Gunning for Greatness: My Life: With an introduction by Jose Mourinho Read online

  The director of football assured us that I would get more playing time because Lincoln, Schalke’s playmaker, was about to leave. The club anticipated that I’d be able to grow into this role. But no sooner had Lincoln gone to Galatasaray than Schalke announced the signing of Ivan Rakitić.

  The Croat is a wonderful guy and a great footballer. I would go so far as to say that he’s a friend. But when Schalke shoved him ahead of me, I was flummoxed. In our discussions with the Schalke bosses, which we’d felt had gone really well and been full of trust, there had been no talk of getting a replacement for Lincoln.

  I had thought that Andreas Müller and Mirko Slomka would trust me and rely on me. From the club’s viewpoint it may well have been a legitimate move to find another player for Lincoln’s position after his departure – he’d been in control of Schalke’s midfield for three years, scoring 31 goals in 113 games and assisting a further 34 – in case I wasn’t up to the job. But they should have been fair and honest about it, and told me beforehand. How could they express their trust in me while suddenly signing a rival in secret? That’s not how you deal with people.

  Unable to understand Schalke’s behaviour, we decided not to sign the contract that we’d agreed verbally straight away. We wanted to wait to see how the season developed and especially what role I’d play in the team – a perfectly reasonable course of action. We just wanted the certainty that Andreas Müller and Mirko Slomka would keep to their word and that in my second season at Schalke I’d be able to make significant progress, i.e. play much more. We weren’t asking for more money or an amendment to the contract.

  I was in the starting line-up against Stuttgart and set up Levan Kobiashvili’s goal that put us ahead 1–0. At half-time I was substituted. Against Dortmund I was on the bench until a few minutes before the end, whereas Rakitić played from the start. I only had brief outings in the Wolfsburg and Bayern fixtures too, but I was on the field for 87 minutes against Leverkusen. Next, against Arminia Bielefeld and MSV Duisburg, I was in the squad but remained on the bench both times. So, after eight matches I had played only 185 minutes of football, even though I didn’t think I’d been poor in training. Over the same period of time Rakitić had played 615 minutes – more than three times as much – in part, possibly, because the club had paid Basel about 5 million euros for him. I was free.

  Because of a torn and sprained ligament I missed the games against Rostock, Bremen and Hamburg, but then I assisted two goals against Hannover and one against Frankfurt. On 15 December I played 61 minutes against Nuremberg – my last outing in a Schalke jersey.

  I still hadn’t signed the contract. I didn’t have a great feeling about it and the promises that Slomka and Müller had made weren’t reflected in the time I was spending on the field. Given these circumstances, I wanted some time to myself to consider whether Schalke was still the right club for me. But while I was hesitating, my contract renewal was a done deal as far as Schalke were concerned. When I looked at my bank statement I could see that they were already paying me more money. As if everything had already been signed and sealed. I rang my father and agent straight away and told them about it. ‘Don’t touch the money,’ they advised me. ‘We’ll sort this out.’

  When they contacted Schalke and asked what was happening they were told that we’d had a handshake agreement on the extension to my contract. Surely we’d been happy with the offer? But we had never accepted it. We regarded the financial offer as more than fair; all we wanted was time to weigh up whether the contract was right from a footballing perspective.

  In the assumption that everything was fine – apart from the different interpretation of our discussions – I went to Istanbul on holiday during the season break. But nothing was fine. All of a sudden mudslinging began in the press, and I’ve never experienced anything like it since in my career.

  On 30 December the German Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag revealed the contract that Schalke had offered me, even reprinting four pages from it. ‘Schalke talent (19) turns down 1.52 million contract,’ went the headline. There was a definite negative undertone to the text: ‘An inconceivable offer for a footballer who’s only played 30 Bundesliga games in his career and hasn’t scored a goal.’ Later, it said, ‘A crazy offer that was only made to Özil because manager Mirko Slomka has a high regard for him.’

  I hadn’t noticed much of this high regard. But what I wanted to know most of all was how and why these documents had ended up in the paper. The only logical explanation that we could come up with was that Schalke themselves had wanted them published. It certainly wasn’t in our interest.

