Ozil showcases stamina in Germany double

Posted by Nicholas Rigg

Madrid midfield magician Mesut Ozil maintained his star qualities on the international front on Tuesday night as he scored in Germany's 2-1 win in Austria in World Cup qualifying.

Ozil scored twice and put in a man of the match performance as Germany comfortably saw off the Faroe Islands over the weekend and he was central to his country's success against in Austria as Joachim Low's side, also containing Sami Khedira, continued their winning start to qualification.

Interestingly, the midfield maestro played the full 90 minutes in both of the matches. Nothing unreal there you might think. It is, however, when your name's Mesut Ozil and you play for Real Madrid. Blancos boss Jose Mourinho is famed for hauling Ozil off early in matches, whether that be on the hour mark or with five minutes left. He rarely completes 90 minutes domestically for Madrid.

These two international matches have showcased Ozil's ability to last the full 90 minutes. Something to take on board for Mourinho, perhaps, the future matches.

His back-to-back impressive performances for Germany have come at quiet a good time for Ozil, too. When new signing Luka Modric made his debut for Los Blancos, he came on to replace Ozil. Whether Modric will continue to play in that position, feeding the front man, or whether he'll be played elsewhere in the long run is still unknown, but the German has certainly stamped his authority on that position over the international break. It'll be interesting to see how Madrid line-up against Sevilla this weekend.

It was another good night on the whole for Madrid players. The aforementioned Modric got more valuable time on the pitch when he featured for Croatia in their creditable 1-1 draw with the ever-improving and dangerous Belgium.

The Madrid trio of Cristiano Ronaldo, Pepe and Fabio Coentrao featured for Portugal as they eased to a home win over Azerbaijan. No reporting on the Ronaldo goal-celebration front this time, however, with CR7 having a relatively quiet night.

Spain returned to pretty much full strength for their first match of their World Cup qualifying campaign, and with that brought four Madrid men into the starting eleven. Iker Casillas, Sergio Ramos, Xabi Alonso and Alvaro Arbeloa all played in Spain's 1-0 win in Georgia, keeping a clean sheet they'll hope to repeat in Seville this weekend. Raul Albiol was an unused substitute.

No goals for Karim Benzema this time but he did start in France's 3-1 win over Belarus, while Marcelo played in Brazil's thumping 8-0 friendly win over China.

Follow me on Twitter @nicholasrigg

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