Thomas Müller: How the Bayern legend's career began in Görlitz

Görlitz. On Saturday, it's all over for now. Thomas Müller will play his 751st competitive match for FC Bayern Munich against Hoffenheim. This marks the end of the Bundesliga career of Germany's most successful footballer. Müller has won 34 titles in his career, second only to Toni Kroos.

The 2014 World Cup winner owes this, among other things, to his former coach, Louis van Gaal. The idiosyncratic Dutchman intensively nurtured the young attacker at a time when Thomas Müller was only a household name among football connoisseurs. "Müller always plays," was van Gaal's most famous quote during his Bayern tenure from 2009 to 2011.

The fact that van Gaal relied so heavily on Müller has a lot to do with a friendly match against Yellow-White Görlitz on August 18, 2009. Van Gaal's former assistant coach, Andries Jonker, recounts this in the Amazon Prime documentary series "Generation Wembley." "Back then, we played a friendly match somewhere outside Dresden against Jens Jeremies' youth club, Yellow-White Görlitz," the Dutchman recalls of the encounter.

Bayern Munich will be playing in the middle of the season on a Tuesday to celebrate the club's 100th anniversary. The record champions have had a poor start to the Bundesliga season under new coach van Gaal, drawing only two of their first two matches. Therefore, they will be fielding a better B-team in Görlitz. The former stars, including Franck Ribéry, Mario Gomez, and Luca Toni, are missing from the Neisse region. This presents Müller with an opportunity.

Not yet a world star at the time: 19-year-old Thomas Müller steps onto the pitch at the “Junge Welt” stadium in Görlitz.

Source: Robert Michael

"Louis came to me before the match and asked me if I remembered how we played at FC Barcelona," says Jonker, who was already van Gaal's assistant coach at the Catalans from 2002 to 2003. "I still remembered it. We played with Patrick Kluivert, Luis Enrique, and Javier Saviola up front. They constantly formed triangles. Then Louis told me to explain this tactic to Müller."

That's what Jonker does. Ten minutes into the game, van Gaal tells him: "He understands, he knows what to do." In Munich's 10-0 win against the then sixth-division team in front of 6,521 spectators at the "Junge Welt" stadium, Müller is Bayern's most notable player, with three goals and four assists. "In the tests, you always want to show that you belong in the starting eleven and make a name for yourself," the youngster said immediately after the match.

It was the birth of Müller, the space-reader who from then on always played in central attacking midfield as a so-called number 10. "We discovered in this game that he could become an outstanding number 10," says Jonker, explaining: "Not a traditional number 10 like Günter Netzer. Müller was a very strong runner with a feel for space. He was focused on scoring goals rather than controlling the game."

Van Gaal also recognizes in Müller the young Jari Litmanen, one of his most important players during his time at Ajax Amsterdam. "Thomas Müller is a player who plays between the lines, who attacks well, defends well, and presses well," van Gaal says of his former protégé in the documentary, emphasizing: "That's rare, because attackers usually can't press properly. That's why I chose him. And I think it was a good decision."

This text first appeared in the “Sächsische Zeitung” – a partner in the Editorial Network Germany.