KING OF GOALS
Remembering Gerd Muller
GERD Muller was the ultimate penalty box poacher – fellow German legend Karl-Heinz Rummenigge dubbing him ‘the Muhammad Ali of the penalty box’.
The German forward, born just after the Second World War in Allied-Occupied Nordlingen, achieved incredible numbers in terms of goals to games well before Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi came onto the scene.
He amassed the medals to match as well. With dominant Bayern Munich and West Germany sides, Muller won four Bundesliga titles, three successive European Cups, the European Cup Winners’ Cup, four German Cups, the European Championships and the World Cup in 1974.
On a personal level, he was named Footballer of the Year in 1970 after scoring 38 league goals and helping Germany reach the World Cup semi-final in Mexico before they lost an extraordinary match to Italy. Muller scored ten goals in the tournament to claim the Golden Boot.
Two years later, Muller would score 40 league goals for Bayern from just 34 appearances – a record that had stood until a certain Robert Lewandowski surpassed it by a solitary goal last season. It had stood for 49 years.
Over the course of that calendar year, Muller netted a remarkable 85 goals for club and country. That incredible feat was only beaten by arguably the greatest of all time, Messi, back in 2012 when he scored 91.
Muller averaged a goal per game for seven of his 15 seasons for Bayern Munich and is still regarded as the club’s greatest ever centre-forward.
He was simply born to score goals. During his club career, which saw him finish playing in the North America League for Fort Lauderdale Strikers in 1980, he scored 654 goals in just 716 appearances. He also scored 68 goals for his country from his 62 caps (another record that had stood for 40 years until Miroslav Klose broke it in his 132nd game for his country).
Muller’s goals for West Germany included two against the Soviet Union in the European Championship final of 1972 and the winning goal against Holland in the World Cup final two years later. That 2-1 victory over the Dutch in Munich’s Olympiastadion was a fitting climax to Muller’s international career. His winning goal typified his brilliance inside the penalty area.
After creating a yard of pace to accept Rainer Bonhoff’s low cross from the right, Muller took a touch away from goal before demonstrating his low centre of gravity.
With a quick swivel of his hips, he wrapped his squat-like legs around the ball and sent it perfectly through the legs of Ruud Krol and past a helpless Jan Jongbloed.
West Germany survived an avalanche of Dutch attacks in the second half to win the World Cup for a second time. It was to be his final appearance for his country, retiring from international football at just 28.
It is claimed that he had been left deeply upset by the decision taken by the German Federation to ban players’ wives from the official post-match World Cup celebrations.
Muller was simply the master finisher and, during his time, comfortably the most feared marksman in Europe.
Not only were German efficiency and the total football of the Dutch dominating the international stage, they were rivals at club level too, with Johan Cruyff’s Ajax also winning a hat-trick of European Cups before there was a mass exodus to Barcelona.
Munich managed to hold onto their main assets better than Ajax and they won successive European Cups from 1974 through to 1976. Muller’s goals were pivotal to those successes, scoring twice in the 1974 replay win over Atletico Madrid and then again in the controversial 2-0 win over Leeds a year later in Paris.
Proudly nicknamed ‘Der Bomber’, Muller will always be regarded as one of the true greats, especially when it came to scoring goals. He always found a way to score and despite his size was equally as lethal with his head.
He lived for football and the buzz of being the go-to-guy when his club or country needed a goal.
Regrettably, when his career came to an end in the United States in 1982 and the adulation stopped, Muller slipped into bouts of alcoholism and depression.
At 36, he suddenly struggled not being a footballer anymore and running a restaurant in Florida hardly helped matters when it came to the drink.
His former club Bayern Munich and former team-mates, such as Franz Beckenbauer and Uli Hoeness did all they could to help. Muller attended a clinic for alcohol dependency and was then asked to coach the club’s B and youth teams over the next two decades.
There was also involvement with Adidas, who still use his image in their branding – but without the goals, Muller drifted away from the game he adored and further into his addictions and his mental health suffered.
In 2015, it was announced by Bayern Munich that their former idol was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and he sadly passed away on August 15 this year at the age of 75. He is survived by wife Uschi and daughter Nicole.
Gerhard Muller, to use his full first name, may have distanced himself from the glare of the media in his later years and much of his struggles remained private, but the images of him in his prime will forever live on. His numbers and honours will ensure he’s always remembered as one of the game’s greats.