  The mudslinging continued the following day. This time Bild took up the story, and this article wasn’t neutral either, but clearly targeted me: ‘Money-grabbing young star playing games with Schalke.’ There was another article to the side with the headline, ‘When stars just can’t get enough’. It began, ‘Unfortunately, Özil’s attempt to rip his club off is not an isolated case.’

  I was at a total loss. I was 19 years old and being paraded in public. I had to learn the hard way that a football career was dependent on more than just talent, hard work and training. That you needed a network and people inside the club supporting you, who would leap to your defence in a power struggle like that. I had none of this. We were inexperienced and powerless, and didn’t know what was happening.

  When I turned up for training at Schalke at the beginning of January, Andreas Müller came stomping into the changing room. This wasn’t unusual; he often paid a visit, especially when he wanted to put a bomb under the team before an important match. I was expecting him to say a few words about our preparation for the second half of the season. But I was wrong.

  ‘Mesut Özil,’ he said, without looking at me, ‘is no longer going to play for Schalke. Not for the first team. Not for the seconds. Not even for the youth team. And he won’t be training with us either.’

  I thought I couldn’t be hearing him right. Why wasn’t I going to play for Schalke any more? Just because I hadn’t yet agreed to renew my contract? Just because I had been thinking about my future? Just because I’d dared to say ‘No’?

  As long as I nodded amiably and said ‘Yes’ to everything, they were nice to me and promised me everything under the sun. But now, from one moment to the next, they had turned into monsters who wanted to destroy my career. All of a sudden I was facing a pile of rubble. Facing the end. At the age of 19 I had to realise that as a footballer you’re just a commodity and at a stroke you can become the plaything of directors and managers.

  I looked around the dressing room helplessly. I was afraid for my future. I thought I was losing the opportunity of a lifetime. But nobody came to my assistance, even though there were so many seasoned players in the room. Our places were arranged according to the numbers on our backs. To my left sat Rafinha, with number 16, who would go on to play for Bayern. To my right was Darío Rodríguez, who wore number 18. Why were none of the old warriors siding with me? No Marcelo Bordon? No Mladen Krstajić? No Jermaine Jones? Nobody said a thing. Nobody defended me, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t even know who I should be angry with. My teammates, who were keeping silent? Or Müller, because he was embarrassing me so deviously in front of all my friends and colleagues?

  What I really wanted to do was to shout at Bordon, ‘Come on, defend me. Tell him that it’s not on what he’s saying, all that crap.’ Bordon was 32 at the time. He’d seen a lot in his life and what he said carried weight in our dressing room. I thought he really ought to have come to my aid. Now I know that the boys were obviously thinking of their own futures. Now I can understand their reticence. In this hard and uncompromising professional business they couldn’t risk their own careers just because another player had a problem with the coach and the director. But at the time I was terribly disappointed in them. And furious.

  Especially with Andreas Müller. While he stood in the changing room grinning after his speech, I had to cling onto my lock
er and stop myself from flying at him. The way he’d made me look like a fool was so unfair, so mean, so ugly. I didn’t have the words to hit back at him, especially not since I’d been taken off guard and unprepared. I was desperate to let my fists do the talking. But I wasn’t a thug, nor was I so stupid as to do him this favour.

  When I went home I was a different boy from the one I’d been that morning. Pure chaos reigned inside my head. One minute I wanted to cry, the next run away – away from this bloody town with its bloody football club. At another point I swore I would become the best footballer in the world, and straight after that considered never playing professional football again.

  But I didn’t have a whole range of options in my life. I couldn’t switch from one thing to another just like that, as in , ‘If it doesn’t work out with your medical studies, just become an architect or a pilot.’ The only chance I had to make something of my life, to escape our very basic existence, was to become a footballer.

  And now it felt like Mirko Slomka and Andreas Müller were trying to take this very opportunity away from me, ruining my chance of a better life. Just because I wouldn’t submit to their rules. I feared I was going to lose the thing that gave me the most pleasure. And they knew that I didn’t have the slightest chance of defending myself. Because who was I? A nobody. A talented no one! In this game I was powerless.

