Mesut Ozil took the captain’s armband as Germany drew 2-2 with Australia on Wednesday night.

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Mesut Ozil captains Germany

In fairly low key affair, Özil wasn’t too involved.

Joachim Löw’s world champions tested a new 3-4-1-2 with Özil stationed behind two ‘false‘ strikers in Marco Reus and Mario Götze.

The first half saw Özil almost credited with a pre-assist, only for Marco Reus’s effort to be ruled out for offside. The most entertaining moment was arguably when we got a good view of how good Özil’s English (or should I say French) is, as he impolitely disagreed with the officials when he himself was flagged offside and shouted ‘F off’.

I’m not sure what’s worse, swearing on a football pitch or being in Germany early when given permission by your club manager, but I’m sure he’ll receive yet more unwarranted criticism form some quarters.

Özil conducted quietly as ever, but Germany failed to find any real rhythm throughout the game.

The last 20 minutes saw Özil captain the side, following the substitution of Sami Khedira.

Arsenal forward Lukas Podolski, currently on loan and struggling to impress at Inter Milan, came on shortly after and managed to score Germany’s second to level the scores with a cool finish and looked more lively than usual.

A couple more half chances went begging, but he certainly looked like a man playing for his place.

Arsenal fans will be relieved to hear that Özil played the full 90 minutes unscathed. Despite not doing too much on the evening, keeping players fit is certainly the priority during international break from our perspective.

With Philipp Lahm, Miroslav Klose, and our very own Per Mertesacker retiring from international duty following World Cup success last summer, Özil and Podolski are now very much senior figures for ‘Die Mannschaft’.

Congratulations to Mesut for captaining his country, and to Lukas for netting his 48th international goal!

In other international news, Nicklas Bendtner scored a hattrick for Denmark as they defeated the USA 3-2. True story.

Chuba Akpom also scored for England’s u20’s against Mexico.

Reports from France claim that Laurent Koscielny and Olivier Giroud will start tomorrow’s game for France on the bench.