Mesut Ozil owes Arsenal a big performance and what a place this would be to produce it. Back in his native Ruhr Valley, a world champion, making his 50th appearance in the Champions League. The stage seems perfectly set.
Arsene Wenger accepts there will be intense scrutiny on his German trio, but the 80,000 fans who ignite Borussia Dortmund’s Westfalen-stadion with their high-visibility traditional yellow colours and an incessant din are unlikely to provide a generous homecoming for the World Cup heroes.
Ozil is a product of fierce local rivals Schalke, 30 miles to the west, in Gelsenkirchen, although it is nearly seven years since he left for Werder Bremen and Real Madrid before Arsenal decided to invest a club record £42.5million in his talents.
Dortmund Jurgen Klopp swerved the chance last night to extol his qualities or to massage his confidence on the eve of such a vital fixture. ‘Even if he is a German player and a national, I don’t want to say anything about this,’ said Klopp. ‘That’s not an issue for me.’
Ozil is by some distance Arsenal’s most expensive signing and his flickering performances have been exposed by the instant impact of Alexis Sanchez, who arrived from Barcelona this summer for a mere £30m.
As Sanchez proved when he ripped off his shirt after scoring against Manchester City on Saturday, he is more muscular and robust and in this regard better equipped to resist the rigours of the English game.
Ozil’s more slender frame and subtle skills often seem in danger of being obliterated by the chaotic blur of the Premier League. Wenger, however, insists his contributions are too easily overlooked and he remains confident the 25-year-old will be successful in north London.
Perhaps it will be in Europe, in Champions League football where he starts to show his true value. With defensive issues piling up, this is one of those games when the Arsenal boss could do with his many creative forces combining to seize the initiative.
‘They did the best job with the transfers this summer,’ said Klopp, when asked about Arsenal’s summer spree. ‘The squad has great stability and they are able to play the football Arsene Wenger wants to see, but they are even more serious because they have all options to close any spaces and are quick on the transition. They have players like Danny Welbeck and Ozil and Santi Cazorla, who has not played so much but shows great qualities when he plays.’
Last year, Wenger left Dortmund with three points after a stout defensive display and a goal from Aaron Ramsey, but this time it may have to be a different approach if they are to take the victory that would give them early control of Group D.
Klopp’s team are familiar foes. It will be the third time these clubs have met in the last four years in the group stages. The Bundesliga runners-up are riddled with injuries which have ruled out important players such as Ilkay Gundogan, Marco Reus, Jakub Blaszczykowski and Mats Hummels.
Robert Lewandowski moved on to Bayern in the summer but Shinji Kagawa has lifted spirits since his return from Manchester United, scoring on his debut against Freiburg on Saturday. ‘It was sensational,’ said Klopp. ‘I was kind of surprised he was on the market once again. Maybe he didn’t fit in. We saw the chance and took it.’
It has been Arsenal’s failure to top the group which led them into the clutches of Bayern Munich and an exit at the first knockout stage in each of the last two years. ‘The first game will show where we’re at,’ said Gunners centre back Per Mertesacker. ‘The group is tough and we have to show from the start we are ready and focused.’
This Champions League will end in Germany, with a final in Berlin in June and, for three of the four English clubs involved, it starts against opposition from the Bundesliga.
The nation is on a football high after their triumph in Brazil and Wenger will hope to enjoy some of the benefit with Ozil, Lukas Podolski and Mertesacker thriving on the added motivation of a home final.
Arsenal’s Germans played more in Brazil’s than Dortmund’s, but an ankle injury ruled Ozil out of the homecoming games against Argentina and Scotland earlier this month, and Mertesacker quit international football after the World Cup.
‘It is always a pressure when you come back to your country,’ said Wenger. ‘The attention is a bit bigger, that’s for sure. Wojciech Szczesny would be under scrutiny in Poland.
‘It’s not such an advantage for us to have three German players because we know Dortmund anyway. We play them each year.
‘The World Cup final in Rio was on July 13 and they came back to training on August 11. That means I gave them one month of holiday. It was important for me that they would recover. They have been training for one month and haven’t reached 100 per cent physically yet. But they’re close.’ – Daily Mail