Fan-club News, Facebook News, Basketball Games & The Bromantic Copa Del Rey Malaga Match Spam

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Fan-club News, Facebook News, Basketball Games & The Bromantic Copa Del Rey Malaga Match Spam



Mesut, warming up with Benzema

Mesut played in a fascinating and very exciting Copa del Rey Match on Wednesday. This post includes the match-spam (which had to be delayed until I actually saw a replay of the game this afternoon - and until andriy_7 provided a couple of gifs - of course!), and some other Mesuty news as well!

Fan-Club News!

The highly discerning members of the DFB's official fanclub with members worldwide have named Mesut their footballer of the year 2011!



crinkly-eared, hat-trick scoring, hand-in-sleeve-tucking, bug-eyed gorgeousness is #1!


According to Zeit Online Mesut won 22% of the vote, closely followed by Miroslav "goal-thief" Klose in second place and Bastian Schweinsteiger in third.

Mesut scored 4 (or 5) goals and assisted 8 times for his National Team in 2011 over 3 friendlies against Italy, Ukraine and Holland, and in official European Championship Qualification matches against Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Belgium, and Austria (twice). He was brilliant, he was genius and this is a totally obvious award in my opinion for the absolute lynch pin of the world's most freakily consistently brilliant National Team.

Well done Mesut - well done discerning fans!


Facebook News!

Mesut, who is the owner of Germany's most "liked" Facebook page, has been taking part in Nike's newest ad campaign, which resulted in this rather dramatic looking picture for the ad -



Intense!


- and the following message!

2012 will be an important year with many goals: 3 titles here in Spain, the big final in Munich and of course the championship in June. What are your goals?
2012 wird ein wichtiges Jahr mit vielen Zielen: die 3 Titel hier in Spanien, das Finale der Königsklasse und natürlich die Meisterschaft! Was sind eure Ziele? 
Mesut


Friend Sami Khedira has been taking part in the same campaign, which led to this unintentionally funny Facebook moment for both of them, preserved by sashatwen - who always recognizes a good joke - one that I'm sure our German speakers will appreciate at any rate! Apologies to the English speakers on this site, but I'm going to leave this particular joke clothed in the ambiguities of the German language (with apologies to Edward Gibbon who did something similar in his history with the naughty bits about Theodora!) -



I'll admit I always thought the facebook is rööd tag was unnecessarily salacious when 90%
of entries are written by Nike - but it would seem even those have potential ;)



Basketball Fun & Games!

And as we all know, Sami Khedira is awfully fond of basketball games - often taking his girlfriends along. This week he took Mesut instead, who brought along a cousin, his brother and his sister-in-law. The game was against Barcelona, and Madrid won it!



Sami, Esteban Granero, Mesut and Family & Friends.


And according to news reports of the event, Esteban Granero (in the white t-shirt) sat with the lads too!





Everyone seems to have had a great deal of fun together. Also at the event, though seated elsewhere, was Crispy Ronaldo.

And frankly, Mesut looks like the sort of person who would talk all the way through a movie!


The Copa Del Rey Match Report & Spam

At two goals down within half an hour (at home!), commentator Ray Hudson (an unabashed Mesut fan) noted the following after watching an exchange of some sloppy passing around the now very crowded Malaga penalty area (all Hudson quotes were taken down by me, jenny_jenkins as they were spoken):

"I wouldn't be surprised if we see Avatar eyes, little Mesut Ozil. He might be just what the doctor ordered!"



Mesut and Benzema, warming up rather early.


And at half-time: "What now Jose? Will little Ozil come in? I think he's needed." And indeed, if you want defence splitting passes it's difficult to think of anyone better than Mesut. Trust Ray Hudson to point out the bleeding obvious!



This is Jose Mourinho. He is pissed off.


And as it happens, Ray was right. Mourinho made all three substitutions at half-time and put Mesut in with Sami Khedira and Karim Benzema who replaced Kaka, Arbeloa, and Callejon, respectively. Ray, who is also an unabashed Jose Mourinho fan (rather like our andriy_7 now I think of it!) interjected with "Here we go!" when Mesut was seen coming on -



Crinkly eared sweetness checking in.


- and pointed out that the risky decision to make three substitutions (which would have quickly been labelled "stupid" and "insane" by the press if it hadn't worked out) was: "Just right. Urgent action needed, right thing to do."



Sechs on legs scoring Madrid's first goal.


And for those of you unfamiliar with the way this competition works, Malaga being 2 goals up means they had an away goal advantage heading into the second leg. They also had an advantage in that the second leg would be played at La Rosaleda - their stadium. For Madrid to fail to win at home would not only be embarrassing, it would have meant an absolute must-win in an away stadium in a cup-tie with an uncertain number of goal needed to avoid being chucked out of the competition.



An approving newspaper piece on the second half.


Within a few minutes of being on, dearest friend Sami Khedira scored a goal the refs didn't like from an offside position off Mesut's pass. The substitutions were already looking good! Ray was beside himself with glee: "Wonderful from Mesut Ozil! Wonderful vision from little Avatar eyes! [He's been] involved in everything good Madrid's been involved with so far - and he's only getting warmed up!"

Then Sami scored an unspeakably pig-headed, determined, bloody-minded, typically bloody German goal - as captured in the gif below.



Fucking A+


It was as though, faced with 90 kilos of bronzed Greek God, the Malaga defence just parted in awe (and who can blame them?).



Please enjoy this post's gratuitous Sami Khedira photograph.


Madrid were to end the match having scored 3 goals in 10 minutes. The second and third goals were scored by Pipita and Benzema, respectively.

Benzema in particular got lots of love from Mesut. It was the winning goal which meant it was finally appropriate to celebrate - and we all know that Mesut is always uniquely pleased when Benzema scores.











In other news, Mesut's new purple boots made their second appearance in a game. I think we can all agree his flourescent yellow boots were scarcely lucky. Mesut was injured in his Achilles heel when he debuted them against Espanyol, missed the European Qualification Match in Istanbul against Turkey, and suffered a dip in form in the league (though not, to be fair, with his National team or in the Champions league where he continued to play brilliantly).



Mesut's feet are never on the ground in these photographs. He doesn't walk, he floats on air!


These new boots are off to a fine start however! In the game against Ponferradina Mesut assisted twice and played splendidly! In this game he was "too quick and slippery" (to quote Ray Hudson in another gem of the evening) for the Malaga defence. And frankly, he should have had several assists in this game. Benzema did score the winning goal, but he was put in even better positions by Mesut than the one from which he scored at least twice (and once more by Cristiano Ronaldo) in the latter stages of the game when Madrid were battering down the Malaga defence.



Again - feet off the ground and glorious view of his pretty purple boots - and his Rennaissancesque profile!


Nevertheless, a win is a win and a comeback win is all the more exciting! The boys will need a draw or a win to advance. If they lose 3-2 the game will go into extra time. If they lose 4-3 however, they will go ahead in the competition on away goals to meet, in all likelihood, FC Barcelona in the next round at the end of January.



Feet off the floor again!


It is now being reported that Mourinho and the players who were to be honoured at the FIFA gala for the Ballon d'or will not be attending because it takes place on Tuesday, the night before the game at the Rosaleda. Having failed to put the tie to bed, so to speak, the players who were to have attended will be sequestered with the rest.

Good luck Mesut, and good luck boys!

Next game - Saturday against Granada at home at 20:00 local time.

Much love to andriy_7 for providing most of the gifs and all of the match pictures and for his research abilities. Also: albion_lass for the lovely gif of Mesut cuddling Benzema. Match-report and news compilation written by me, jenny_jenkins.



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