Fenerbahce president asks fans to help finance Ozil package

 

Fenerbahce have asked fans to help fund Mesut Ozil’s £13million wage packet by donating money through a text message campaign.

The German playmaker is currently in Istanbul arranging a free transfer to the Turkish giants after reaching an agreement with current club Arsenal to terminate his contract in north London.

Ozil was earning around £18million-a-year in wages from Arsenal and will be taking a pay cut when he completes a move to Fenerbahce, but the Turkish club’s president Ali Koc admitted his side needs financial support to complete the move.

Koc announced: ‘We have a request for our fans. Please continue to support us, we are also dependent on your financial support.

‘On the day of the signature, I will ask you to break a record. With an SMS campaign.

‘Maybe 300,000, 500,000 or maybe even a million text messages come together. This support will do us very good.’

Text messages in the ‘Mesutol campaign’ will cost just under £2 and will be sent to the number 1907, which was the year Fenerbahce was founded.

Reports this week claimed Ozil will be earning £67,300-a-week or £3.5m-a-year until 2024 which is a far cry from the £350,000-a-week he earned at Arsenal.

President Koc is confident the Fenerbahce faithful can rise to the occasion with the Turkish giants currently dealing with £460million in debt.

The club signed eight first-team players at the start of the season and is the only side out of Turkey’s ‘Big Four’ who have tried to settle their debts without a debt-restructuring programme.

But Fenerbahce fans have shown that Ozil’s prospective move to their club is set to be one of the biggest in their history.

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Within half an hour of the German midfielder announcing his move to Fenerbache on Twitter, the post was retweeted over 105,000 times and received 300,000 likes and 26,000 additional quote retweets.