Arsenal's Mesut Ozil credits his family for his footballing success

London: Arsenal playmaker Mesut Ozil credits his family with making him into the World Cup-winning star he is today despite having grown up in impoverished circumstances. [caption id=“attachment_3138300” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File photo of Mesut Ozil. AP[/caption] The 28-year-old German – whose creativity is reflected in being joint equal with French legend Eric Cantona in Premier League assists – admits to The Times he was the butt of jokes at the youth club he played for back in Germany because his parents could not afford to buy him a pair of flashy boots. “They had nice brands, the best boots, but there is nothing you can do about it,” said Ozil. “In my life, maybe I don’t have a lot of money, but I always had my family, always supporting me, so in this way I was very lucky. “Sometimes I had to miss matches because we didn’t have a car. But my parents believed in me. They always said: ‘go for it’.” Ozil, whose grandfather was Turkish and emigrated to Germany where he worked as a miner in Essen, said happily for him his natural talent overcame that handicap. “But you can have the best boots, but that doesn’t make you the best on the pitch . . . I was the best player. That gave me confidence,” he said. Ozil, who grew up in a spartan apartment with his miner father and cleaner mother and three siblings consisting of two bedrooms and a living room, said it is thanks also to the wise counsel of his family he is not one who will splash the cash and go out carousing in nightclubs. “Some people are getting crazy, going to nightclubs, having fun, you have this opportunity if you have money,” says Ozil, whose strong Muslim beliefs saw him undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca this year. “But my parents controlled it. If I went to spend lots of money, they said, ‘hey, hey, what are you doing?’” One of Ozil’s characteristics and learnt from his upbringing in Germany is to ignore racism and treat people with respect. “I don’t care about racism. If you ask the other people in my school, they will say that I always treated people with respect,” he said. “If someone is racist, maybe that is because of the influence of their parents or background. If you show them respect, you make them better people . . . You show them the right way.”