Gerd Müller

Gerhard Müller, born on 3 November 1945 in Nördlingen, Bavaria, to Johann Heinrich Müller and Christina Carolina Jung, was a German professional footballer widely considered one of the sport’s greatest players and goalscorers. Nicknamed "Bomber der Nation" or simply "Der Bomber," he was especially lethal inside the six-yard box. Müller is among only eleven players to have won the FIFA World Cup, the UEFA Champions League, and the Ballon d'Or.

He began his career at TSV 1861 Nördlingen’s youth ranks in 1958, and after being promoted to the first team in 1963, scored 51 league goals in 31 appearances in the Bayernliga. That same year, at age 18, he joined Bayern Munich, then in the Regionalliga Süd. Alongside Franz Beckenbauer and Sepp Maier, he helped the club rise to the Bundesliga, where he spent 15 seasons. For Bayern, Müller scored 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga matches—still the league’s all-time record—and netted 65 goals in 74 European club games.

He won four German championships, four DFB-Pokals, three consecutive European Cups (scoring in the 1974 final replay and the 1975 final), one Intercontinental Cup, and one European Cup Winners’ Cup. He was German top scorer seven times and European top scorer twice. His single-season Bundesliga record of 40 goals in 1971–72 stood until Robert Lewandowski scored 41 in 2020–21. In the 1972–73 season, he scored 67 club goals in all European competitions, a record later broken by Lionel Messi.

After his Bundesliga career, Müller played three seasons for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers in the NASL, scoring 38 goals and reaching the 1980 league final.

For West Germany, Müller scored 68 goals in 62 appearances, averaging over a goal per game. He is one of six players to reach 50 international goals in under 50 caps, doing so in 41 games. His international career began in 1966 and ended with the 1974 World Cup final, where he scored the winning goal in a 2–1 victory over the Netherlands. He also scored four goals in that tournament, and with ten goals at the 1970 World Cup, he became the all-time top scorer in the competition with 14 goals—a record that stood for 32 years until Ronaldo surpassed it in 2006.

Müller was top scorer at the 1970 World Cup, winning the Golden Boot, and later that year was named European Footballer of the Year (Ballon d'Or). In 1972, he won the UEFA European Championship and was top scorer, including two goals in the final. He held Germany’s all-time scoring record for nearly 40 years until Miroslav Klose surpassed it in 2014, though Klose needed over twice as many caps.

In 1999, the IFFHS ranked Müller ninth in its European Player of the Century election and 13th in its World Player of the Century election. In 2004, Pelé included him in the FIFA 100 list of the world’s greatest living players. Müller died on 15 August 2021.