Mesut Ozil has reportedly refused to join Saudi Arabia’s Al-Nassr for £5 million even though he is no longer wanted at his current club, Arsenal football club.
The 31-year-old German midfielder has less than a year on his current contract with Arsenal and there is no possibility of staying at the North London club beyond June 30, 2021.
Arsenal have said that they want to see their once priceless midfielder leave the club even though he is still under contract. But Mesut Ozil who reportedly earns £350,000-per-week at the club seems uninterested to leave the club at this point in his dwindling football career.
Ozil has never been shy to proclaim how he is still part of the Arsenal set up even though the coach of the club, Mikel Arteta, has never allowed him to kick a ball in any competitive match since June.
Hence, it was not a surprise when reports started making the rounds that the former Real Madrid star turned down a £5 million transfer deal a Saudi Arabian side Al-Nassr offered him recently.
Why is Arsenal so desperate to get rid of Mesut Ozil?
When it comes to playing football on the pitch, Mesut Ozil is not such a bad player that Arsenal would want him to go so badly. The 31-year-old German midfielder has scored 44 goals and has provided 77 assists in 254 matches since he joined Arsenal from Real Madrid in 2013.
However, based on his age, his off the pitch engagements, and the drop in form in recent times, Arsenal football club are ready to sacrifice him to cut cost and save money for more pressing needs.
In the light of this, Arsenal tried as much as possible to get a buyer for the versatile midfielder throughout the 2020 summer transfer window all to no avail. Mesut Ozil had interest from clubs in Major League Soccer and clubs in Asia but none of that worked out for Arsenal as the player insisted that he wanted to see out his contract.
According to Athletic’s David Ornstein, Arsenal was making all the effort to get rid of Ozil during the summer transfer window not only because of his weekly wages which was already choking the club financially but because the club would pay the midfielder £8 million for staying at the club for as long as he has done. The money which is a clause on his contract with Arsenal was due in September 2020.
Besides that, Arsenal had to support Mikel Arteta to sideline him because of the appearance fee the club must always pay to the midfielder anytime he plays a competitive match.
Above all, if Ozil continues to stay at Arsenal, he will keep earning £350,000 without doing anything, and at the end of his contract in June 2021, he would walk out of the club as a free agent, meaning that Arsenal would not get anything in return. This is what Arsenal would not want to see happen but the world is watching to see who will blink first between the club and Mesut Ozil.
Mesut Özil under Mikel Arteta. pic.twitter.com/VYkelNlVDi
— William (fan account) (@OzilThings) March 10, 2020
