The New York Times - USA (2020-10-26)

THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2020 N D3

SOCCER

LONDON — Everything started with a
tweet. Mesut Özil knew the risks, in De-
cember last year, when he decided to of-
fer a startling public denunciation of both
China’s treatment of the Uighurs, a large-
ly Muslim minority in the region of Xin-
jiang, and the complicit silence of the in-
ternational community.
Friends and advisers had warned Özil,
the Arsenal midfielder, that there would
be consequences. He would have to write
off China as a market. His six million fol-
lowers on Weibo, the country’s largest
social network, would disappear. His fan
club there — with as many as 50,000
signed-up members — would go, too. He
would never play in China. He might be-
come too toxic even for any club with
Chinese owners, or sponsors eager to do
business there.
Özil knew this was not fearmongering.
He was aware of China’s furious re-
sponse — both institutionally and organ-
ically — to a tweet by Daryl Morey, the
general manager of the N.B.A.’s Houston
Rockets, only a few weeks earlier. Yet
Özil was adamant. He had been growing
increasingly outraged by the situation in
Xinjiang for months, watching documen-
taries, consuming news reports. He be-
lieved it was his duty, he told his advis-
ers, not so much to highlight the issue but
to pressure Muslim-majority nations —
including Turkey, whose president, Re-
cep Tayyip Erdogan, had served as best
man at Özil’s wedding — to intercede.
And so he pressed send.
How much of what followed can be
traced back to that tweet is contested.
Özil is convinced that is the moment ev-
erything changed. Arsenal is just as ada-
mant that it is not. There is no easy, neat
way of bridging the divide between those
perspectives. Perhaps both are true. Per-
haps neither is. Neither Özil nor Arsenal
was willing to discuss their differences
on the record.
The outcome, regardless, is the same.
A few days after Özil went public, the
Premier League’s two broadcast part-
ners in China, CCTV and PP Sports, re-
fused to air an Arsenal match. When the
latter did deign to show Arsenal again, its
commentators refused to say Özil’s
name.
His avatar was removed from video
games. Searching the internet for his
name in China brought up error mes-
sages. (It was reported his Weibo ac-
count was disabled, though that was not
true.) Very deliberately, though, and
seemingly at the behest of an authoritar-
ian government, Mesut Özil was being
erased.
If it felt, at the time, as if that was as
bad as it would get, it was not. As it
turned out, Özil’s disappearing was just
beginning.

The Pay Cut

In hindsight, Arsenal’s reaction to
Özil’s decision to speak out was — at
least — inconsistent. Publicly, the club
moved quickly to distance itself from his
comments. Privately, it considered pun-
ishing him.
His tweet, and a simultaneous Insta-
gram post to his more than 20 million fol-
lowers on that service, had caused con-
siderable problems — not just at Arsenal,
but also for the Premier League. China,
after all, was its largest foreign broad-
cast partner, and its biggest foreign mar-
ket, and the league could not afford —
even in a pre-Covid-19 world — to have
its games blacked out, to have its spon-
sors and its fans close their wallets.
“In China, a lot of the audience are not
aware of the nature of the relationship
between an association, a league and a
player in foreign countries,” said Zhe Ji,
the director of Red Lantern, a sports
marketing company that works in China
for the Premier League and a number of
its teams. “They see in China the football
association is in full control of the league,
which is in control of the player. It puts
teams, leagues and individuals in an
awkward position. There is a cultural
confusion.”

Conscious of that, Arsenal executives

urged Özil to avoid political statements,

or at least to ensure he avoided any asso-

ciation with the club if he continued to

make them. When the club sent out its

merchandising celebrating Chinese New

Year, it made sure to remove Özil from

any of the materials.

Eager to avoid the kind of public dis-

pute that had imperiled the N.B.A.’s bil-

lion-dollar business relationship with

China, the Premier League did its best to

stay above the fray. But the league and

its clubs seem to pick and choose their

interventions. A few months after Özil’s

tweet, players representing the Premier

League’s 20 clubs — Arsenal’s Hector

Bellerin was a leading advocate — in-

formed the league that they would begin

purposeful displays of support for the

Black Lives Matter movement during

games. The league quickly acquiesced to

its players’ political awakening.

And last week, after Arsenal’s captain,

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, tweeted

in support of protests against police vio-

lence in Africa, the club issued its own

statement. “To our Nigerian fans,” it be-

gan. “We see you. We hear you. We feel

you.”

“It is becoming increasingly impor-

tant that you have a point of view on this

stuff,” said Tim Crow, a sponsorship con-

sultant. “If you don’t, sooner or later the

spotlight will turn on you, and people will

ask questions about your values.”

Özil’s mistake, then, appears to be less

that he made a political statement and

more that he picked the wrong issue.

By the time the Premier League was

discussing Black Lives Matter in the

summer, of course, the world had

changed. The coronavirus had forced

soccer into a three-month hiatus, and Ar-

senal, like every other club, was coming

to terms with the financial ramifications.

Soon a new discussion began at Arsenal,

about whether the team’s well-paid play-

ers should accept salary cuts. And al-

most immediately Özil’s stance on that

issue, too, was widening the chasm be-

tween him and his club.

Even after his tweet about China, Özil

played a reasonably prominent role for

Arsenal in the first few months of 2020.

