by Mesut Özil
3
The world of football isn’t a talent show
The most important thing is a firm grounding
At the start of my career I felt as if someone had pressed the double speed button on a DVD player. So many new impressions. So many new experiences. So many changes in such a short period of time. When I moved to the Schalke 04 youth team nothing was as it had been before. The first six months I spent there felt like a month.
In summer 2005 we went to a training camp in Billerbeck, 70 kilometres away, where we stayed in a hotel – I’d never seen anything like it. It was in the middle of a park, on top of a hill, with views over the town.
After we’d checked into our rooms, our coach Norbert Elgert had us assemble in one of the conference rooms. ‘The truth is, a youth hostel would be good enough for you lot,’ he began. The mumbling in the room stopped at once. ‘You’ve really no business being here at all. No U-19 player needs luxury like this. But we took the conscious decision to bring you here. We’re here to show you what’s possible in your career. What you can achieve. How nicely you can live if you give it your all. My family has worked very hard and now we can afford to stay in hotels like this. As successful professionals you can have this too. But what’s crucial to me is that you appreciate it. I want you to understand our gesture in the right way. Never take this for granted. Be friendly to the staff. I don’t want to hear from any employee here that a single one of you has been snooty, arrogant or unfriendly. That you didn’t say hello to the cleaners. Show some humility. The achievements of a professional footballer are never greater than those of a doctor, journalist or a cleaning lady. Have respect and be grateful that you’ve had the chance to stay here.’
After this Elgert gave us two other pieces of advice to remember: ‘Your hands can be in the sky, reaching for the stars, but make sure both your feet remain on the ground,’ and ‘We at Schalke are firm in our belief that apprentices have to start by earning everything. You begin as an apprentice, then you’re a craftsman and only right at the end, after lots and lots of hard work, are you a master craftsman.’
At Rot-Weiss Essen I’d sat in on lots of team meetings. But to be talked to like this was completely new. I liked it, just as I liked the idea that one day I might be able to afford to stay in hotels like this.
I’d never stayed in a hotel before. Up until then this world had been totally alien to me. We never went on holiday with the family in summer quite simply because we didn’t have the money. I’d practically never left Gelsenkirchen. The furthest I’d been was to visit my grandparents in Müllheim an der Ruhr. A 29-kilometre journey taking the fast road. I used to think that Gelsenkirchen was a world metropolis. The city seemed so big to me – I felt that there was no end to it. Today that’s changed of course.
After the summer holidays I’d always sit in a semi-circle with the other children and all of us had to tell the class about the best thing that had happened over the summer. One after the other they all talked about their holidays. Someone had been in a hotel in Spain. Other children had stayed in villas in France or Turkey. There were even children who’d flown with their parents to countries I’d never heard of. Me, on the other hand, I never had anything to say. Or at least I couldn’t talk about wonderful trips and hotel stays.
After the meeting Norbert Elgert assigned us a task. We had to come up with our own team credo, set out on a placard what we wanted to achieve together and how we imagined we would play. He also asked us to devise a list of ‘penalties’. ‘There are always rules in a community,’ Elgert said. ‘You must determine these yourselves, not me. You must stipulate the code of behaviour you think’s important.’
When we’d finished he couldn’t stop laughing. We had agreed on 15 or 20 points along with corresponding fines. Forgetting your shin pads was punished by a fine of 20 euros, arriving late – if I recall correctly – would cost you 100 euros. As a group we quickly agreed on the sums. But all Elgert said was, ‘You can’t be serious about the amounts of those fines. We pay you a few hundred euros pocket money per month so you can concentrate on your careers rather than having to get a job alongside school and football. This is the only opportunity you’ve got to save money so you can learn to drive. Do you really want to impose a fine of a hundred euros if someone turns up late? That’s far too much. Your pocket money will soon be all gone. How about we halve the fines? They’ll still hurt.’
A few days later he invited me for a one-on-one chat. Every player on the camp had conversations like this at some point. Elgert wanted to get to know me better as a person, find out about my dreams and ambitions. As he reminded me some time later, my answer back in summer 2005 was: ‘I’m going to start by becoming a professional at Schalke. And later I’ll play in Spain, for Barcelona or Real Madrid.’
