Gerd Müller, legendary striker for Germany and Bayern Munich in the 1960s and 1970s, died at the age of 75, Sunday August 15, announced the Bavarian club in a statement.
“Today is a sad, dark day for FC Bayern and its supporters”, said club president Herbert Hainer. At the same time, Bayern’s website wore black and white as a sign of mourning, as did its logo on social networks.
A minute of silence was observed on Sunday in his honor before the Bundesliga match between Mainz and Leipzig, counting for the first day of the championship.
1974 world champion, 1972 European champion, scoring each time in the final, Müller held some of the main records in German football.
Author of 365 goals in the Bundesliga throughout his career with Bayern, he had especially scored 68 times in 62 matches for the FRG, the last of which to offer the coronation to Germany in the World Cup in 1974 in final against the Netherlands (2-1) at the Olympiastadion (Olympic stadium), Munich.
With the German selection, he scored 14 goals in two editions of the World Cup (1970 and 1974). He long held the position of top scorer in the World Cup, but was beaten in 2006 by the Brazilian Ronaldo (15) then by the German Miroslav Klose (16) in 2014.
Ballon d’Or in 1970, “Der Bomber”, as he was nicknamed, had also won in club three European Cups of Champion Clubs, one Cup of Cups, four German league titles and four German Cups.
“The best center forward of all time”
“I am convinced that people will still be talking about him in a hundred years”, launched in November 2020 his great friend Franz Beckenbauer, with whom he was world champion in 1974. The “Kaiser Franz”, whom the Germans consider to be the greatest player in their history, even showed humility in the face of talent of his ex-teammate:
“In my eyes, he is the most important player in Bayern history. It is thanks to his goals that the club reached the international level where it still evolves. “
Gerd Müller has inspired generations of strikers, such as England’s Gary Lineker, who hailed the memory of the “Better fox of surfaces than[il] have[t] never seen play ” thanks to which he has “Learned a lot of things by watching him” when he was a child.
Müller “Is one of Bayern’s greatest legends, his performances remain unmatched to this day and will eternally be part of the great history of Bayern and German football”, said ex-Nationalmannschaft goalkeeper Oliver Kahn.
For Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, one of his successors in the Golden Ball and current Bayern boss, “Gerd Müller was the best center forward of all time”. “A striker like we will never see again in modern football”, added Joachim Löw, the 2014 world champion national coach.
After his retirement from sports in 1981, he sank into alcohol and depression. On the occasion of his 75e birthday, on November 3, 2020, his wife, Uschi, had given a touching interview to the daily Bild, describing the “Slow slide towards the beyond” of her husband, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. “It’s almost twenty-four hours a day in bed, he only has rare moments of awakening, she said. Sometimes he can say yes or no by wiggling an eyelash (…) he is calm and peaceful, I think he is not in pain. “
