Germany’s General Manager, Oliver Bierhoff has said that Mesut Ozil should have been dropped from the Germany team ahead of the World Cup after meeting with Turkey president, Recep Tayyip Ergodan.

Ozil has been made the whipping boy of this failed German team, just like he was targeted as an Arsenal failure.

While Ozil certainly didn’t enjoy the best of tournaments, he was not the worst German player in the squad and not responsible for their exit.

In fact, there are a host of different areas you could address with the German team – such as their defence – that are more responsible for German’s awful showing than anything Mesut Ozil did (or didn’t do).

“We have never compelled players in the German national team to do something, but always tried to convince them when it comes to certain things,” Bierhoff told Friday’s edition of Die Welt newspaper.

“We did not succeed with Mesut. And in that respect, one would have had to consider whether to refrain from playing him.”

Across the Group Stages at this year’s World Cup, no player played more key passes than Mesut Ozil. In any team.

In terms of Germany player ratings across the tournament, 16 players in the squad received a lower overall rating than Ozil.

Some of those players include Timo Werner, Manuel Neuer, Jerome Boateng, Marco Reus, Ilkay Gundogan, Sami Khedira, and Thomas Muller.

Or, to put it another way, only three players were rated higher than Ozil in the whole Germany squad.

But sure, let’s blame it all on Mesut…