,” Jamie
Carragher said on Sky on Tuesday.
“As you say, it’s a massive PR own goal.
“I’m not going to have a go at him for the wages he’s earned, blame the people who are paying him, but the highest paid member of the squad should be one who sets the example.”
But Ozil uses a large swathe of his money for good, both at home and across the world.
Only nine weeks ago, when the world was a very different place, Ozil welcomed some disabled supporters to the Emirates stadium to watch Arsenal’s win against Everton, posing for pictures with them afterwards.
He also works with the children’s charity Ray of Sunshine, through which he once welcomed an ardent 8-year-old Gunners fan with cerebral palsy and a lung condition into his home.
Abroad, a simple but endearing gesture saw Ozil send a football shirt to a young boy called Lawrence in Nairobi, Kenya, after he was alerted to the fact he had made his own version of an Arsenal top with Ozil’s name on the back. The former Germany international also sent an array of kit, including football boots, to him and his friends.
“The picture of a Kenyan boy with a self-made shirt on Twitter touched me so much,” Ozil wrote on Instagram after seeing that Lawrence had received the shirt.
“And look at Lawrence now – it’s so heartwarming to see him and his brothers happy.”
His gestures have not stopped there. Ozil’s agent, Dr Erkut Sogut, said last year that the Arsenal playmaker had also paid for 1 000 vital operations for children across the world, fed 100 000 homeless people at 16 refugee camps in Turkey and Syria and paid £240 000 to fund operations for sick children in Brazil.
It is, therefore, not a huge leap of faith to think that, in a time when the world faces the most unique of challenges, Ozil may be using his money for the greater good.
Yes, for Arsenal as a club, it looks far stronger in terms of team unity to say that the entire playing squad has agreed a pay cut.
And they still might. Ozil still might agree to one. The 31-year-old has received intense scrutiny for the standard of his displays in recent seasons at Arsenal and whether they align with what fans expect from their highest paid player.
That criticism has been fair. But here, with a delicate situation unfolding by the day, there is an argument for more factors to be thought about. | Daily Mail