Elgert replied that he approved of dreaming big. ‘I like that,’ he said. ‘But can you imagine what I’m going to expect of you from now on? I’m going to keep a very close eye on someone who says they’re going to play for Real Madrid or FC Barcelona. You’ve got talent. But talent alone will only get you to the threshold. To actually go through the door you need the right character, the right attitude – you have to be smart and work hard.’ After that he added, ‘Do you know what the problem is today? Everyone wants to be something, but nobody wants to make the effort to get there.’
Then he asked me if I knew about the TV reality show, Deutschland sucht den Superstar (Germany Seeks a Superstar) . At the time the programme was still quite new; there had only been two series. ‘One good performance and these people are orbiting the earth,’ Elgert said. ‘Just because they’ve pulled it off once they suddenly think they’re the greatest. But there’s no firm grounding to their success. And that’s the most important thing of all for a great career. Awaiting you up there in the firmament of your career are so many things you have to be prepared for. Only a firm grounding will bring you lasting success. That’s why I advise every player to climb the ladder of success slowly. Of course, if you’ve got what it takes you can occasionally take two steps at a time. That’s perfectly possible and I don’t want to stop anyone from doing so. But you should not let yourself shoot from the bottom to the top rung. Because the quicker you get into orbit, the quicker you’ll be plummeting back down.’
I nodded. I understood the core of what Elgert was trying to say. But I’d also been told often enough that it was important to have self-confidence if you wanted to be successful. How did these two things go together? I asked him. He replied, ‘You need self-confidence or you don’t have a chance. But with all the self-confidence you have, you must also have a realistic self-awareness. You should feel as strong as an ox, but I still expect you to estimate your abilities accurately rather than totally overestimate them. It’s no contradiction to be humble and impatient at the same time. The key to success is to be patiently impatient.’
While I was still mulling over these words of Elgert’s, he continued, ‘If the world collapses for a budding professional footballer because he doesn’t achieve his ambition immediately, that’s crap. But it’s also crap if a budding professional footballer doesn’t care that he’s not making progress and just thinks apathetically, “Oh well, I’ll achieve my ambition some day”.’
What Elgert said has meant a lot to me. Elgert was absolutely the key coach in my career. He saw something in me that others hadn’t before. He always wanted the best for me and was always there for me too. I learnt so much from him. I was desperate to play – every time I wanted to know what I could do better. But often I ran around the pitch like a headless chicken. It was from Elgert that I first learned that something like tactics existed at all. Although many people will shake their heads at this comparison and refuse to accept it, Norbert Elgert was very similar to José Mourinho. He always said what he thought. He was never satisfied! He taught me the most valuable lessons and prepared me for my professional career. For example, in my first weeks in the Schalke U-19 side he kept grumbling that I
wasn’t running back enough. ‘If I don’t see more of that from you,’ he threatened, ‘you’ll be on the bench.’
But Norbert Elgert wasn’t the only one trying to further my career. Especially at the start, blokes I’d never met kept cropping up with grand plans. Telling me who should advise me in the complex business of football. Or advising me as to whether I should switch to another club. When you’re young, in particular, you’re forever meeting people who are ready to offer their help and promise you the earth. But if your rise is too rapid you can get burned before things have really taken off. Life isn’t a Hollywood film, and nobody is gifted lasting success. Which means that as a young player you should always think very carefully about which offers you accept and which you turn down.
In January 2006 I went with Schalke 04 to Sindelfingen for the Mercedes Benz Junior Cup, a youth tournament that has taken place every year since 1991. We were being watched by Dunga, Heiko Herrlich, Ralf Rangnick and Guido Buchwald. Joachim (Jogi) Löw was there too, watching me whirl around the pitch. Teams from all across the world had come to Sindelfingen. There was even a team from Vietnam. Because those boys had never seen snow before, they didn’t, at first, dare get out of the bus and into the mass of white flakes.