Mikel Arteta, the club’s new coach, had

insisted in his interview for the job that

he wanted to work with Özil, a former

teammate, to see if he could coax the

club’s highest-paid player back to his

best.

That relationship seems to have foun-

dered as the club pressed its players to

surrender some of their salaries to ease

Arsenal’s cash crunch. The talks lasted

for six weeks, and by late April the ma-

jority had fallen in line.

Özil, though, still had questions. He

had asked Arsenal’s senior leadership

for detailed answers on what the savings

would be used for, whether the club’s

owner would also be contributing, and

whether the team could assure him it

would use the money to protect its non-

playing staff.

He did not feel those issues were satis-

factorily addressed (though the club

does). After a final Zoom call, in which

Arteta urged his players to “do the right

thing,” Özil remained unmoved.

In June, the 12.5 percent wage cut was

made official, and the players were

presented with paperwork backdating

the changes to April. Most signed imme-

diately. Half a dozen or so lingered. Özil

stood firm. Again, he knew the risk: that

he might be ostracized by the club, that it

might effectively end his career at Ar-

senal by refusing. It made no difference.

Özil has not played for Arsenal since.

In August, two months after winning the

wage concessions from its players, the

club — citing the continuing financial im-

pact of the pandemic — announced that

it had parted company with 55 staff

members. Özil took a particular interest

in one of them.

The Dinosaur

There is, perhaps, no better indication

of just how all-encompassing the distrust

between Özil and Arsenal has become

than the fact that, along with his political

activism and his refusal to accept a pay

cut, at least part of the tension between

the parties relates to an argument over a

dinosaur.

This month, it emerged that Arsenal

had parted company with Jerry Quy, a

lifelong fan who has spent the last 27

years dressing up as an oversize green

dinosaur (possibly; his species is un-

clear) standing on the sideline during

games. Quy is the human behind Gun-

nersaurus, Arsenal’s slightly ironically

beloved mascot.

His dismissal was, to put it mildly, a

public-relations disaster. Özil, immedi-

ately, seized on it, volunteering to pay

Quy’s salary until fans were permitted to

return to English stadiums and Gunner-

saurus could return. The club was furi-

ous.

It seemed, from the outside, that Özil

was trolling Arsenal. It is certainly possi-

ble that he was. It was just as clear that

for good or (mostly) ill, player and club

were inextricably bound together.

The club had tried to sell Özil in the

summer of 2018 and in the summer of

2019, and more recently it had been nego-

tiating with him over buying out most of

the remainder of his contract.

Özil, though, was unwilling to budge.

Why that might be — again — is a matter

of debate. Some at the club believe that,

newly married and with an infant daugh-

ter, he feels settled in London and does

not want to move. Many fans assume he

is simply happy to collect his multi-

million-dollar salary until his contract

expires next year, content to be paid not

to play soccer.

Together with the international inci-

dent his tweet provoked, and coupled

with the news media whispers — fiercely

denied by those close to him, and never

publicly stated by the club — that his atti-

tude is lax and his inspiration gone, Özil

seems to have developed a reputation.

Soccer as a whole seems to have decided

that the trouble he brings outweighs his

talent.

For months, a World Cup-winning

playmaker has been available at a heavy

discount. And yet nobody, certainly in

Europe, has been willing to take him on.

The Beginning of the End

Özil, 32, insists it is his “love” for Ar-

senal that keeps him there. He had op-

portunities to leave over the course of

this summer, according to a soccer exec-

utive with knowledge of the offers, but

none that appealed. The size of his salary

— and perhaps his reputation as trouble-

some — severely limits his options, even

as Arsenal is so keen to move him on that

it is prepared to pay two-thirds of his con-

tract to make it happen.

It was only in the past week that the

reality of his situation set in. He had al-

ready been left out of Arsenal’s squad for

this season’s Europa League — he live-

tweeted its game against Rapid Vienna

on Thursday night from home — when he

was told he would not be in the list for the

Premier League campaign, either.

With the transfer window closed until

January, it is, now, too late for him to

leave. Until then, at the earliest, he finds

himself in soccer exile: one of his own

making, of his club’s making, one that

there does not seem to have a way out.

He believes it started with the tweet.

Arsenal disputes that. Wherever it be-

gan, this is where it has led: 10 months

later, Mesut Özil has, effectively, been

erased.

A Star Wrote Boldly. Then He Was Erased.

Arsenal’s Mesut Özil, before a Premier League match in February,

above, and in the stands last year, left, lost much of his social media

presence after a tweet that denounced the Chinese government. His

relations with his club have deteriorated, and he no longer plays.

EDDIE KEOGH/REUTERS

OZAN KOSE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Uighur children, left, showed support for Özil during a demonstra-

tion last year in Istanbul. Özil, above right, angered Arsenal when he

offered to pay the salary of the man inside the costume of Gunner-

saurus, the mascot that was eliminated in a round of cost-cutting.

EDDIE KEOGH/REUTERS

Mesut Özil, a supporter of the

Uighurs, has paid a price for

angering China and his team.

By RORY SMITH

and TARIQ PANJA

DAVID KLEIN/REUTERS

Claire Fu contributed reporting from Bei-
jing.

.