Ozil was one of the breakout stars of this summer’s World Cup, and as such the 21 yr-old is garnering interest from big clubs outside Germany. He’s in the last year of his contract with Werder Bremen, a side that finished 10th in the Bundesliga last season (though they had top 3 finishes the five season prior to last).
Bremen want to resign the playmaker, but it seems crazy considering he’d draw around €20M for a transfer fee, and if he doesn’t extend his contract with Bremen he’ll be able to take his leave next summer on a free transfer. Better to take a page from Lyon’s book, and sell the young star at a massive profit, rather than try and hold on. With the money they’d make from Ozil, they could buy 5 young promising Turks and a couple new first team players to strengthen the squad short and long term.
Somewhat tangentially: Lyon are simply the best at finding underrated (thus cheap) players, developing them, and selling them when high-paying clubs come in with their wallets open. Check out the book Soccernomics for a really nice breakdown of Lyon’s strategy in the transfer market.
Unless you’ve been following Santos—maybe on the trail of Robinho—you may have so far missed the next great midfield prospect in global footbal: Paulo Henrique aka “Ganso”. He’s on many a team’s radar and there are bound to be