Gerd Müller; the long lost legend.
Brilliant German footballer admired for his prolific goal-scoring and his role in the 1974 World Cup.
Gerd Müller was a German attacking footballer. He was famous for his consistency in front of the goal and the deadly finishing skills he possessed. Gerd played for the German giants- Bayern Munich for 15 years while representing his country (back then called “West Germany”). He scored unbelievable amounts of goal in his prime scoring 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga matches. Gerd Muller became the top scorer of the German league and cup in his glory days. This record was very recently broken by the current Bayern Munich striker and #9, Robert Lewandowski.
International Achievements
Müller managed to win the FIFA WORLD CUP and The EUROS back in 1974 and 1972 respectively. “Der Bomber” was awarded the European Player of the Year in 1970 for his record breaking season. He scored 65 goals in 74 European games in the 69–70 season. After a successful season with the German Giants- Bayern Munchen, Gerd went on to perform at football’s biggest stage; the FIFA World Cup. He went on to score 10 goals in 1970 for West Germany going on to win the golden boot for the tournament finishing as the top scorer.
The goal scoring machine never failed to deliver on the bigger stages. Gerd Muller was the top scorer in the 1974 WC scoring crucial goals, like the deciding one in the finals against the Dutch which helped the Germans clutch their second World Champion title. West Germany won the title, beating the Netherlands 2–1 in the final at the Stadium dé Olympiastadion in Munich. This was the second victory for West Germany, who had also won in 1954.
During the 15 seasons he played for Bayern, Gerd Muller was the top league top scorer 8 times consisting a minimum tally of 9 goals per season in his last year for them. His 14 goals in FIFA World Cup tournaments were a record between 1974 and 2006. This score was bettered in 2006 by Brazil’s Ronaldo, and eight years later by German Miroslav Klose, who also broke Müller’s record for goals for Germany.
Gerd Müller and his importance at Bayern Munich
Bayern were then playing in a level below the Bundesliga, and aside from a solitary national league title back in 1932 had hardly set German football alight. But the signing of Müller, along with two other future greats of the game, Franz Beckenbauer and Sepp Maier, helped them gain promotion to the top league in Müller’s first season, laying the foundations for a decade of majestic achievement that established them for the rest of the century, and to the present day, as one of Europe’s premier sides.
Bayern won the Bundesliga in 1968-69, then followed up with three consecutive league titles from 1971-72 onwards as Müller scored more than 50 goals in each season. Having been named European Footballer of the Year in 1970, he won the first of his three European Cup winners’ medals in 1974, scoring two of Bayern’s four unanswered goals against Atlético Madrid in a replay of the final. He bagged another goal in the 2-0 victory over Leeds United in the 1975 European Cup final and provided five goals across the 1976 campaign that ended with a 1-0 win against St Etienne and a third medal.
Why Lost?
As we move forward in time, we witnessed the sport evolve massively. With time, our generation forgot about one of the greatest goalscorers in football history because of players who overshadowed legends like Gerd Muller with their playing style or even the statistics per season. It is very evident that Gerd was one of the best in his time and was a generational talent scoring in almost every match he played. Short and thickset but supremely well balanced, Müller had a devastating burst of pace over short distances, and was exceedingly agile inside the six-yard box, where he scored a large proportion of his goals through opportunism and quick thinking. Despite being only 5ft 9in, he was also an excellent heading the ball.
The Ballon D’or winner was a very humble human who somehow wasted a lot of his years after retiring as a player to alcohol. His Bayern teammates convinced Gerd to go through alcohol rehabilitation and offered him a coaching job for Bayern II in 1982. Gerd also signed a contract with Adidas releasing his own Sports Merchandise which gave the company unmeasurable profits due to his popularity.
Unfortunately, we lost our legend in August 2021 as Gerd Muller very recently passed away due to Alzheimer’s Disease that we was diagnosed in 2015. It was a sad week for the football world as we mourned the loss of a legend who gave early German football fans a whole lot of memories. Muller held the all-time goal-scoring record in the World Cup with 14 goals for 32 years.[4] In 1999, Gerd Muller was ranked ninth in the European player of the Century election held by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS), and he was voted 13th in the IFFHS' World Player of the Century election.
