Mesut Ozil provides 1400 school meals per day in North London | OneFootball

Mesut Ozil has praised Marcus Rashford for his charitable efforts as the German continues his own philanthropy by providing 1400 meals for school children in Islington.

2015 was also the year Ozil was named German Player of the Year and won the German Football Ambassador Public Award.

Rashford was recently awarded an MBE for his campaign to get the government to help feed children in English schools. It is a cause that has been picked up by all the major papers. Rashford has been thrust to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness at a time when the Tory government seems more willing than usual to let the less fortunate die off.

Mesut Ozil, meanwhile, has just been quietly getting on with things while being constantly slated by large sections of the media:

Marcus Rashford doing good but that’s not the point

What Rashford is doing is a good thing, although it is not a good thing that we need a footballer to help feed kids, a point that often gets lost as people rush to praise Rashford. I’m sure the 22-year-old would much rather there was no need for him to campaign so children can have the very basics needed to survive in what is supposed to be an advanced society.

Even the Daily Mail have got behind Rashford, despite the fact that he’s black and writers for the front half of the paper are probably, as we speak, preparing takedown pieces just in case he gets a bit ahead of himself and needs put back in his place alongside Raheem Sterling.

But’s he’s also English and that matters in the UK English media.

Ozil’s causes aren’t quite as popular as Rashford’s. There was no call for any awards or wall-to-wall coverage when Ozil used his World Cup winnings, for instance, to pay for surgery for multiple children in Brazil to say thank you for the country’s hospitality.

When Ozil spoke out against the treatment of Uighur Muslims in China, he was persecuted to protect access to the Chinese market. There was little said about Ozil helping to feed 100,000 refugees at 16 camps across Turkey and Syria, or the 1,000 operations he paid for in 2019.

Time and time again, Ozil has used his platform to speak out about things most tell him he should shut up about. Even his pandemic paycut refusal was an attempt to seek clarity and safeguard jobs at Arsenal by asking the club to prove publicly they would use the money to save jobs. If they did that, Ozil’s agent said, the German would happily give up an even larger share of his wages.

Arsenal showed him nothing and then showed the rest of us he was right to be sceptical when they made 55 staff (and then some) redundant.

None of this is to detract from what Rashford is doing. It’s merely offered as a way of showing how important the press are when it comes to the general perceptions of players.

Ozil tweeted the United star to congratulate him on his campaign:

To many, this was simply Ozil’s PR machine. To those who have paid attention to what Ozil actually does, not just what the press say he’s doing (or not doing as tends to be the case with Ozil), this was just Ozil being Ozil.

Mesut Ozil’s paycut refusal

Ozil’s wages have been the source of a constant conversation ever since Arsenal threw £350kpw at him in a desperate bid to get him to stay. Since then, he has been treated as though that was his fault.

Ozil’s agent, Dr Erkut Sogut, apparently refused to comment, which is most unlike him as he likes to clarify things about his client, especially when it comes to money.

This story was, of course, spun as Ozil being greedy but there were a few specifics missed that I think are important to highlight:

If your boss wanted you to take a significant paycut while seemingly still making a large profit, wouldn’t you want to see actual figures before you agreed?

Ozil’s stance was hardly unreasonable, regardless of what you think of how much Arsenal pay him, and was certainly not what the Mail and Mirror tried to portray it as

Arsenal said they would pay the full 12.5% back if the club qualify for the Champions League in the next two seasons, 7.5% if they get into the Europa League and nothing if they fail. There is also a £100k bonus pool.

It should set off alarm bells that this was more about cutting the wage bill than navigating the current crisis, but it is no surprise to see Ozil being made the scapegoat once again.