the last pass. v. Sunderland, 2013. : Gunners

Well, here it is. I’m deciding to end things where it all began, with Özil’s first assist in an Arsenal shirt back in 2013. His magical touch to take Gibbs’ pass down basically sends Sunderland to League One then and there, and the pass he slides through to Giroud isn’t half bad either.

But this day is really more about the occasion than the pass. To those who thought I couldn’t do it, hahaha! You underestimate how boring my life is right now, and how deep my love for Özil runs. To everyone else on r/gunners, thank you all so much for the support during this series. The comments on these posts are always insightful and hilarious, and would never fail to perk me back up when quarantine had gotten me down. There have been a lot of cute comments about how people are using this series to count days, and some of the DMs I got were incredibly personal and heartfelt. The feeling that this series has been helping people through a difficult time is a big reason I’ve seen this out to the end. As Özil proves on the pitch, it feels good to assist people.

Compilation coming tomorrow if iMovie is able to export a ten minute file by then. Shoutouts go to Haider and HTComps, two YouTube channels that have each made public a metric fuck-ton of high-quality Özil footage (you can find their Google Drive folders if you do some digging); to footballia.net, a godly website which has a ton of full Arsenal matches online for free; and again, to all of y’all. Don’t give me awards! At least, don’t pay for them with real money. Donate to Black Lives Matter or your organization of choice. Thank you. It’s been fun!!