Thomas Muller: Modern football's Cerebral Assassin at the crossroads
“There are some players who just don’t have any price tag” – Karl-Heinz Rummenigge
So enthused King Kalle, the current Bayern Munich CEO, upon hearing Manchester United’s interest in Thomas Muller. For a club that has recently shown a worrying trend of selling off their prized assets – the likes of Toni Kroos, Xherdan Shaqiri, and mostly importantly, Bastian Schweinsteiger – this is the value they place on the unassuming German. While Rummenigge’s words can’t be taken at face value, in today’s world of rhetoric and “Delphisms”, that is exactly what Thomas Muller should be to the Bavarians – priceless.
They call him Ramdeuter. When roughly translated, it means “space investigator” or an “interpreter of space”. And, “footballistically speaking” to quote Le Professeur, Arsene Wenger, there is nobody who is as adept at the art of using space on the football pitch, as the German marksman, midfielder, winger, playmaker or whatever goddamned thing he is.
And that is exactly why Thomas Muller hasn’t scaled far greater heights than his already stratospheric status in world football. To use the hackneyed sporting cliche, the 25-year old has been a victim of his own versatility, time and time again. The Oberbayern native has been played anywhere and everywhere in every which way possible, inside the opposition half of a football pitch.
A hugely underrated footballer
To say Muller is criminally underrated, would be a criminal understatement. For someone who is never even mentioned alongside the likes of Neymar, Gareth Bale, Eden Hazard or James Rodriguez, he has certainly achieved a silverware collection that even Meryl Streep would be proud of.
To put it even more succinctly, he is rated 86 in EA Sports FIFA, bracketed only a tad above the likes of Hugo Lloris, Juan Mata, Mario Gotze and Karim Benzema. However, without meaning any offence to any of these players, the German is far ahead of them and worthy of being tagged alongside the likes of Luis Suarez and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, if not the big two. How he failed to get into the Ballon D’Or shortlist mystifies me to this day.
What we tend to forget, is the fact that he is younger than the other great prodigy of German football – Marco Reus. And while the latter is still clubbed in the promising category, Muller is afforded no such luxury. He is caught somewhere between the genuinely world class, yet missing something perception, in the eyes of most people. Even the experts and advertisers ignore Die Mannschaft’s number thirteen.
After all, why market Thomas Muller? He has neither a shiny, Brylcreem sidecut hairstyle, nor a tanned, chiselled, muscular torso. Caught somewhere between the ‘70s and the ‘90s, he still wears those funny short socks, long extinct in football, and celebrates with the same confused glee of a 6-year-old – the 11 of hearts and Calma Calmas are not for him. To use another cliche, he lets his feet do the talking.
What does Muller not do?
Coming back to how versatile he is, nobody really knows what Thomas Muller does best. Louis Van Gaal, his mentor, admirer and suitor, played the nondescript-looking teenager as a centre forward. Yes, centre forward of Bayern Munich at the age of 19. Muller repaid the faith placed on him by becoming Bundesliga’s Player of the Month in just the second month of the season.
Soon, he earned praise from his namesake and arguably the greatest poacher ever born, Gerd ‘Der Bomber’ Muller. Goals were tapped in, headed in, scraped in, sidefooted in, bulleted in, blasted in, curled in, curved in, glided in, slid in – you name it, he did it. A new contract was signed, and the national team came calling soon. By winning the DFB Pokal Golden Shoe and achieving a domestic double in his first season, Muller had set the tone for what went on to become a habit.
However, in his 13 goals and 11 assists, was a massive opportunity that only Joachim Low saw. The kid could conjure as well as he could finish. And with Miroslav Klose habitually turning from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde during the World Cups, Low had found the perfect triple pivot to assist him, in Lukas Podolski, Mesut Ozil and their new right-winger, Thomas Muller. It was in South Africa that Muller, and his finer, deeper and robotic understanding of space really came into life.
Winning the Golden Boot as well as the Best Young Player Award, Muller ripped the defences of England, Argentina and Uruguay apart with his hawk-like vision and rapier like accuracy. More importantly, he displayed a winning habit that has been the trademark of his glorious career – being in the right place at the right time.
The arrival of Jupp Heynckes saw more tinkering happen as to where and how Muller played. A vital cog in Heynckes’ pressing system, Muller was the attacking engine room of a team, where Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery always got the plaudits. Muller’s terrier-like pressing, biting at the heels of the defenders and pouncing on their mistakes, was never given its due. Nor was his incredibly intelligent off-the-ball running.
Tacticians of the game, whether they belong to the Mourinho or Guardiola school of thought, would agree that football is a game which is as much about what you do without the ball as it is about what you do with it. In fact, there is this little known incident involving Muller and Jordi Alba, where he blocks the fullback by turning his back on him, thus allowing Arjen Robben to score one of his solo goals during the 4-0 drubbing at the Allianz Arena two years ago.
It encapsulated the intelligence of a player whose maturity belied his age.
Muller is a big game player
Golden Boot and Best Young Player at the FIFA World Cup, 2010. A goal, albeit in vain, in the 2011/12 Champions League Final. Scoring the winning goal in the 2012 DFL Supercup. Chief orchestrator and partner in crime along with Arjen Robben, in battering the pulp out of Tito Vilanova’s Barcelona in 2013.
Scored in the final of the 2012/13 DFB Pokal, thus clinching Bayern’s first ever treble. Scoring again in the Pokal final the following season. Silver boot in the 2014 World Cup, taking him to a jaw-dropping 10 goals in the showpiece event, at an even more jaw-dropping age of 24.
The 7-1 thrashing of Brazil in the 2014 World Cup semi-final (equal credit to David Luiz too). The highest scoring German in Champions League history at the age of 25.
Wow.
A plea to Pep Guardiola
“Muller spielt bei mir immer”.
“With me, Muller will always play”, Van Gaal had stated all those years ago when Muller had arrived on the scene as a bright-eyed kid. His stock has only ever grown higher since, except during certain parts of the 2014/15 season, under Pep Guardiola.
The flipside of being as obsessive and madcap as Guardiola is that certain players are sacrificed at the most inopportune times, to serve as a means to an end. This Uncle Quentin-ish attention to detail focuses solely on the various permutations and combinations of team building.
And this is where Muller became a bench-warming victim of the Catalan manager’s methods last season. As far as Guardiola is concerned, Alcantara passes better than Muller. Gotze and Ribery dribble better than Muller. Robben runs faster than Muller. Lewandowski jumps higher and finishes better than Muller.
Muller, is the nice guy who finishes second in all of these attributes. But, what is fascinating is that he still remains world class in all these facets of the game. He can finish with the unerring ruthlessness of a Kamikaze, and can come up and notch a goal from nowhere like only he can – his trademark, subliminal, Houdini-cum-Guerrilla act.
He can pass better than everybody except the cream of the crop. He works as hard as a Diego Costa or an Alexis Sanchez. And he can dribble as well as anybody in the game, though his runs may look ungainly and awkward.
Thomas Muller, is the perfect total footballer, the attacking version of the great man, Franz Beckenbauer. He is a part of the fabric of the Allianz Arena, their very own homegrown prodigy, a product of Germany’s never ending conveyor belt of talented footballers.
In Louis van Gaal, he has an admirer who will go to any extent to sign the kid he catapulted to fame. If sold, whether it be for €30m or €150 million, Bayern’s loss will most certainly be United’s gain. For, if Thomas Muller treads the same path that Bastian Schweinsteiger did, Manchester United would have well pulled off their best signing since Sir Alex Ferguson signed a lanky winger from Sporting Lisbon all those years ago.