Mesut Ozil said Sunday he was quitting the German national football team, citing \u201cracism\u201d in the criticism of him after the side\u2019s World Cup debacle.<\/p>\n
Ozil, who has Turkish roots, had been under fire since posing for a controversial photograph with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May which sparked questions about his loyalty to Germany\u2019s squad ahead of the tournament in Russia.<\/p>\n
In a four-page statement sent out in three images on Twitter and Instagram, an angry Ozil saved his bombshell for the final salvo.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is with a heavy heart and after much consideration that because of recent events, I will no longer be playing for Germany at international level whilst I have this feeling of racism and disrespect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Arsenal midfielder blamed the German Football Federation (DFB) for failing to defend him against his most strident critics.<\/p>\n
\u201cArguably the issue that has frustrated me the most over the past couple of months has been the mistreatment from the DFB, and in particular the DFB President Richard Grindel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said that Grindel and Germany coach Joachim Loew had asked him to give a \u201cjoint statement to end all the talk and set the record straight\u201d over the picture with Erdogan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhilst I attempted to explain to Grindel my heritage, ancestry and therefore reasoning behind the photo, he was far more interested in speaking about his own political views and belittling my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ozil, 29, said he had been unfairly blamed in Germany for the side\u2019s shock first-round defeat at the World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will no longer stand for being a scapegoat for his (Grindel\u2019s) incompetence and inability to do his job properly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the eyes of Grindel and his supporters, I am German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ozil had said earlier that he was true to both his Turkish and German origins and insisted he did not intend to make a political statement by appearing with Erdogan.<\/p>\n
\u2018I have two hearts\u2019<\/strong> \u201cI have two hearts, one German and one Turkish.\u201d<\/p>\n Ozil said that despite the timing of the picture with teammate Ilkay Gundogan and Erdogan \u2014 shortly before the president won re-election in a poll endowing him with sweeping new powers \u2014 \u201cit wasn\u2019t about politics or elections, it was about me respecting the highest office of my family\u2019s country\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMy job is a football player and not a politician, and our meeting was not an endorsement of any policies,\u201d Ozil added.<\/p>\n Germany is home to more than three million people of Turkish origin.<\/p>\n Manchester City midfielder Gundogan presented Erdogan with a signed club shirt on which he had written \u201cto my president\u201d.<\/p>\n The two players were booed by German fans in pre-World Cup friendlies over their appearance with the Turkish strongman, and Ozil said Sunday that he had his family had received threats.<\/p>\n After the tournament, Ozil came in for stinging criticism by DFB officials and German politicians across the spectrum.<\/p>\n \u2018Right-wing propaganda\u2019\u00a0<\/strong> \u201cIf a newspaper or pundit finds fault in a game I play in, then I can accept this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut what I can\u2019t accept are German media outlets repeatedly blaming my dual-heritage and a simple picture for a bad World Cup on behalf of an entire squad,\u201d he added, calling it \u201cright-wing propaganda\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThis crosses a personal line that should never be crossed, as newspapers try to turn the nation of Germany against me.\u201d<\/p>\n He also furiously denounced disparaging remarks by former captain Lothar Matthaeus, who he noted \u201cmet with another world leader a few days back and received almost no media criticism\u201d in an apparent reference to an appearance with Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n And Ozil railed against an unnamed sponsor, which, he said, removed him from promotional videos for the World Cup after the pictures with Erdogan emerged.<\/p>\n \u201cFor them, it was no longer good to be seen with me and (they) called the situation \u2018crisis management\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mesut Ozil said Sunday he was quitting the German national football team, citing \u201cracism\u201d in the criticism of him after the side\u2019s World Cup debacle. Ozil, who has Turkish roots, had been under fire since posing for a controversial photograph with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May which sparked questions about his loyalty to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[862,1307,1306,1308],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-football","tag-german","tag-mesut-ozil","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1664,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions\/1664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cLike many people, my ancestry traces back to more than one country. Whilst I grew up in Germany, my family background has its roots firmly based in Turkey,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\nOzil said he could abide criticism of his performance on the pitch but not when it was linked to his ethnic background.<\/p>\n