As a long-suffering Arsenal supporter I’ve seen players that have been characterised as having a cult following. These are players that are heavy on personality and vary from the mercurial to the eccentric. The sort of players that are, a bit of us, on the pitch. Then there's Mesut Özil. I cannot recall an Arsenal player who has been deified by his followers to the same extent as he has. An idealised, heroic and worshipful image has been created by his followers; and by the term 'his followers' they are exactly that. He is perhaps the epitome of the modern phenomenon where global reach has resulted in fandom for individual players, with the club they play for being a secondary consideration.
Using the techniques of social media to create an idealised persona he and his advisors have cultivated a cult based on social engineering. With this sort of cult of personality you end up with acolytes who base their worship on abstract ideas of their object of worship as a cross between artist and spiritual leader.
Woe betide an unbeliever who dares to make an observation that tweaks the reactive nose of the cultist as they overlook the basics of football and logic as this would question their faith.
For the most part there has been a sort of snobbery regarding the concept of criticism of Mesut, to partake in criticism of Özil's performances was to "not get" what he does, how he plays; not to understand his art.
For some of his voluble followers the only things missing are rallies and a remote settlement in Guyana.
Now that he has left Arsenal Football Club I expect we will see thousand of social media profiles change details from Hashtag AFC to Hashtag Fenerbahçe and that will be a god thing as they can then turn their defensive outpourings of the divine one to those Fenerbahçe fans who raise their heads above the parapet and say something negative about him.
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so I said...