  Baris Ciftci, one of my best friends, often lent me his ear at this time. He didn’t mind me going over the same old stuff almost every day. ‘I don’t want to leave Gelsenkirchen,’ I would say. ‘This is where my friends are. You’re all here. I want to stay with my family. It might be normal for other people to change clubs. But not for me. What should I do?’

  Because we didn’t want anything said against us, I turned up at Schalke every day despite my training and playing ban. That’s what my father and manager had advised. ‘We mustn’t make ourselves vulnerable,’ they explained. So I went to the weights room, the only place I was tolerated. I was pumping iron in a place where I was being treated like a leper. I wasn’t even allowed to be treated by the physios.

  On one occasion Bordon came up to me and said, ‘Mesut, why don’t you just renew your contract? Everything will be fine again. All they want is the certainty that you’ll stay at Schalke. Things will get better for you at once.’ But since Müller’s little speech things weren’t that simple any more. Although I loved Gelsenkirchen and Schalke was the club dearest to my heart, I couldn’t just pretend that nothing had happened and happily stay with an employer who’d treated me so lousily.

  I kept myself fit half-heartedly. I pumped iron without any enthusiasm. Did a bit of running. I was keeping myself busy rather than doing any serious training. And my evenings got longer; I’d hang around with my mates until late at night. We played PlayStation. We chatted. Sometimes we went to a different house. I needed the distraction – it prevented me from going crazy.

  Was I living like a pro? No! Did I feel like a pro? No! Was I worried about my future? Yes, very much so.

  While I just hung out and went through hell, Andreas Müller made sure that the public pressure on me increased. He went to a New Year’s reception, one of the regular events that Schalke organised for its fans, in Letmathe in the Sauerland. Usually you don’t get more than small talk there – harmless stuff – but the fans are thrilled to be able to see their stars up close. Policy statements aren’t made at such events, nor will a manager announce any transfer news. But Müller used his visit to the Haus Lennestein pub to make the fans hostile towards me. ‘Mesut Özil,’ he said, ‘won’t play another game for Schalke 04.’

  Over the following days the press was full of stories about me. I was described as ‘scandalous’ and ‘a problem player’. Sport Bild took Schalke’s side, too – or at any rate its chief football writer, Jochen Coenen, wrote a piece that said, ‘Thank you, Schalke. Finally a club is cracking down and refusing to let players do as they please. Sure, Mesut Özil is one of the most talented footballers in Germany and has a great future ahead of him. But he hasn’t achieved great things yet. From now on he’s going to be seen as a money-grabber. And he should brace himself for the fact that this will hound him for the rest of his career. It’s his own fault.’

  At least the Frankfurter Allegemeine uncovered the club’s behaviour as a campaign against me – a political issue in which I didn’t stand a chance:

  Özil is now looked upon as a young professional who, after roughly thirty Bundesliga games, has lost all sense of moderation, has gone back on his word and is playing games with Schalke, as Bild puts it [. . .] The details of the contract were used as the basis for a campaign against the young player. No footballer of this age has ever been put under so much public pressure for this long. If this serves anyone besides the paper, it’s FC Schalke. Any club that cannot or will not hold on to a money-hungry player looks better in such circumstances.

  Every time I left the flat over the next few days to have a stroll through town I had to run the gauntlet. The people of Gelsenkirchen believed what the media and the club were saying. I can understand that they were annoyed. After all, they didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes. It got to the stage where I even received threats. People would ring our doorbell to insult us. Hate mail arrived in our letter box – but I can even sympathise with that today.

  People saw in me a young lad for whom an annual salary of 1.52 million euros was not enough. A young lad who, wanting more money, had gone back on his word. For someone living in Gelsenkirchen who’s a stranger to luxury, who continually has to struggle for survival and who has to save every cent to be able to afford a ticket to the stadium, that’s shameless behaviour. But of course this wasn’t how it really was.

