In a country that has seen millions of migrants take up German citizenship, Germany has fielded an increasingly multicultural team at each successive World Cup since hosting the event in 2006.
Alongside the likes of Sami Khedira (who has a Tunisian father), Jerome Boateng (Ghanaian father) and Marko Marin (Bosnian-Serb heritage), Ozil is a third-generation Turkish-German, who says his ancestry comes from north-western Turkey. He credits his style of play to his heritage, but his attitude to his country of birth.