Supporting Gerd Müller

I found myself delighted when 1FFC Frankfurt striker Célia Šašić grabbed the first hat-trick of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup finals, in a 10-0 win over Ivory Coast. I loved that the first hat-trick of the 2014 FIFA men’s World Cup was scored by Bayern Munich’s Thomas Müller. Seem like strange things for a Scotsman to remember, far less celebrate. No less so when I explain it's because both wore Germany’s number 13 - the shirt made famous by Bayern legend Gerd Müller, now aged 75.

When, in October 2015, it was announced Müller was suffering from Alzheimer’s, German football rallied round arguably the greatest striker the game has known. Following those who inherit his shirt is just one of the tenuous ways I’ve always supported “Der Bomber”, who retired from international football 41 years ago, as I turned 5.

Growing up as Scotland’s World Cup failures went from heroic to comedic and VHS tapes of football history proliferated, Germany’s tournament consistency became a stolen security blanket, Müller’s stats and story a self-help book for young adulthood.

Derided by his first Bayern Munich coach as “the short fat Miller”, he became 1970 European Footballer of the Year through close-range scoring.  He would go on to score 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga matches for Bayern. So being classed “a lazy, poaching git” wouldn’t shame me out my teenage place in a Sunday league team.

The humble stoicism of die Nationalmannschaft was also, for me, the perfect antidote to Scotland’s extremes of international arrogance and insecurity. We capped dishevelled alcoholic geniuses apparently predestined for Culloden-esque hubris. Yet squat, inelegant Müller - fond of a bevvy and representing a nation universally unforgiven for a war which ended the year he was born - scored the winner in the final of the World Cup, European Championships and European Cup

My dad saw him score against Scotland at Hampden, my uncle against Rangers at Ibrox. While his is the only autograph I’ve ever hunted (obtained outside Glasgow City chambers in 2002), I never saw him play. Yet when Brazil’s Luís Antônio Corrêa da Costa put Scotland out the 1990 World Cup with both a strike and nickname connoting 1940s Bavaria, I knew the original “Müller’s” career would always be visceral to me.

Holland’s Marco van Basten, needing one to beat Müller’s record of 16 European Championship goals, couldn’t score throughout Euro 92. When he missed in the semi-final shoot-out against Denmark I was off the sofa, delighted he couldn’t even claim a tie-breaker.

Peter Schmeichel was still in goals for Denmark four years later when Croatia’s Davor Suker, who would reach 20 during the Euro 2000 qualifiers, equalled Müller’s record with a famous chip at Hillsborough. Sheffield “neutrals” asked Manchester United’s Schmeichel the score. I sat among them, in that high uncovered corner between the Leppings Lane End and the North Stand, knowing it was 16 each.

In 2006 I supped tea-time pints in the pub nearest my work, masochistically watching Brazil’s Ronaldo equal then overtake Gerdy’s record of 14 World Cup finals goals: His two against Japan and one versus Ghana were scored at Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion, adjacent to the Stadion Rote Erde, the site of Müller’s first international goal (and his second, third and fourth – all in the same 1968 Euros qualifier versus Albania). So it was worth waiting eight years to see Miroslav Klose reclaim that record for Germany on Brazilian soil – his fifteenth against Ghana, his sixteenth in the 7-1 rout of the hosts. 

Klose, because of that record; the Faroe Islands’ Jan Allan Müller because of his surname; and Thomas Müller because he has the surname, squad number, Champions League winners medal with Bayern and World Cup Golden Shoe:  I’ve loved seeing these players score live, simply because of their varyingly direct links with my retrospective hero.

The namesakes I saw scoring against my country at Hampden. Those 2006 post-work pints used up the last of the money I had left from travelling to Munich for the opening match and ceremony of that World Cup. Klose got a brace - two of his eventual record tally – in a 4-2 win over Costa Rica. The ceremony which preceded it saw Müller on the pitch. At Bayern’s new home ground. It was like a passing of the flame.

What’s happened since, with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi taking goal-scoring to cartoon levels, exists in a world and game unrecognisable from the one of my day – when defenders could and would kick you to pieces - far less that of the striker they called Der Bomber. Messi and Ronaldo have their records, their Ballons d’Or and their Champions Leagues. But they have one international winner’s medal between them and it’s not for the FIFA World Cup, the final of which neither has scored in.

Müller shouted, “Ich bin Max Morlock,” while playing as a kid. 1FC Nuremberg’s Morlock, wearing 13, scored Germany’s opener in their triumphant 1954 World Cup final. When they next won a World Cup, in 1974, Müller scored the winner – his 68^th goal in his 62^nd and final match for his country - wearing his hero’s number. It embodies the beautiful memories he’s provided for millions that, four decades later, middle-aged Scotsmen could still be seen waddling round Glasgow five-a-side courts, hailing every jammy sklaff from three yards with, “I am Gerd Müller!”