VICE Spörts Player öf the Weekend: Mesut Özil

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

Remember when Mesut Özil was a respected member of the global footballing elite? We do. It was great. He played beautiful football, was given the plaudits to match, and was a joy for all to behold. We loved him, Madrid loved him, Germany loved him, and I'm fairly sure he must have loved himself.

All that was spoiled the day he was bought by Arsenal, and ruined by a hoard of hero worshipping social media warriors, destroying his once glowing reputation one hyperbolic tweet at a time.

Here's the thing: everyone knows Mesut Özil is really, really good. We've seen him play. He moves across the surface like a prima-ballerina, he manipulates the ball like Dynamo, and he creates goals for fun. There's no secret here. There's no agenda. Maybe there's the odd inflammatory piece by the Daily Mail, but that's only confirmation of what's come before. Think about all the good things that paper – and others like it – oppose, and all the hate filled bile they support. Being trashed by the Mail is a badge of honour, not something to fight against.

We remember how he ran through England at the World Cup in 2010; we know that somewhere inside himself, Gareth Barry is still chasing him, never getting a step closer. He was the player so often there to provide for Cristiano Ronaldo, setting him up for goal after robotic goal, crushing most of what came before them. There's not a football fan in the world who hasn't seen him thread passes through the eye of a needle, drop deep and help dictate the pace of a game in metronomic fashion, or laugh to themselves as he abandoned defensive work to push forwards, waiting to launch another attack.

But none of that really matters anymore.

Özil now finds himself a pantomime character, all that previous glory behind him. He wins every Sky Sports News poll going because Arsenal fans hashtag the fuck out of it. He's got moronic t-shirts, grown men giving their plain English names umlauts, and some of the most questionable online content ever produced shared in his honour. What should be a much celebrated gift to watch in the Premier League across all clubs – like David Silva, like Juan Mata – is roundly derided because he's forced upon us like a new record by Adele.

We want you to have nice things, Arsenal fans, but you make it so hard. You create polls of your own when rolling news isn't being broadcast, claiming that you'd rather see Özil given Player of the Year than see Arsenal win the league. One Direction fans are looking at you and thinking you're stupid; Beliebers reckon you've gone over the top. Free this once majestic player from your vice-like grip of adolescent neediness. Free him from the shackles of being reduced to nothing more than a meme.

There's a misunderstanding that, despite his obvious skill and ability, people take the piss out of Mesut Özil online because they don't rate him. That's not the case. People are doing it to readdress the natural order of the world. It takes fans of each and every one of the other 19 clubs in the Premier League to keep the tirade of pro-Özil propaganda neutralised. It's a public service. Imagine knowing something was good, actively liking it, but being force-fed it regardless. It's like stuffing someone full of gourmet food until they're sick, and then feeding them again with what they've just regurgitated. It's too much, Arsenal fans. We can't take it anymore.

This damage isn't irreparable. Things can change. Please, feel free to send a tweet when Özil provides an assist, but remove the umlaut from your name – you're a middle-aged man with a respectable career and your kids don't know if they can carry on looking up to you. Voting for your own players in polls is fine, but stop creating your own – this whole online Mugabe vibe isn't big, and it isn't clever. You might find, strangely, that the less you have to say about Özil, the more others will instead. Fans of other clubs might stop calling him a fraud, and giving him credit there wasn't space to give before.

In the face of this overwhelming fan-created pressure, Özil is enjoying his best season in England. He set a new Premier League record in Saturday's 2-1 defeat to West Brom by assisting a goal for the seventh straight match, becoming the first player in the top flight to do so. Despite the bullshit, he's not buckling. And so for performing under the weight of artificially created pressure and an online campaign more absurd than Donald Trump and Ben Carson's assaults on The White House combined, our Player öf the Weekend is Mesut Özil. Stay ströng, bröther.

@bainsxiii

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