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The king without a ball: Thomas Müller
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Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images
He was left out for around two years, and now Thomas Müller is part of the German national soccer team again.
National coach Joachim Löw has called the 31-year-old into the squad for the European Championship starting on June 11th.
As far as Müller is concerned, Löw is following the same path that Hansi Flick took at Bayern when he became head coach there.
His most important decision was to make Müller, who often sits on the bench under Niko Kovač, the focus of the team again.
The six titles that the Munich team then won would be unthinkable without this measure.
The significance of Löw's decision to bring Müller back is correspondingly large.
In 2019, the DFB announced a new start without Müller, Mats Hummels and Jérôme Boateng, now Müller is not just returning, it is certain that he will lead the team.
Müller becomes a captain without a bandage (Manuel Neuer wears it), an organizer, you could almost say that Löw brought a playing assistant coach into the team.
"In terms of leadership, they can give the team a lot," said Löw about Müller and the second returnees, Mats Hummels.
Both had "played a very strong season."
Coach on the lawn
Müller once described himself as a "spatial interpreter";
a term that is now also used in English speakers when writing about the offensive player.
However, Müller not only interprets the space between the opponents, he also interprets the positions and actions of his teammates and the opportunities that arise from them.
And he quickly interprets all of this and draws the right conclusions.
During the ghost games, Müller's importance for FC Bayern can not only be seen, but also heard.
He whips you, but more than that, he even makes decisions.
Sometimes you can even hear him shouting commands that normally only come from the dugout.
»Attack more structured!
More about the sixes! «, One heard him when he was out in the Champions League against Paris Saint-Germain.
"He leads the team, he leads his teammates and plays at a very high level," said Flick about his attacker after taking office in Munich.
This illustrates his understanding of the game, his mental clarity in extreme situations and an influence on the team that goes far beyond his own actions.
The king without a ball
Lionel Messi is the king of dribbling, Kevin De Bruyne is the king of the pass - and Müller is the one without the ball. He is the yardstick for opening up space for dribbling and offering pass options.
Because running itself is not as difficult as a pass or a dribble, it is easy to overlook what the difficulty is: The footballer has to move in such a way that the opponents have difficulty reacting to it.
At the same time, in such a way that it does not block any teammates, but still maintains enough contact with them to create opportunities for passes and combinations.
Perhaps the best way to see how effective Müller's runs are is by observing the movements of other players.
Many footballers find it difficult to find sensible routes, especially against compact, low-lying defensive rows.
Often they choose straight runs towards the goal.
But they are predictable and therefore easy to defend.
Müller, on the other hand, repeatedly finds lateral movements through the opposing lines, diagonal sprints downwards or arched runs through the entire defense, which lead to even three or four defensive players reacting to him.
And often in the end no one succeeds in defending effectively.
In general, this is the real core of Müller's game: The permanent search for ideas, for solutions to the situation.
He does this offensively as well as defensively in capturing the ball and with a unique understanding of the game.
The Müller that Löw brought back to the DFB team today is even better than the one he retired in 2019.
With more experience, he became even stronger at playing with the ball.
His solutions under pressure are particularly spectacular - and unexpected.
At FC Bayern he was last seen in the penalty area playing passes into angles that he actually couldn't see;
he always manages to put the balls on goal with his chest, knees and heel.
In the current Bundesliga season he has so far made 21 templates.
He has one game left to break the record (also 21 assists).
It was set up by Müller himself last season.
Müller will organize the offensive game in the national team, he will instruct the younger colleagues around him, Timo Werner or Kai Havertz;
Serge Gnabry and Leroy Sané already know Müller's commands from the club.
In another phase of the game you will be able to hear Müller's announcements at the EM: in the pressing.
This role sets him apart from almost all top stars
He was already a key player in the 2014 World Cup victory: he took Marcelo out of the game in the 7-1 semi-final against Brazil, in the quarter-finals against France (1-0) and in the final against Argentina (1-0 aet) he was the one who put the opposing central defenders under pressure.
At Bayern, too, he often takes on the decisions when and where the team goes into high pressing, controls the opposing pass paths with his position and often wins the ball himself.
This role as a driver and organizer of the defensive distinguishes him from almost all top stars.
Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Kylian Mbappé are rarely seen in it.
The DFB-Elf will inevitably become a Müller team at the EM.
His work will lead to the team playing better together, to more and better movement in the game, to more talk, and to a certain extent also to the team remaining focused on the goal on the lawn.
Best of all, as FC Bayern demonstrated under Flick.
Müller's comeback suggests that Löw has taken exactly this Bavarian as his model for the EM.
That he wants to perform there just as the Munich team did in the past year and a half.
Thomas Müller has completed 100 international matches, he is world champion, won the Champions League twice with Bayern and won several other titles.
And yet there is perhaps no player who can show such a vita and at the same time is further away from being recognized by the general public as an undisputed world-class player.
There was always a Miroslav Klose, Arjen Robben or Robert Lewandowski, someone who outshone Müller's presence.
But the constant was Müller: He makes sure that the team works and that all the players around him work.
Without him, many other strikers would have shone less.
There may be German strikers at the EM who score more often than Müller.
But chances are they owe it to him too.
That Löw will take Müller with him to the European Championship should therefore not come as a surprise. Rather, the surprise is that the national coach previously waived him.