Mesut mad as Ozil attacks critics' Loew blows

Mesut Ozil has hit out at Germany’s critics, telling them Joachim Loew is the only man to lead the side.

The Germans were dumped out of the tournament in the semi-finals by an impressive Italy outfit, in what many considered a major shock. Ozil and Co had won their previous 15 competitive matches and looked like champions-in-waiting for most of last month.

But a Mario Balotelli double put paid to their title hopes and prompted a volley of criticism back home.

And for midfield maestro Ozil that’s completely off the mark.

“All this discussion just for one narrow defeat, we could have scored three goals in the opening stages of the match and now the coach is meant to be able to prevent that?” the Real Madrid man (pictured) said.

“Since I have been involved [with Germany], we have received lots of praise, particularly from abroad, and now everything is supposed to be wrong?”

Ozil feels Germany’s world record-breaking run of victories should be the main memory of Euro 2012 and not their defeat to Italy.

“We should not only look at single results,” he said.

“We have won 15 games in a row with this team. To win a title, a lot of things have got to come together and that includes having some luck.

“I am completely against making things out to be bad. We have been in four semi-finals and that is a great achievement.

“Of course we also want to win a title and we are doing all we can for it, but it is not so easy.” Such was Germany’s strength in depth - against Greece, Loew dropped Mario Gomez, Lukas Podolski and Tomas Muller and still won 4-2 - many thought the Henri Delaunay Trophy was their’s for the taking.

But for the eighth time they lost to Italy in a competitive match.