Thread by @_Zeets

You know, what I loved so much about Mesut Ozil at his best was the sense of possibility that existed whenever he played. Something that you notice more when he's absent than when he's on the field and his flaws are easy to latch onto.

Even when things went well without him, it seemed so standard and systematic. There was a plan and the players executed it well. The journey to goal is straightforward. The practiced patterns are brought to life in the match. It's great, but you can almost predict everything.

But for example, Ozil used to dummy the ball a lot. He's receiving the ball from underneath, and he runs past it so the pass goes to a teammate above him. Or he fakes to the pass and then curls around the defender, and then suddenly a set of non-trained combinations open up.

Or he had that great playmaker ability of not only playing great passes but dictating the pass that came afterwards. He was so good in his early Arsenal years, his Real Madrid and Germany time. His passes on counters would make his teammates assists so much easier.

And the greatness of that is that it makes his teammates seem so much smarter and perceptive than they might be. So when he's gone, they do the standard things that they're good at, and while you can't quantify it, you can see that there's something missing. It feels duller.

He had so many things he would do that weren't really anything in the grand scheme but was entertaining. At a level where everyone is generally good technically, he had touches and passes that made everyone else look remedial. And he was in his zone, he seemed so much smarter.

For some time he really exemplified that Arsenal identity of football being team and individual artistic expression. It's funny that Wenger used to be criticized for it because it's still a source of pride as an Arsenal fan and what the idea of the club still is.

Anyway, what can you do at the end of the day?

"Everything moves on
just the way it is
heading toward memories"