crinkly_ears | Video Archive: Oliver Kahn Saw It First - Analysis of Mesut's Third Game For The National Team

Video Archive: Oliver Kahn Saw It First - Analysis of Mesut's Third Game For The National Team

September, 2009

Next to his technique, next to his creativity and his skill - it is above all his playing intelligence...

Mesut celebrates his goal. The crowd chants his name. If you look closely at 0:14 you will notice Podolski and Khedira congratulating him

Narrator: Talent, tempo and technique: the Özil trilogy. An instinctive footballer - one for the surprise pass. Mesut Özil plays between the midfield and the forward line-up, lays on his pass, Gomez and Ballack finish. Praise for the space-creator!

Goal assistant and finisher - his first goal in his third National game. Özil is the media's most-sought-after player after Saturday night.

Harald Stenger protectively ushers Mesut away from the cameras

Oliver Kahn: Next to his technique, next to his creativity and his skill - it is above all his game-intelligence. You can see it here...

Sami passes to Mesut

...for the 2-0 - how he places himself in the open spaces. From another perspective...

The footage shifts to a bird's eye-view of the field

...it's wonderfully clear. You can see here that Schweini (Bastian Schweinsteiger) is going to play a pass to Miro Klose. Özil could have run forward and taken the ball with him. He lets it go through to Klose however, moves wonderfully into the open space and what Miro will do fantastically just now is: he'll bounce the ball directly into that open space. It's so simple - and you can see the game-intelligence that the lad's already got and that is simply - it's simply class!

Kathrin Müller-Hohenstein: At twenty years of age - is it in the blood?

Kahn: Yes well, these types of things - situations - such as what we've seen - you can train it. A coach could practice this type of thing but nevertheless - in such a situation, under pressure, in a National game - it doesn't always work out. I think most other players would have taken the ball along with them with their left-foot and would have run straight into a defender. He anticipated, that is to say, he could see, in the blink of an eye Klose is standing next to me and is free, if I run through he can pass directly to me - and that's a skill - this anticipation of events that very, very few players have. And next to his other qualities it really stands out.