Unai Emery on Joachim Low row: ‘I didn’t deny him meeting Ozil’

Unai Emery on Joachim Low: The Arsenal head coach has denied blocking the German manager from an entry in Arsenal training ground and meeting Mesut Ozil.

There were various speculations regarding Joachim Low’s visit to Arsenal’s training ground earlier this week. Many media outlets reported that the German manager wanted to meet Mesut Ozil in order to persuade him to return to the national team.

There were also reports of Unai Emery blocking Joachim Low from meeting Mesut Ozil or his representatives at the Arsenal training session, despite the meeting being already fixed.

ESPN FC, however, has quashed these claims, stating that Low met Arsenal’s German players, Shkodran Mustafi and Bernd Leno, as well as head-coach Unai Emery. The national team coach also had a meeting with former German defender Per Mertesacker, who retired at the end of the last season.

Unai Emery has now cleared the air around Low’s visit to Arsenal training ground, and denied that he blocked his meeting with Ozil.

“It’s not true, it’s not true,” said Emery after being asked by a reporter on the speculation.

ESPN earlier reported that a club source told them, “Low was at the training ground in London Colney to have lunch with Per Mertesacker, who is now the academy director at Arsenal. He also met with fellow Germans Shkodran Mustafi and Bernd Leno while he was there, but Ozil was not at the training ground at the time.”

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Mesut Ozil announced his retirement from international football after a dismal world cup with Germany in Russia.

Joachim Low later said, “Mesut did not call me, not to this very day. I tried to reach him several times in the past two weeks, via text message, via phone. Mesut has decided to take this path. I must accept it.”