Arsene Wenger congratulates Mesut Ozil on his Ballon d’Or nomination – but there’s one small problem

The 30-strong shortlist for football’s highest individual honour was revealed earlier this week, but it appears the Arsenal boss may not have been paying attention

Arsene Wenger took the time in his pre-Sunderland press conference on Friday morning to congratulate Mesut Ozil on his nomination for the Ballon d’Or award.

But there was one major problem

When the 30-strong shortlist was drawn up earlier this week, the German’s name was conspicuously absent from the list.

In fact, no Arsenal player is in the running for the award which will be dished out in January.

The Arsenal boss has never been a fan of individual awards in football and his gaffe here shows just how much attention he has been paying to the gong this week.

“Of course, I encourage and congratulate the players who do well and I’m happy for that. But when you look at the history you do not always think that it has been the most objective decision always and I think that the players who are the best, we know very well about them.

“Let’s take care of those who are not as much in the glory. The best – we know all about them.

“Certainly there is a big satisfaction for [Ozil] and for us as well, but I am against it because I think it gets in the head of players,” Wenger said.

“We have seen many people only thinking about themselves because they are obsessed by Ballon d’Or and not by the team performance and I believe football is a collective sport and we live already in a world where everything is individualised.

“We want to respect what football is about, first about the team effort,” he continued in what could be seen as a not-so thinly veiled dig at some of the players that are hell bent on winning the award.

Wenger has never been slow to criticise the award in the past.

“Overall I’m not a big fan of it,” he said earlier this year. “We are in a team sport. It is not logical just for individual effort. It is a bit contradictory to what is the route of our sport.”

Wenger was also quizzed on the current state of contract negotiations with Mesut Ozil, whose deal expires in 2018.

“Nothing really concrete enough to talk about it. It’s moving along,” said Wenger.

Arsenal face Sunderland in Saturday’s early game knowing that a point will be enough to send them top of the table.