EPL: Mercenaries who can hurt

EPL: Mercenaries who can hurt

On the face of it, Mesut Oezil and Marouane Fellaini have little in common.

Oezil stands 1.81 metres and, on the field, his work is all about stealth and creativity. A slippery kind of beauty.

Fellaini towers above him, and above most players in the world. He measures up to 1.94m tall, not counting the guardsman's helmet of black hair on the top of his head.

And while Fellaini can play, he has no qualms about using his physical size, elbows and all, in the heat of the contest.

"Felli is not someone you want to be playing against," is how David Moyes put it. The Scot managed and mentored the Belgian at Everton, before making the big man his top priority signing when he moved to Manchester United.

The pass master Oezil and the combative Fellaini were the biggest last-minute signings of the English summer. Arsenal broke their previous tight-fisted piggy bank to meet Real Madrid's £42.5 million (S$85 million) valuation for Oezil, and literally minutes before the window shut, Everton tweaked £27.5 million out of United for Fellaini.

And then, typical of the way that football operates these days, they saw nothing of their new purchases for a fortnight. Oezil was on duty for Germany, Fellaini for Belgium in World Cup qualifiers.

No sooner did Oezil fly in to London than he, together with his fellow German national-team player Per Mertesacker, reported sick.

Oezil always looks pale so that was no guide to his illness as he wore the shirt for promotional purposes, spoke about his ambition to repay Arsene Wenger's trust by winning trophies, and said his first words in English: "I am a Gunner!"

He travelled to Sunderland for Saturday's game but the priority is to get him fully fit for the Champions League in Marseille on Wednesday, followed by a home debut against Stoke City on Sunday.

Fellaini, though, was fully up for the fight as a Red Devil on Saturday's lunch-time against Crystal Palace.

"Roy Keane was an aggressive player who could win every ball," he said, setting his sights impressively high. "Maybe I can do this as well.

"I can win the ball. I can clear the ball. I can play clean."

Actually, you have to drag the words out of Fellaini. He is an action man, a commando man on the field as Evertonians will testify. But in dress and manner off the pitch, he talks in modest whispers.

Oezil can be a bit like that too, even in his native German or the Spanish he has spoken in Madrid these past four years.

And there we begin to find comparisons. Oezil is the son of Turkish immigrants to Germany, Fellaini's family moved from Morocco when his father, also a professional footballer, joined a club in Belgium.

So they are transient men, Oezil and Fellaini. They are the modern players who go where they are hired, who assimilate and adapt to the teams they play in.

The modesty, almost shyness in their manner, is like a cloak of deception.

If Fellaini aspires to play deep, do whatever it takes to win the ball, and maraud forward with it like Keane, we can have no illusions about his physicality.

Oezil, too, wants to hurt the opposition. But in a different way, with the passes that he sees before other men, the ability to caress the ball into spaces, the strokes that can make other men be the scoring heroes.

You probably read that Cristiano Ronaldo was not pleased when Real Madrid sold Oezil to recoup half the fee they paid for Gareth Bale on Sept 2.

Good reason for the fact is that nobody - not one single player in Europe - has created as many goals as Oezil over the past four seasons.

He has that Johan Cruyff sixth sense to know where a pass can kill the opposing defence, and to weigh up the pace, the movement, the anticipation of a great finisher like Ronaldo.

Cristiano's loss (not to mention the competition he might feel from Bale) could be Theo Walcott's gain.

Yes, Olivier Giroud is the main striker for the Gunners. But Walcott is the speed merchant and the stealth runner who can burst into scoring positions from the wing.

Wenger talks of his "world class" German being best suited to the role behind the centre forward that Dennis Bergkamp perfected when Arsenal played at Highbury Stadium.

But Oezil is adaptable, he can create from deeper positions in front of the back line, and he can be scintillating on the wing, particularly the left where Arsenal need cutting- edge.

Fellaini is also a multi-purpose individual. He is not, and would not pretend to be, the playmaker Manchester United have been seeking since Paul Scholes went into decline.

"Marouane is very noticeable for many reasons," says Moyes. "He can play several roles, and I needed that. We have a busy schedule coming up, we want to be able to play different ways in different games."

Moyes and Fellaini came together from Everton where it was considered an overachievement to finish in the top half of the Premiership on the comparative shoestring budget there.

Anything outside the top three is failure at Old Trafford.

The Champions League is not simply on the agenda there, but also winning it.

When you listen intently to Fellaini, and Oezil, they speak the same language, in football terms.

They are hungry for trophies, they will give everything in their armoury to win them.

And, despite different physical appearances and vastly different repertoires, they are starting afresh with clubs whom they believe match their ambitions.

Look at them again, and you might see that they are two of the many foreign mercenaries attracted to the EPL for similar reasons.

It is the most visible league in the world. It pays well. And call me naive but I believe players when they say money isn't the bottom line.

"The fee is not my problem," said the whisperer Fellaini this weekend. "Whether it is 25 million, 30 million, expensive or not, I don't care about this.

"In football, there are always some people who don't like you or your quality. OK, I just want to play well for the team."

stsports@sph.com.sg


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