DER BOMBER
Gerd Muller is tragically fighting dementia in a Bavarian nursing home — but his legacy as Germany’s greatest striker is untouchable
IN 1979, Gerd Muller left the comfort of the penalty box and took to the skies, touching down among the winding canals and floating boulevards of Fort Lauderdale.
Awaiting Der Bomber was a group already flush with firepower — the Fort Lauderdale Strikers had George Best in their ranks, after all.
‘ I’ll never, ever forget,’ says team-mate Ray Hudson. ‘It was his first day of practice and he couldn’t hit a f****** barn door with a handful of rice!’
Over the previous 15 years, Muller had redefined the art of goalscoring, netting 620 times for West Germany and Bayern Munich. In 62 matches for his country, he scored 68 goals. For Bayern, his tally of 552 is almost double that of any other player in their history. And eventually in Florida, after the jet-lag had subsided, normal service resumed.
‘There was no great grace, like there was in Besty,’ says Hudson. ‘When we trained on the beach, George never left footprints in the sand. With Gerd, it was like a tractor had been there!’
Short, squat and lacking speed, Muller was never the easiest on the eye. ‘He scored far more goals that had warts on them than were pieces of art,’ says Hudson. ‘Just an unemotional, cold-blooded killer.’ The numbers tell you why, back home, he is considered the country’s most influential player of modern times.
‘One of the greats,’ Karl-Heinz Rummenigge once said. ‘Without his goals, Bayern Munich and German football would not be what they are today.’
Fifty years ago this week, England learned that the hard way. Sir Alf Ramsey’s world champions had already surrendered a 2-0 lead in their 1970 quarter-final against West Germany when Muller skewed in an extra-time winner. ‘People would love to have had a centre forward like him,’ remembers Alan Mullery, who played that day. ‘He looked the most awkward player on the pitch but he had this wonderful ability of scoring goals.’
Four years later, on home soil, Der Bomber’s goal secured West Germany the World Cup. By his first training session in Florida, though, those days seemed to belong to a bygone era. Hudson remembers: ‘We were like, “S***! Is this the real Gerd Muller?”’
He would soon show that the fire had never gone out. But the spark of a long, sad decline had already been lit.
And now, following a long battle with alcoholism, that Gerd Muller is long gone. Thanks to the slow, suffocating grip of dementia, the game’s greatest goalscorer cannot speak, walk or feed himself.
At his Bavarian nursing home, Muller, now 74, is cared for by Uschi, his wife of more than 50 years. When old friends such as Franz Beckenbauer visit, he does not always recognise them.
THE final act of Muller’s story has been confined to the small town of Wolfratshausen, outside Munich. Here, for the last five years, Der Bomber has drifted into the shadows. His condition has deteriorated away from the glare of camera lenses.
But after being born into poverty among the ashes of the Second World War, Muller grew into a footballing giant. His break came in 1964, when Bayern bought him for 5,000 marks (around £ 2,300). Bayern were a second- tier side but, over the next 15 years, he helped turn them into a powerhouse.
From 1966, he was joined by Franz Roth — and the two formed a lasting friendship. ‘He’s the best German striker we will ever have,’ Roth tells Sportsmail. ‘The special thing about Gerd was that he scored with every part of his body. It was incredible to watch.’ After 50 minutes of West Germany’s 1970 World Cup quarter- final, however, Muller looked powerless. After goals from Mullery and Martin Peters, England were heading to the semi-finals. Beckenbauer and Uwe Seeler scored late on, before Muller completed the comeback 12 minutes from the end of extra-time. ‘Two bandy legs but he had this wonderful ability to be in the right place at the right time,’ says Mullery.
Though West Germany lost to Italy in the last four, Muller won the Golden Boot and the Ballon d’Or. In 1972, he scored twice in the final as West Germany won the Euros — and his goal secured the 1974 World Cup, too.
Earlier that summer, Muller helped Bayern win the first of three straight European Cups. But by 1979, he had fallen out of favour. Alcohol had taken hold.
‘There was never anybody like him before and I don’t think there has been since,’ says Hudson. ‘If you found him in space, you could throw your hands up and start walking back to the halfway line.’
Muller spoke little English and friction developed with Best. ‘It seemed he feared me as the other star,’ Muller recalled. ‘He never passed to me.’ They did, though, share one bond. Hudson says: ‘If you were at the back of the warmup and Gerd and George were ahead of you, you could tell they’d been at the pub.’
America gave Muller anonymity, but boredom developed. ‘(Drink) was a big problem in the US because he felt so lonely,’ says biographer Patrick Strasser. ‘He didn’t like to talk to people and didn’t understand the language.’
Retiring to Germany in 1981 did little to help. ‘He was still playing in legends games,’ adds Strasser. ‘Rummenigge, Uli Hoeness and Beckenbauer could smell from his breath that he was drinking.’
THEY convinced him to seek help. And Muller found salvation. He was given the chance to coach Bayern’s youth and second teams, overseeing the development of Thomas Muller — no relation — and Bastian Schweinsteiger, to name just two.
‘The work was done by the other coaches. Everyone had deep respect because there was a legend on the training ground,’ says Strasser. ‘But they all knew it was more of a help for Gerd. It was just a nice move to save his life.’
It worked, until other problems began to spiral. Muller grew forgetful. In 2011, at a training camp in Italy, he went missing for 15 hours. When police found him, he was unaware what had happened. By 2015, Der Bomber had moved into care. According to Hans Woller, a biographer who visited Muller last year, he is wheelchairbound, mute and fed by his wife.
In 2018, Roth stopped his regular trips to Wolfratshausen. ‘He’s away with his thoughts,’ says Roth. ‘ He’s not here. It’s quite difficult to watch — such a special man in such bad condition.’
Muller’s understanding of the outside world fades with time but no disease can erase the mark he left. ‘A goal is a goal, all that matters is it crosses the line,’ he once said of that 1970 winning strike.
Whatever happens inside those nursing home walls, there are 620 reasons the world will always remember Der Bomber.