Bayern Munich's Thomas Muller: When the ordinary is extraordinary
In some ways, it reflected the big red contradiction that is Bayern Munich. Corporate super-club with 20-plus years of mega-profits on the one hand. Community trust where the cheapest season ticket won't run you much more than 150 bucks on the other hand.
Watching Thomas Muller after the final whistle of the 6-1 Champions League victory over Porto on Tuesday was a reminder that top-end football isn't entirely about sanitized supporters with plastic flags in antiseptic stadiums, fanboys milked by televised sports entertainment hurling abuse from behind a keyboard, commercial directors who are more important than head coaches because revenue equals silverware, disconnected and spoiled superstars who are driven mostly by ego and zeros on a pay stub and, of course, that insufferable Gazprom ad that reminds us who really "lights up the football".
There is a very real and personal connection between player and supporter. It means something. Following the win, the Bayern team lined up on their knees in front of the club's ultras. Muller grabbed a megaphone and scaled the fence, leading them in celebration, in among the fans.
It was fitting that Muller should be the guy leading it, and not just because he was born and raised 30 miles away from the Sabenerstrasse and, at 25, has spent 60 percent of his life at Bayern.
Muller himself is a contradiction.
He's a superstar on one of the world's biggest clubs yet he's as blue-collar as they come. He's the guy your coach was thinking of in Little League when he told you that it's not about skill or natural ability, it's about desire and heart and work rate. (And, when he told you that, you knew that if you looked really, really closely, his nose began to grow.)
That's the thing about Muller. Nobody with so little in terms of technical ability has achieved so much.
But first, let me pre-empt the counter-arguments. There are plenty of measurables in which Muller excels. He has the aptitude and stamina to run all day, all night and into next week. He's quick for someone 6-foot-1 and he's deceptively strong.
If the Champions League quarterfinalists had the equivalent of the NFL combine, he'd be off the charts in those areas. And then when it came to the actual ball and things like passing, shooting, controlling and dribbling, they would likely groan.
Go ahead. I dare you. I double-dare you. Count the attacking players who started in the first leg of the quarterfinals and see how many you can count who -- strictly in terms of technique -- rank behind Muller. My guess is you won't need more than a couple of fingers.
Of course, in the history of the game there have been technically average or even limited players who have achieved plenty. But they tend to be, as you'd expect, defenders or holding midfielders. When it comes to attacking players, Muller stands alone in that category.
I'm not going to bother to list what's in his trophy cabinet -- I assume you know it includes a World Cup and a Champions League crown, as well as a gaggle of domestic silverware -- and I know many will point out that it's easy to win things when you play for Bayern and Germany.
That's true. But while it may be easy to win with those teams it's not easy to PLAY for those teams, simply because there is so much competition. Muller was 19 in 2009 when he elbowed his way into a Bayern first team that included Arjen Robben, Franck Ribery, Miroslav Klose, Ivica Olic, Mario Gomez and Luca Toni. (And before you giggle about those last two guys, consider that they had scored a combined 121 goals the previous two seasons and were high-priced veterans.) Muller made his full debut for Germany the following March and, four months later, ended up as the top goal scorer in the 2010 World Cup. And he just kept going.
How to explain his success?
One factor, as we've said, is his athleticism. Fine. The other is purely mental. He has an understanding of the game that is almost supernatural. When defending, it's his reading of the play, the angle of his defensive runs, the understanding of what his teammates and opponents are going to do. When in possession, it's the ability to anticipate what will happen, ensuring he's in the right place at the right time, ready to set up a teammate or shoot on goal. And his understanding is so universal that he can seamlessly find a role anywhere on the attacking front, which is why he has played -- and played well -- out wide, in the hole, as a centre-forward and as a second striker.
Muller simply sees the field differently, not as something defined by positions, but by tasks, by knowing what to do next. He's the ultimate team player, who carves out a useful role for himself in any lineup.
"Pour liquid into a container with a hole, however tiny, and it will always find a way through," said one veteran director of football I spoke to on Wednesday. "He always finds the hole. There's always a way through for him. He's always useful."
Both the man who made him a regular in the first team, Louis van Gaal, and his current coach, Pep Guardiola, come from a different footballing culture, one whose credo is predicated first and foremost on technique and individual ability. They made their careers by forming talented individuals into a collective that's greater than the sum of its parts. That's why many believed Muller would be sent out on loan under Van Gaal, perhaps to some team that played more direct, bang-bang football. And why others, yours truly included, felt -- wrongly -- that he wouldn't be a fit for Guardiola's philosophy (whether you want to use the tired tiki-taka term or however else you choose to define it).
Yet both managers saw the value of Muller. Both understood that what he lacks in deftness of touch, he more than makes up for in sharpness of mind. And both made him a lynchpin of their sides.
His other tremendous trait is even fuzzier, but enough folks in the game have noted it, that you have to take their word. Muller is, at once, conscious of his limits and courageous enough to test them.
"He is totally unafraid to take the difficult shot or hit the difficult pass," the director of football added. "At big clubs, there's a hierarchy of talent. You don't see [Sergio] Busquets trying to do what [Lionel] Messi does. And John Terry doesn't do what Eden Hazard does. Muller takes liberties, not because he thinks he's more talented than he is, but because he has a knack for knowing when to take what for him is a low percentage shot which other players of his ability would pass up ... I'm not sure it's something you can teach, but it's a hugely valuable skill."
Technical ability -- even more than athleticism, because, deep down, so many of us believe that we could whip our bodies into shape if given the time and resources -- is what most obviously separates top professionals from the guys who cheer for them. With Muller, that "barrier" is much less obvious. A fan can suspend disbelief, look at Muller and imagine himself in his place. Certainly more so than with a Hazard or a Robben or a Messi.
And maybe that's why he resonates so much with Bayern fans and why it was fitting that he should be the one to scale the fence and lead the celebrations. He's Everyman. He's one of them.
On Tuesday night, Gianluca Vialli and Paolo Rossi sat in a TV studio and played an age-old game. Finding parallels in the past for players in the current Bayern side. Robert Lewandowski, for example, was compared to Marco van Basten for the elegance of his movements and accuracy and simplicity of his side-foot finishes.
When it came to Muller, they were stuck. They couldn't find a single player to whom you could compare him.
Neither can Bayern fans. He's a one-off. And he's theirs.
In my opinion, the most scary player to come up against. Got nothing but respect for this guy for what he has won and achieved at such a young age. He deserves twice the hype and attention Bale and Neymar receive together.
