Piers Morgan, Mesut Ozil comments completely off the mark

The controversial ITV presenter and Arsenal fan Piers Morgan ranted about Mesut Ozil’s rejection of a 12.5% pay cut. Said tirade was very ill-informed.

Piers Morgan is an incredibly controversial figure in the world of entertainment and moreover, the entire sensible section of the planet as a whole. He is a die-hard Arsenal fan though and for that reason, when he says something that pertains to the Gunners or one of the players within the squad, his opinion generally holds some weight.

Recently, Morgan came out with a damning assessment in regards to Mesut Ozil reportedly being one of three players to reject the club-proposed 12.5% pay cut.

Morgan tenaciously stated: “Some of the players, who are on far less money than you, [Ozil] are taking a 12.5% pay cut, a miniscule drop in the ocean for you, and you don’t want to do it because you want to see how the financial situation plays out…”

Morgan then blasted Ozil by claiming he is “disgraceful” in his act of rejecting the 12.5% cut in pay. In my opinion, Morgan is horribly off the mark and the massive tirade he came out with his massively ill-informed.

Ozil is one of the most giving and charitable players in world football and the fact that he has rejected the pay cut merely for the reasoning that he wants to know where the funds are going is far from “disgraceful”.

In fact, I would argue that the rejection is actually the exact opposite. While the other players accepted it, surely in part to avoid a PR disaster like the one in which Ozil is enduring, the German stands bravely in the face of adversity. Other players probably thought to themselves, “where is this money actually going,” for a brief moment, but then opted to oblige in hopes to avoid any kind of public backlash. While many are questioning him and labeling him as a primadonna or even greedy, I find myself firmly behind Ozil’s decision.

As an Arsenal fan, Morgan should know better than anyone else that the World Cup winner is a giving individual on the pitch, in terms of assists and more importantly, off of it as well. He has his astronomical wages directly plugged to a number of charities and never shies away from helping others with his abundance of wealth.

Though I understand that Morgan relies upon shock value and massive headlines to generate revenue, him labeling Ozil “disgraceful” is pretty ironic when the massive media outlet in which he works for has reportedly gone forward with the furlough scheme despite being a multi-million dollar entity. 

This is a scheme in which Morgan has stated that he is staunchly against well-off individuals taking advantage of just recently. Along with slamming Ozil for rejecting a pay cut, he also begrudged Susanna Reid and Victoria Beckham for furloughing their staff.  Morgan recently stated, “This furlough scheme was not for primadonna multimillionaires like you two running a failed vanity business that makes no money.” However, the gigantic production company that he works for, which surely is still generating loads of revenue, has also gone forward with the scheme. For obvious reasons, Morgan has decided to hypocritically ignore that case though.

All in all, like most comments Morgan makes, the Ozil ones were massively off the mark and Ozil is right to be cautious in accepting the pay cut. If the funds are not going to a good cause charitably or even to the non-playing staff, then where are they going? Possibly towards the new, multi-billion-dollar stadium being built for Stan Kroenke’s NFL team, the LA Rams? It may be overly presumptuous to assume Kroenke would do such a thing, but you just never know.

Ozil and the other two players who reportedly refused the offer should stand for what they believe in and not oblige until they know where the funds are going. If you were to ask me, I believe that is the only reason that he and the others who’ve rejected the proposal have not blindly accepted the terms offered like the other players already have.