Okay Arsenal fans, I am well aware that when I compare our very own creative star Mesut Ozil with the Barcelona and Argentina international forward Lionel Messi I am going to have to ignore one very important factor if the German is going to come out favourably. Messi has all sorts of talents but it is the incredible goal scoring on top of them all that makes him the best player in the world, and Ozil is not even close in that regard.
But that is not really what I am getting at here. When I say that Ozil could be the Gunners’ version of the man about to win the Ballon D’Or it is not their ability I am thinking of, although if our number 11 was not a special player I would not even have started.
One of the other remarkable things about Messi is the amount of football he plays. As long as the little Argentinean is not injured he plays just about every minute of every game and funnily enough he hardly ever picks up an injury. For a player fouled as much as Messi that is quite something and I think it has to do with his appetite for the game, something that magical Mesut has been showing.
Ozil also used his last injury lay off to work on his physical strength and since then, touch wood, he has stayed fit. He has probably played more minutes and covered more ground than any other Arsenal player this season and yet he was the main man again in the Bournemouth match, so there is no sign of him running out of steam like we saw with Alexis Sanchez.
Could we have our own version of Messi, in the sense that Ozil can just keep playing and at the very peak of his powers?