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There is a photo of Gerd Müller that shows him next to his wife Uschi in a seating area of the New York uber-disco Studio 54. The group drinks bubbly. With a full beard and a jacket, Müller could, by today’s style standards, play in an indie rock band from the West Coast. But it was the year 1979; and the “Bomber of the Nation,” retired from Bayern Munich, had just signed a contract with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers in Florida.
The league was called the North American Soccer League (NASL). The most dazzling club was Cosmos New York, with superstars like Pelé, Carlos Alberto and Franz Beckenbauer. A typically American attempt to market the “soccer” phenomenon with a lot of money according to the rules of showbiz.
At the Müller Club Strikers, the English World Cup goalkeeper Gordon Banks, Bernd Hölzenbein and the coolness legend George Best also played a little for the gallery. Gerd Müller scored 38 goals during his 71 games. It was over for two more years. His last career stop before he got into troubled waters as the operator of the steak restaurant “The Ambry” and drank too much. He returned to Munich, underwent rehab and found his happiness as an athlete again as an assistant coach at Bayern.
Gerd Müller was totally old school
In many football books and analyzes the 1970s are described as a decade of liberation with long hair, the first model girlfriends or the super dynamic “totaal voetbal” from the Netherlands. Penalty area king Müller escaped these categories. He came from the country side of Nördlingen, small backgrounds. He was strictly old school, stoic and angular; He liked to stick his butt out when receiving the ball. In his idiosyncratic style, the so-called “müllern”, he turned – somehow – around his own axis and sank the ball into the goal from every position, no matter how unfavorable.
It all fit with his rare forays into pop culture. For example, his popular single “Dann es bumm”, which he recorded in 1969 together with the local song composer Walter Geiger: “Every Saturday afternoon, there is something going on; again and again the tension is huge…”
A rustic spirit, which also inspired the later World Cup song “Football is our life” lived. Gerd Müller became top scorer in 1971/72 with 40 goals when he won the championship three times in a row with his Bayern from 1972 to 1974. In 1972 he became European champion and in 1974 world champion. Müller scored the winning goal in the final against Holland to make it 2-1.
His years at FC Bayern were also a time in which the dull grandstand chorus “Take Bayern’s Lederhosen off” was invented in away stadiums. Gerd Müller was above these things. He scored goals. He was just as unsuitable as a prophet of the modern game as he was in his urbane demeanor outside the penalty area. The photo from the New York super disco should remain the only one. The later FC Hollywood would not have been his thing.
Like the ultimate expert on the guitar, he mastered his instrument, the ball. He wanted nothing to do with the big, wide world of posing and self-promotion. A hero from another time. Gerd Müller, born on November 3rd, 1945, died on August 15th, 2021 at the age of 75.