8-2 is the sort of scoreline you get in the first round of the DFB Pokal, in which Bundesliga teams often face amateur sides in rickety grounds with Portakabins for dressing rooms. Yet this was a Champions League quarter-final. Against Barcelona. A win for the ages, sublime, surreal, stupefying.
UEFA’s man of the match Thomas Muller professed himself “still out of breath” from this historic demolition job during the post-match interviews but the 30-year-old quickly gathered his thoughts to explain what he had most enjoyed. It wasn’t his two goals or “the brutal dominance” that surpassed Germany’s 7-1 win over Brazil in 2014 in his estimation. It wasn’t even the notion that this result would send shockwaves of angst to the handful of possible contenders standing in the wake of Bayern’s sixth European Cup win.
Advertisement
No, the thing that pleased Muller most was something that few observers would have noticed on Friday night. “The nicest thing of all,” he said, “was to see players who get on (as substitutes) having the same impact, the same joy, the same work ethic (as the starters).” The man of the match trophy thus belonged to the whole squad, not him, he added.
Muller’s praise for Bayern’s collective endeavour points to the culture of togetherness that Hansi Flick has bred since he was appointed caretaker and then head coach in November 2019. Getting total “buy-in” from squad players and occasional starters has been one of Flick’s main achievements this campaign. A testament to his assured human touch.
But that’s only half the story, the part that Muller wasn’t too humble to mention explicitly. In his admiration for the substitutes’ commitment, he was really speaking about the qualities that have made him such an exceptionally effective player over the last decade. Untiring, relentless and incredibly smart, this Bayern side followed his lead up front to take a wrecking ball to Barca’s shaky foundations and provoke the biggest collapse ever seen at this level of elite club football.
It was a win won by 16 Mullers, playing Muller football, harrying and harassing the opposition high up until they fell apart. The similarity between the team and the man whose identity they channelled like never before went so far that many seasoned commentators wondered if… Bayern had actually been all that good? The very same question has been asked of Muller since he first burst onto the scene in 2009.
Thin, ungainly, unflashy to the point of looking entirely ordinary, he’s the anti-superstar in the age of nutmegs memes and YouTube compilations. Millions of football fans who don’t support Bayern or Germany are still unsure of what he does and how he does it — other than that it’s invariably right.
Advertisement
Friday night’s match was the fifth time Bayern have scored eight or more goals in a league or European game this century. The only Bayern player involved in all those routs (8-1 v St Pauli and then 9-2, 8-0 and 8-0 against Hamburger SV) — guess who? — was Thomas Muller, triggering Bayern’s ball-hunting pack from his preferred shadow striker position.
Looking back on this decade of unabated Bayern domestic dominance and their international renaissance, football historians will find that it was based on the introduction of possession/position principles under Louis van Gaal, expensive star players bought with new-found riches and a precision pressing game underpinned by the legs and brains of Muller, a man born to run who has come to run the entire team.
The 2013 Champions League winners were the side of fellow Bavarians Bastian Schweinsteiger and Philipp Lahm. In 2020, Muller is the last locally-born hero standing, determined to infuse his side with the club’s unforgiving “we have to be the best” ethos.
Having joined the club as a 10-year-old, Muller is winning mentality incarnate. “It’s only acceptable to be No 1 at Bayern,” he told this writer a few years ago. “It’s always been like that here. I’m used to it and it’s normal for me. I’m a very competitive guy anyway. I’ve never jumped for joy coming second.”
Muller grew up between two lakes in rural Bavaria, a hardcore Bayern fan who found seeing his club win the Champions League in 2001 aged 10 much more exciting than lifting the trophy and the World Cup himself as a player. Bayern is German for Bavaria, and the way he explains it, the character traits of the population and the club are overlapping. Others might consider it arrogance, but he describes “Bavarian-ness” as a feeling of strong self-confidence and deep inner happiness.
“The typical Bavarian in his lederhosen is not at all ashamed to wear a piece of clothing that looks funny to the rest of the world. He feels comfortable in it, comfortable with himself. He knows where he’s from, he knows where he belongs. And he projects that to the rest of the world as well.”
One of the many things Niko Kovac got wrong was to underestimate Muller’s importance, both as a leader in the dressing room and on the pitch. In the Croat’s deeper set-up without active pressing, Muller was seen as superfluous, not quick enough to play on the break, not cultured enough to circulate the ball in tight spaces.
Advertisement
He considered Muller a mere “emergency back-up” for striker Robert Lewandowski. It’s telling that Bayern reached one of their lowest points in the last 10 years without him, disintegrating completely in their 3-1 home defeat against Liverpool last season. Muller had been suspended for a dangerous, badly mistimed tackle on Ajax’s Nicolas Tagliafico in the group stage, but Kovac probably wouldn’t have picked him anyway as he had settled upon a reactive 4-3-3 system that left no natural space for him. Muller came close to leaving the club in the wake of his marginalisation but then Flick reinstated him as the key player for Bayern’s high-line, high-tempo forward movement.
It was Muller who screamed at his team-mates to press Chelsea’s build-up in the 85th minute of the first leg at Stamford Bridge. Bayern were 3-0 up at the time but he wouldn’t let the team relax. They have won every game in the Champions League since that Liverpool defeat, scoring 39 goals in nine games.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that this Muller-fuelled side has looked particularly muscular since the restart, winning every one of their 13 games in all competitions. Without supporters, some sides have found it hard to generate the levels of energy and inspiration required to play their very best. But that hasn’t been an issue for Bayern at all. Executive chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge suspects that’s down to the strong prevalence of intrinsic motivation within the squad.
The players have reportedly worked incredibly hard in training during the COVID-19 suspension and carried that attitude into the games. On top of that, they’re expertly self-coached. One of the sole benefits of football without crowds is the ability to listen in on the shouts and instructions, and the first thing you understand is that the “Radio Muller” nickname is well-earned. Seeing what he does, in particular, can be tricky to the untrained eye, but at least you can now hear it.
He doesn’t stop talking to his team-mates, constantly firing them up, and sets the tempo and direction of the play. Before a midfielder collects the ball, Muller will have already told him where to play it next. He quite literally calls the shots and the team follows his instructions — not out of fear of dressing-room recriminations but in the knowledge that his ideas tend to be good ones.
Since May, watching a Bayern match has been a bit like going for a 90-minute drive in a car that has saved the same radio station in all 11 slots. All you hear is Muller. Late on Friday, the circumstances might have been otherworldly, but the message he broadcast was the same as it’s ever been: just keep going.
(Photos: Michael Regan/UEFA via Getty Images)
