Gerd Müller

TSV 1861 Nördlingen

Müller began his football career at his hometown club TSV 1861 Nördlingen youth ranks in 1958. In 1963 he was promoted to the first team and he scored 51 league goals in 31 appearances in his first season in the Bayernliga, Bavaria's regional league.

Bayern Munich

In 1963, aged 18, Müller joined Bayern Munich, where he teamed up with future stars Franz Beckenbauer and Sepp Maier. The club, which would go on to become the most successful German club in history, was then still in the Regionalliga Süd (Regional League South), which was one level below the Bundesliga at the time.

After one season, Bayern Munich advanced to the Bundesliga and started a long string of successes. With his club, Müller amassed titles during the 1960s and 1970s: he won the German Championship four times, the DFB-Pokal four times, the European Cup three consecutive years (the first West German team to win it; Müller scored in the 1974 final replay and the 1975 final), the Intercontinental Cup once, and the European Cup Winners' Cup once. An opportunistic goal-scorer, Müller also became German top scorer seven times and European top scorer twice. Müller scored 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga matches for Bayern Munich, 53 goals over the second-most successful Bundesliga scorer, Robert Lewandowski, since 2022.

Club goal records

At his peak, Müller held the single-season Bundesliga record with 40 goals in season 1971–72, a record that would be held until…

Müller scored 68 goals in 62 games for West Germany. He was Germany's all-time leading scorer for almost 40 years until surpassed by Miroslav Klose in 2014, though Klose required over double the number of caps to do so, scoring his 69th goal in his 132nd appearance. Müller is one of six players to reach 50 international goals in under 50 appearances, doing so in 41 games. Müller's international career started in 1966 and ended on 7 July 1974 with victory at the 1974 FIFA World Cup at his home stadium in Munich. He scored the winning goal for the 2–1 victory over Johan Cruyff's Netherlands in the final and later having a goal wrongfully disallowed for offside. His four goals in that tournament and his ten goals at the 1970 FIFA World Cup combined made him the all-time highest FIFA World Cup goalscorer at the time with 14 goals. His record stood until the 2006 tournament, coincidentally held in Germany, when it was broken by Brazilian striker Ronaldo, who also required more matches than Müller to achieve his tally. Müller also participated in the 1972 European Championship, becoming top scorer with four goals (including two in the final) and winning the Championship with the West German team. Müller quit playing for West Germany after the 1974 FIFA World Cup triumph. While there was an argument with the German Football Association (DFB) at the post-tournament celebration, when officials' wives were allowed to attend but players' wives were not, Müller said that he had made the…

Gerhard Müller was born on 3 November 1945 in Nördlingen, Bavaria, Germany, the son of Johann Heinrich Müller and Christina Carolina Jung.

After Müller ended his career in 1981, he fell into a slump and suffered from alcoholism. However, his former companions at Bayern Munich convinced him to go through alcohol rehabilitation. When he emerged, they gave him a job as a coach at Bayern Munich II. He held the position from 1992 until he retired in 2014 due to health problems. There is also a collection of apparel released by sporting giants Adidas under the Gerd Müller name. It is part of the Adidas originals series. In July 2008, the Rieser Sportpark, in Nördlingen, where Müller had begun his career, was renamed the Gerd-Müller-Stadion in his honour. On 6 October 2015, it was announced that Müller was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He died on 15 August 2021 in a nursing home in Wolfratshausen, aged 75.