Angela Merkel has insisted that Germany is “a cosmopolitan country” and praised Mesut Özil’s achievements for the national side, after the Arsenal midfielder’s resignation from the German national team over alleged racism and lack of respect kicked football deep into the country’s political arena.

“Özil is a great footballer who has done a lot for the national football team,” a spokesperson for the German chancellor said on Monday, adding that the Gelsenkirchen-born player’s decision to resign “has to be respected”.

The World Cup winner’s combative resignation statement on Sunday led some politicians to decry him as an example of the “failed integration” of migrants from Muslim cultures, while others warned that Özil’s acrimonious parting with German football sent a disastrous signal to the next generation of Germans with multiethnic backgrounds.

The German player, of Turkish descent, had been widely criticised in the run-up to this summer’s World Cup after he posed for photographs alongside the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in London. His critics said the smouldering conflict had contributed to his team’s poor performance in Russia, with calls for the player, capped 92 times for Germany, to explain himself.

Play Video 0:57 Mesut Özil quits Germany team over 'racism' and draws mixed reactions – video

But when Özil finally did so on Sunday, via a series of well-orchestrated and carefully phrased statements on social media, he took aim at some of his most vocal critics.

Reinhard Grindel, the president of Germany’s football association, DFB, in particular stands accused of having scapegoated a player with a migrant background for his association’s collective failings. “In the eyes of Grindel and his supporters, I am German when we win but I am an immigrant when we lose,” Özil’s statement said.

The German FA on Monday vehemently rejected accusations of racism, saying: “The DFB regrets the departure of Mesut Özil from the national team. However, this does not change the determination of the association to continue the successful integration work consistently and with deep conviction.”

But the governing body finds itself engulfed in a scandal just six weeks before Uefa will rule on its bid to host Euro 2024. Germany’s only competitor for the tournament? Turkey.

If the fallout from Özil’s resignation also has deep political reverberations in Germany, it is not only because Grindel is a former MP for Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union, but also because under Merkel the Arsenal midfielder has been built up as the poster boy for the country’s state-led approach to integrating ethnic minorities.

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Özil’s statement criticises Grindel for calling multiculturalism “a myth [and] a lifelong lie” in a parliamentary speech in 2004, when Merkel was not yet chancellor but already the head of his party.

In her 18 years at the top of the CDU, she has never sought to challenge her party’s sceptical view of multiculturalism as a dangerously laissez-faire Anglo-Saxon approach to the challenges of multi-ethnic societies. In spite of Merkel’s staunch defence of open borders during the 2015 refugee crisis, the chancellor reiterated in the same year her party’s line that “multiculturalism leads to parallel societies, and therefore multiculturalism remains a grand delusion”.

A comment piece in influential weekly Die Zeit in the wake of the footballer’s resignation from the national team argued: “In Özil, we are also losing faith in a progressive society.” The piece continued: “His withdrawal is a fatal symbol in a time and a country in which rightwing parties are getting ever louder and people on town squares call for refugees to drown in the sea.”

Alice Weidel, co-leader of far-right Alternative für Deutschland, on Monday criticised Özil as “a typical example of the failed integration of far too many immigrants from Turkish Muslim cultural circles”.

Politicians closer to the centre of the political spectrum said Özil’s combative resignation statement had still not fully explained why he had agreed to take part in a photoshoot that amounted to a propaganda coup for a Turkish strongman president then shaping up for reelection.

Mesut Özil’s Germany saga is symptomatic of a world under strain | Richard Williams Read more

“No one with a sensible mind wants Mesut Özil to deny his heritage,” said Paul Ziemiak, the head of the CDU’s youth organisation. “But to claim that a photo with Erdoğan – in the middle of Turkish elections – came about without political intentions is naive.”

Turkish politicians were quick to endorse the footballer’s resignation as a goal for their own side, with sport minister Mehmet Kasapoğlu tweeting: “We support the honourable attitude of our brother Mesut Özil.”

Cem Özdemir, a Green MP of Turkish heritage who is one of Germany’s most vocal critics of Erdoğan’s government, nonetheless said the footballer’s resignation sent out a troubling message, adding: “It is fatal when young German-Turks now get the impression that there isn’t a place for them in the German national side. Strength lies in diversity, not homogeneity. That’s how we won the World Cup in 2014, and France did this year.”

Social Democrat justice minister Katarina Barley, who holds dual German and British citizenship, said: “It is an alarming sign when a great German footballer like Mesut Özil is no longer wanted in his country because of racism and doesn’t feel represented by the DFB.”

Sawsan Chebli, a state secretary of Palestinian descent in the Berlin state parliament, tweeted: “Özil’s departure is a confession of failure for our country. Will we ever belong? My doubts are growing by the day. Am I allowed to say that as a state secretary? It is, at any rate, what I feel. And it hurts.

Sawsan Chebli (@SawsanChebli) Dass #Özil geht, ist ein Armutszeugnis für unser Land. Werden wir jemals dazugehören? Meine Zweifel werden täglich größer. Darf ich das als Staatssekretärin sagen? Ist jedenfalls das, was ich fühle. Und das tut weh.

Germany’s foreign minister on Monday rejected the accusation that the latest chapter in the Özil saga should be read as a verdict on the country’s approach to integration as a whole. “I don’t believe that the case of a multimillionaire living and working in England will give us any information on capacity to integrate in Germany,” said Heiko Maas, during a press conference with the visiting British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

“Anyway, what matters is what happens on the pitch. That the Germans got kicked out at such an early stage has very little to do with the fact that Mr Özil allowed himself to be photographed with Mr Erdoğan.”