When it came time for Thomas Muller to make history, he celebrated the moment as only Thomas Muller could.
On as a substitute to make his 710th appearance for Bayern Munich, the most in the club’s history, he dragged a cross down out of the sky with his first touch and then, with his second, thumped his shot high into the Freiburg net off the goalkeeper’s shoulder.
Right foot. Left foot. Goal. Game over at 2-0. Muller pumped his fists as always and his face rippled with that familiar intensity.
Muller made his debut for the club in August 2008. Bitcoin was yet to be invented. Barack Obama was still to be elected U.S. President for the first time. Since then, Bayern have played 821 competitive matches and Muller, including against Holstein Kiel last weekend, has appeared in 711 of them.
It is remarkable longevity. Sepp Maier, whose record Muller surpassed, is among the greatest goalkeepers in history. Oliver Kahn, now in third position on that list, belongs in that conversation, too, but Muller has now made 98 appearances more than any other outfielder — the great Gerd Muller managed 613 — and has worked under 10 permanent head coaches and in all sorts of moods at a famously tempestuous club.
It has made him one of the game’s survivors, but he is also one of its unlikeliest stars and indecipherable riddles.
How many players have been different enough to create their own role?
It is not a long list and in 2011, aged 22, Muller added himself to it. He had already won the Bundesliga title and his first DFB-Pokal. He had been to a World Cup with the national team and returned from South Africa 2010 with the Golden Boot.
By most measures, he was already a star, but his identity — the one that lasted longest — came from an interview he conducted with Andreas Burkert in January 2011, when the world was still trying to define the ungainly forward with the long legs who somehow kept scoring goals.
“It is difficult to compare your style with that of another player. Do you know one?” Burkert asked.
“No,” Muller replied, “I’m quite unique. There are dribblers who have some similarities and some strikers, too, but what am I?”
“Yes, so what is Muller?”
“Hm. Tja, was bin ich? Raumdeuter? Ja, ich bin ein Raumdeuter. Das wäre doch eine gute Überschrift, oder?”
(What am I? A space interpreter? Yes, I am a space interpreter. That would be a good title, wouldn’t it?)
It was a good title. So perfect that it wrote itself into the game’s technical vocabulary and infiltrated the mainstream via the Football Manager series. Thirteen years later, Burkert is still struck by how concisely Muller described himself.
“Back then, everybody was asking this,” he tells The Athletic. “We had to work to find a way to phrase it.
“I think we were in a hotel in Doha and he wasn’t prepared for the interview at all. But this word — Raumdeuter — he had never said it before and the way it translates into English is difficult, but it’s perfect for him.”
Burkert is no longer a journalist. Today, he works for Bayern Munich’s basketball department and before our conversation had not read his interview with Muller back for many years. When he does, he realises how little its subject has changed.
“It’s actually amazing to read this again now because he is no different,” Burkert says. “I think I saw Thomas last winter and he was so open and friendly. He hasn’t changed in these 13 years. I was a reporter at Suddeutsche Zeitung for 12 years and I met a lot of guys from the top level of sport. The only one who I would compare him to is Dirk Nowitzki (the German former NBA great who starred for the Dallas Mavericks). He didn’t change either.
“Thomas is the total opposite of what you find in the football bubble today. He’s not showing off with a Ferrari, he dresses normally… really, he could be your neighbour.”
This is not such a surprise. When Muller broke into the international consciousness with two goals against England at the 2010 World Cup, he used his post-match interview to smile goofily into the camera and say hello to his grandparents back home. He was a young boy on top of the world and, it seemed at the time, that was a quick glimpse of his humanity before a trained facade obscured it for good.
Not so. Muller is unchanged and obviously comfortable in his own skin.
“He is absolutely one of the most intelligent players I’ve ever trained.”
Heiko Vogel spent 10 years working at Bayern’s academy, working with some of the finest players in European football’s modern era, including Mats Hummels, Philipp Lahm, Toni Kroos and David Alaba.
His perspective on Muller’s footballing upbringing helps to explain the 35-year-old’s longevity in the game and his capacity to remain relevant across the different eras.
“The first time I met him, he was 12,” says Vogel. “It was before he came to Bayern Munich and he was playing in a youth tournament for his hometown. He was pretty good, so we asked him: ‘Could you imagine coming to us?’ and he said, ‘Yes, of course’.
