Mesut Ozil And The Elegance Of Minimalism, By Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht For 11Freunde

How many teams have a player who is so beautiful to watch on the ball that a professor of literature writes an elegy on him?

He manages sublime moments on the ball of a scarcely tangible substance.
His passes out of nothing are black holes in the game.
A tribute.

TEXT Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht           ILLUSTRATION Hendrink Jonas



Translated by jenny_jenkins

After July 4, 1954 - I was six years and 19 days old at the time - I was never really aware of the National team until the last 16 of the World Cup in South Africa, which I was following because I was on vacation in the Caribbean. There are moments from those games of this new national team with its different faces that I will remember until the end of my life. In the middle of these unforgettable moments are the movements of Mesut Özil - and also his face, that did not remind me of Nemo's face - his 10 friends from Real Madrid are wrong on that one - but instead, of the face of a Turkish prince out of a fantasy from the 19th Century.
( Of the elegant and the sublime...Collapse )

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