Before the tournament began all the teams went into the hall in turn. Like the parade of countries at the Olympic Games, we entered to the accompaniment of African musicians drumming and lasers flashing around the room.
I was wearing number 11 on my jersey. It looked more like a sack, however, as it drooped down from my narrow shoulders.
In the group stage we played Galatasaray of Istanbul, Porto Alegre, Werder Bremen and Borussia Dortmund, finishing top of our group without being defeated. In the quarter-finals we beat the U-19 South African national team 6–4 on penalties. In the semi-final we defeated Werder Bremen, again on penalties. In the final we won 3–0 against Basel and so were champions. My teammate Ralf Fährmann was chosen as the player of the tournament. I was the leading goal scorer with five, and afterwards I gave my first ever interview. ‘It’s a great feeling to be the top team,’ I said. And: ‘It’s nice to have scored five goals. I’m very pleased.’ Only a few words, but still.
As well as catching the media’s attention through the tournament, I caught the eye of other clubs too. For example, Thomas Strunz of the 1996 European Championship winning side and former Bayern Munich player, got in touch with my father. He had just been appointed manager at VfL Wolfsburg and was desperate to sign me. So my father went to Wolfsburg and listened to what Strunz had to offer. They sat in his office on the second floor of the VW stadium. You get a view from there of the stadium car park, the Mittelland Canal and the railway line to Berlin. It somehow wasn’t a place for dreams and visions. It didn’t inspire anything in my father, as he said when he got back. All very different from Real Madrid some years later. From the room where we signed the contract with Los Blancos you can look directly into the Santiago Bernabéu.
Strunz was a five-times champion with Bayern Munich. He had won the German Cup and the UEFA Cup and now wanted to bring that winning mentality to Wolfsburg. ‘With talents like Mesut we want to create a new identity here,’ Strunz said. ‘Wolfsburg have only been in the Bundesliga for eight years and yet the club is already a brand, it stands for integrity and continuity. Wolfsburg has already been in the UEFA Cup once, four times in the UI Cup and has never been in danger of relegation.’ It was an unbelievable development, he declared, and asked, ‘How long did it take Leverkusen to get to this stage?’
My father listened, unimpressed, as he already knew all the facts. And yet he liked the confident way Strunz talked. ‘Wolfsburg led the table eight times this year,’ the manager continued. ‘The team thrashed both Schalke and Stuttgart. No one has to feel humble here.’ The club had enormous potential, he argued, ‘and with Mesut on board there’s lots we can achieve. Why should we be satisfied with fifth in the table or worse? We want more. And we can get more. Only if you aim high are you going to get anywhere.’
Strunz immediately offered us a professional contract, something I didn’t yet have. He also promised my father a job at VfL Wolfsburg. And he suggested that our entire family should move to Wolfsburg – with the club covering the costs of our move, of course.
It was a flattering offer, which all of us gave some thought to. But at the time I didn’t want to move away from Schalke. Norbert Elgert was such an important support for me. Gelsenkirchen was my home. It was where I was born and grew up, and where I wanted to take my first steps as a professional footballer. I loved Schalke; it was my absolute favourite club in Germany. So we declined.
The conversation with Thomas Strunz was one of many that my father would have over the coming weeks and months. Since my first few games in the Schalke U-19 side and my appearance in Sindelfingen, people offering advice were beating a path to my door. Football agents kept contacting my father and telling him what an exceptionally gifted footballing talent I was, and what a great future would be awaiting me with their help.
Whenever these strangers came into our flat and sat in our living room I found it very funny. Some wore suits and parked their big cars right outside the house. I hope it doesn’t get touched, I’d sometimes think, expecting some neighbour to scratch the bodywork out of envy. It was a not uncommon dare amongst some of the kids in our area, though I was always too much of a coward to do it as I was scared of being arrested by the police.
‘If I represent Mesut,’ one of them said grandiosely, ‘in three years’ time he’ll be playing for Bayern. Or for any other club you like. I can take you anywhere.’ Somehow the agents’ promises were all fairly similar. Each one of them claimed to have the best contacts to the greatest clubs in the worlds. They had impeccable rhetorical skills – these strangers in our living room we knew nothing about. Were they storytellers? Pied Pipers? Or were they really as influential and successful as they claimed to be?