“When he got to the under-15s, I was his coach. It was a very good time, I think, because we were very successful. Our philosophy at Bayern Munich was to play our younger players against older teams. We played with our under-15s in an under-17s league. It was very hard, but I think that was an important concept for us.
“We had a lot of brilliant players. Not really fast ones, not players who were amazing athletes, but those who had a good mindset and a very special type of game intelligence.”
The age difference — and the artificial disadvantages it exposed the young players to — put a premium on that game intelligence; on thinking more quickly, finding better solutions, dealing with physical deficits and, occasionally, older players not averse to roughing up a young Bayern prospect.
To some, Muller is a ferocious player — defined by his will to compete and win. Watching him now, applying himself in the same way that he did before he won everything football had to offer, there is no question that he has, to some extent, remained at the top of the sport by sheer force of will. By luck, too, because he has evaded serious injury and rarely been unavailable.
But he is also a timeless footballer whose qualities are out of step with modern trends. He is not particularly fast or technical and his strength is hardly overwhelming, yet he has so often profited from being first to a loose ball or quickest to anticipate how a passage of play might develop. He does not clip passes around the pitch or play with an obvious subtlety, but managed — at the peak of his career — to be one of the foremost creators in European football.
Robert Lewandowski scored 344 goals for Bayern — 54 of them were assisted by Muller. While tempting to attribute that statistic to Lewandowski’s prowess as a finisher, it would be wrong. In 2022-23, the season after the Pole left for Barcelona, Muller was (according to FBref) in the 99th percentile for expected assists (0.38), passes into the penalty box (2.00), key passes (2.16) and progressive passes (4.76) per 90 minutes.
Explaining how is difficult without lapsing into cliche — Muller understands where the gaps in a game are, he is the calm in the chaos. Part of that ability, that feel, probably is intrinsic, but it was also nurtured by Bayern from an early age and, according to Vogel, encouraged by challenges within formative training environments.
“We would always be limiting touches in training,” says the former Bayern youth coach. “We would play with one touch, two touches — or with three touches and then with one. It was never the same. Everything would be changing. We would move the goals, too, or play with only one goal, or even three.
“We would mix up the duels: two vs two, three vs one, two vs three. These are all components that are very important in developing game intelligence — in getting players to be clever. If you don’t have the body to handle the situation, you have to be fit in your mind.”
And to be fit in your mind, you also need to stability away from the pitch. That was something Muller had, too.
“One of his greatest strengths is his family,” says Vogel.
“I love his father (named Gerhard but not the former Bayern and Germany star). For a developing player, it’s very important to have a father like that. He was always supporting him but always in the background. It meant that Thomas had to learn to handle all the situations he encountered for himself. Whether he was playing or not playing — things like that. He knew that his family was always there, but he was alone in those moments.
“Then, after each season, his father would have a conversation with one of the coaches or with me. After the season, he’d ask me, ‘What do you think about his development this season? Is it OK? Is it not OK? Can he improve something?’.”
In that lies the most likely explanation for why Muller has been so important to such a long line of coaches, from Louis van Gaal to Jupp Heynckes, Pep Guardiola to Hansi Flick. On and on, regardless of formation or philosophy, like a footballer impervious to change, happy to live on his wits.
And that adaptability seems to afford him special status. Nobody has anything bad to say about Muller. Rival supporters might envy his medal collection and Bayern Munich’s success inspires plenty of resentment, but little of it is drawn towards him despite being such an obvious symbol of their dominance.
How can that be?
Thomas Hurner, who covers German football for Suddeutsche Zeitung, ponders that question before answering.
“Nothing about Thomas Muller looks like a professional footballer,” he says. “He knows that and he can make fun of that. He is really an underdog who managed to become one of the most successful players in German football history. That kind of story makes him really interesting, but he can express himself really well, too, and he’s a very funny, authentic guy. If he wasn’t a very successful football player, you could imagine him being a mechanic or something like that.
“He has never behaved like a star.”
Vogel agrees.
“Thomas Muller is Thomas Muller. Sometimes, you see players play a role — you see them perform for the cameras — but Thomas doesn’t do that. He never has. He doesn’t have those insecurities and he is not an actor.
“He is what you see, all the time.”
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)
