If asked who are the greatest big-match players of all time, the name Gerd Müller would definitely come up. After all, scoring in the finals of the World Cup, UEFA Euro and the European Cup (the then version of the Champions League) is no easy feat.
His name will also be amongst the very best strikers of all time. He won every football award for his club and country. On top of that, he received Ballon D'Or, the highest possible honour a European footballer can achieve back in those days.
He was unconventionally short for a German Striker. In a country that produces some of the tallest players of the game, 5’9’’ might not be an ideal height for a target man. He was also quite a fat footballer. His nickname ‘Short Fat Müller’ given by his first coach at Bayern, Zlatko Cajkovski remains a popular term of endearment for the supporters of his beloved club.
Gerd Müller was born on 3 November 1945, in the small town of Nördlingen, located in Bavaria of the then West Germany. After beginning his football career with his hometown club, Müller joined FC Bayern Munich, which belonged to the same state, in 1964.
At that time, Bayern were not the prestigious club they are now. Müller alongside names like Franz Beckenbauer, Sepp Maier, Paul Breitner, Uli Hoeness, Karl-Heinze Rummenigge, shaped a new era by establishing Bayern amongst the elites of European Football.
Bayern won 3 European Cups in a row, a feat which has only been achieved by Ajax and Real Madrid so far. And Müller was instrumental in each of those campaigns. His sudden burst of pace and pinpoint accurate finishing inside the penalty area made him one of the greatest footballers of that Era.
His success was not limited to the club level. He won the UEFA Euro 1972 as well as the FIFA World Cup 1974 with the West German National Team, scoring in the final of both these competitions. His sudden reflex and putting the ball in the back of the net against the mighty Netherlands of Johan Cruyff in the Final of the 1974 World Cup will always be remembered as one of the finest pieces of finishings in that stage of the event.
Gerd Müller represented a dying breed of strikers, the fox in the box, whose only responsibility is to score from inside the 6-yard box, no matter how difficult the angle is. And to say he did his job properly is quite an understatement.
In 716 games at the club level which included TSV Nördlingen, FC Bayern Munich and a brief stint in the USA with Fort Lauderdale Strikers, he scored 654 goals. His record for the National Side is even more impressive as he scored an astonishing 68 goals in 62 official appearances.
He previously held the records of scoring the most number of goals in a single calendar year as well as the most number of goals in a Bundesliga season, before the records being broken by Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski respectively. He scored an impressive 34 goals in 35 matches in the European Cup, with an excellent ratio of 0.97 goals per game.
Gerd was suffering from Alzheimer’s, a disease that is associated with loss of memory and other brain-related issues for 6 years. On 15 August 2021, he breathed his last at the age of 75.
Gerd's death has sent a shockwave through the footballing world as football lost one of its greatest ever players. He represented the efficient side of the beautiful game and inspired a generation of strikers for whom, lack of technical ability is not a big obstacle in excelling at their job.
Rassiq Aziz Kabir is a student of Economics at the University of Dhaka.