I couldn’t judge that. I saw the cars, the chunky watches that some of them displayed ostentatiously by rolling up their sleeves. And I kept hearing ‘Manchester this’, ‘Arsenal that’, ‘Bayern Munich tomorrow’, ‘Real Madrid the day after that’.
This is why I left it up to my father to make the decision. We were desperate to have Norbert Elgert act as my agent, but he declined because, as he told us, it wasn’t compatible with his job at Schalke. So unfortunately we had to look for someone else.
Once, in a state of excitement, my father gathered the family together. He’d met another agent, and this one, my father said, had offered us 50,000 euros to look after my career. An unethical offer, but one we couldn’t turn down just like that. After all, we weren’t big money earners. For us, 50,000 euros would have changed our lives on the spot. With that money my parents could have paid the rent on our flat for six years or bought a new car. To earn 50,000 euros my mother would have had to work 12 hours a day for several years.
In spite of this we rejected the offer. My father thought the idea of ‘selling me’, if you want to call it that, strange somehow. Who knows what course my career might have taken if we’d placed ourselves in the hands of that man? I’ve no idea if he would have acted in my interests, or whether he would have encouraged only the transfers that were most lucrative to him.
For a short while Roger Wittmann was my agent. But I never had the feeling that I was really important to him. Then we let Dr Michael Becker look after my affairs. At the time he was representing the captain of the German national side, Michael Ballack, as well as Bernd Schneider and Oliver Neuville, both of whom were also playing for Germany. This lawyer’s motto was ‘mediocrity sucks’, which appealed to us. Becker did not remain my agent for long, however. When he gave me a Michael Ballack jersey the same feeling crept over me as with Wittmann. I couldn’t understand the gesture at all. What was I going to do with a Ballack jersey? I didn’t want one. I wasn’t a fan! I wanted Michael Becker to represent my interests, give me advice, help me carve out a great career. F
or that I needed a man who saw something in me, not a Ballack jersey.
I don’t think it’s bad to have switched agents several times over my career. You grow as a person. You grow as a personality and a footballer. You change, you mature. Perhaps after two, three or four meetings you get the impression that the agent sitting opposite is the right one. But after the fifth meeting you realise that, although you get along with him, you’re not going to progress any further. As a footballer you have only one career and you mustn’t ruin it with ill-considered decisions. That’s why we terminated our relationship with Dr Michael Becker fairly quickly.
While negotiations about my future were going on in the background, I was trying to play as good football as possible. My first season with Schalke was almost over. In early summer 2006 we were in the semi-final of the German U-19 championship. Our next opponents were Hertha BSC Berlin, with a certain Jérôme Boateng. We were soundly defeated in the capital 2–0. The dream of a championship title was on the verge of being shattered. Only a 3–0 victory in the return game at home could save us. But after the hiding we’d had in Berlin, none of us players really believed we could do it.
When we’d changed, the dressing-room door flew open and Norbert Elgert burst in. In his hand was a golden dumbbell, which he flung to the floor in the middle of the room. ‘Listen,’ he said, and everyone turned their eyes to him. ‘I’m going to tell you a story, a true story. I was a qualified fitness instructor and in this capacity I visited the FIBO, the trade fair for fitness and bodybuilding. There was a competition – the unofficial German fitness championship – which I took part in. A fitness pentathlon with bench presses, bench jumps, sit-ups, pull-ups and three minutes’ fast cycling. Fifty participants. The first ten made it through to the final round. I was eleventh, about to be eliminated. I was hanging on the bar, thinking, “I can’t do another pull-up”. My arms were burning and my head was saying, “Give up. You’ll be out. The others are better.” But I didn’t listen. I fought my inner voice. And kept telling myself, “I’m not giving up. Never! Sod you!” ’ And then he did actually manage one more pull-up. And another, and another. ‘I gave my inner bastard a kick up the arse,’ Elgert said, as we listened with bated breath. ‘Have a guess where I ended up coming?’ He nudged one of our players and demanded an answer.
