Mesut Ozil enjoyed one of the most illustrious careers any professional footballer could hope for. In his prime, he was arguably the best attacking midfielder, renowned for his incredible assists and knack for finding the back of the net on crucial occasions, be it for Real Madrid in Spain or for Arsenal in the Premier League.
Since retiring from professional football in 2023 due to a series of injuries, the former German international has been more active on social media, leveraging his fame to garner thousands of likes. In a recent banter round, Ozil took a swipe at his former club’s rival with a hilarious tweet that left users questioning if it was truly him.
Mesut Ozil makes hilarious joke over new blue card trial
In light of a recent report that a new blue card trial would be launched in global football, Mesut Ozil took to Twitter to take a hilarious jibe at Atletico Madrid, his former club’s cross-city rivals.
With this new card, any player who commits a serious foul could spend as many as ten minutes on the sidelines, which can have a big impact on the game and help reduce cynical fouls.
Mesut Ozil quickly quoted the tweet and responded, saying, “So Athletico Madrid will only play with six players then?”
Mesut Ozil was pointing out the doggedness of Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid side, who have been accused of deploying dark tactics to stop opponents from scoring. Simeone himself has been labeled the king of dark arts by the media, thanks to his incredibly strong defensive tactics.
Simeone, who once gave a funny nickname to Lionel Messi to ease the fears of his players, has eased up a little on his dark tactics, as his side is now one of the highest-scoring teams in La Liga with 45 goals in 23 games, so far this season.
A blue card is reportedly to be introduced in soccer
The game of soccer has undergone a lot of changes over the past few years, some of which have been welcomed by fans and players themselves. First, it was the introduction of longer additional time periods, which was implemented in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to help reduce time-wasting.
This way, if a team adopts a time-wasting tactic, they will be punished by the referee with a yellow card and a longer additional time period for the exact time they wasted during the game.
The most recent one, although it hasn’t been implemented yet, is the blue card. The game of soccer traditionally has two cards; yellow and red. The yellow card is given as a warning to a player who has committed a foul that’s deemed not too serious. The red card automatically sends off the player, which may even come when a player has been given the yellow card twice.
The blue card won’t be as serious as the red card, although it will make a team play without the culprit(s) for a ten-minute period. This means a team may have as many as two, three, or four men down, and it will have to play without them for at least ten minutes. The IFAB introduced this concept earlier, and it’s been trialled in grassroots-level English football.