  ‘Get me away from here,’ I told my agent one day. ‘I can’t take it any more.’ The club closest to my heart was causing me heartache. The sudden loss of affection was like your first girlfriend unexpectedly chucking you without any warning. In this winter of 2007–08 Schalke robbed me of my smile.

  As I lay in bed at night I prayed that this wouldn’t be the end of my career. But part of me thought it might be. On several occasions I said dejectedly to my brother Mutlu, ‘Perhaps God doesn’t want me to become a footballer. Perhaps I just have to come to terms with that. Maybe it’s my destiny.’

  Fortunately, however, alternatives to Schalke 04 soon emerged. Manchester United showed a keen interest in having me on loan. At the time they were the team to beat in England. In 2006–07 they’d won the Premier League by six points over Chelsea. Cristiano Ronaldo had scored 17 goals for Man United and Wayne Rooney 14. The title-winning squad also included Patrice Evra, Rio Ferdinand, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes.

  In his 2013 autobiography, Alex Ferguson revealed that Wayne Rooney had once criticised him for not having tried to sign me. In the book, Ferguson wrote, ‘Wayne said that we should have pursued Mesut Özil, who had joined Real Madrid from Werder Bremen. My reply was that it was none of his business who we should have gone for. I told him it was his job to play and perform. My job was to pick the correct teams.’

  Ferguson didn’t let on that he had actually tried to sign me earlier. And it hadn’t just been a half-hearted effort either. But somehow the thought of living in Manchester had frightened me. Ten hours by car, eight by train or two by plane from Gelsenkirchen. At any rate, 900 kilometres from my family, from all the people I loved. With whom I’d lived for the past 19 years in such cramped quarters.

  I wasn’t mature enough to make this big move. Not mature enough for the UK. I didn’t feel I was sufficiently independent yet, especially not for a country where I didn’t speak the language. I’d hardly ever been abroad. I’d once played for Schalke in Valencia. I’d been to Nancy, where we lost a UEFA Cup match 3–1. The U-19 European Championship had been held in Austria. But that was pretty much it as far as my trips abroad were concerned. At the time I only really felt comfortable in North Rhine-Westphalia. Manchester was too big for me. Too foreign. Too far aw
ay. Perhaps the spat with Schalke had also robbed me of a little of my self-confidence. In any case I soon told my agent he could say ‘No’ to Manchester United.

  While in the background we were trying to save my career, Schalke kept up its attack against me. Mirko Slomka, still my coach, said, ‘The player has to come to me or Andreas Müller and admit he was wrong.’ And he claimed, ‘If Mesut could make the decision himself, he’d certainly choose Schalke straight away. But he’s clearly not allowed to have his own opinion. He’s being controlled remotely.’

  In an interview, Schalke’s president, Josef Schnusenberg, also denied that I had my own will in these matters: ‘I don’t want to judge Mesut. The situation is clearly too much for him. He doesn’t realise the opportunities he could have had at Schalke 04. He would have had the support of the fans, received a solid training and not a bad sum of money. I think it’s a shame because he’s a super guy. I can only hope that he’ll find the right club now, for otherwise that will be the end for one of the most talented footballers in Germany today.’ Schnusenberg described the bond of trust as ‘completely broken’ and said – probably to score some points with the fans and make me out as the bogeyman – ‘It’s about what you’re prepared to put up with as a club and where the line has to be drawn. It’s also a signal to anyone looking to sign a contract with Schalke 04.’

  In the meantime I’d called Yıldıray Baştürk, who’d now gone to Stuttgart after stays at Bochum, Leverkusen and Berlin. He told me a bit about the club, the city and the manager, Armin Veh. I didn’t meet Veh in person, but my agent spoke with him. I did, on the other hand, have contact with Dieter Hecking, whose Hannover 96 team was in fifth place in the Bundesliga after the first half of the season. Hecking really went for it. ‘Do you know why you absolutely must come here?’ he asked me, looking deep into my eyes. ‘Because with me you’ll play thirty games a season. I’ll back you. I’ll let you play. I’m convinced you need to be allowed to play. And that’s what I’ll do. Believe me: at Hannover you’ll get more time on the pitch than at any other club.’