On Wednesday afternoon, reports and claims started circulating that Mesut Ozil wanted to leave Arsenal and return to his previous club Real Madrid.
We went looking for them and it was started by Germany’s SportBild. First the good news, they believe a new Arsenal deal for Ozil is very likely.
Then comes the bad news, they say that doesn’t necessarily mean Ozil will stay at the club forever. Well, yes.
Ozil is said to be very happy where he is, but he wants trophies… like all Arsenal fans then.
Should those trophies not come then SportBild reckon Ozil would grasp at the chance of a return to Real Madrid, a club they say got into the footballer’s heart.
SportBild aren’t very clear on how they’ve built that idea. Originally, the claim was part of a much wider article in their magazine this week, with all kinds of speculation about different Premier League clubs.
Within that context, and as it’s presented, SportBild saying Ozil has Real Madrid in his heart and would like a return looks most probably to be an assumption, an opinion, rather than the result of someone speaking to the player about it recently.
Equally, it may be easy to make the assumption that there’s too much bad blood left from Ozil’s Arsenal transfer to consider a return to Madrid. The media friendly to the Spanish club were incredibly harsh on Ozil and his father, leaving the latter to threaten legal action.
Madrid themselves were annoyed with the whole thing and the reaction from some to an Ozil sale. Florentino Perez was stung by a backlash, and then the media again went after Ozil, almost as if they’d been encouraged.