In our “Green Space” column, Oliver Fritsch, Christof Siemes, Stephan Reich and Christian Spiller take turns writing about the world of football and the world of football. This article is part of ZEIT am Wochenend, issue 49/2025.
On the day the most successful German footballer arrived in his new home of Vancouver, the local newspaper there had him The Province not just with the headline “A Legend Arrives” on the title. Inside the sheet there is also an advertisement designed like a letter. The addressee: “Dear Vancouver”. The message: I’m not coming to visit the city. I’m coming to Vancouver to win titles. Signatory: Thomas Müller.
You have to give him that: he kept his word. Almost four months later, the guy from Pähl im Pfaffenwinkel, whom I could never imagine outside of Säbener Strasse after 756 competitive games for FC Bayern, is in the final of the MLS, the US Major League Soccer. And even if he was with his friends on St. Nicholas Eve Vancouver
Whitecaps against Lionel Messi and whose Inter Miami should lose the final, but he has already delivered: On October 1st, Müller won the Canadian Championship with his new team, his 35th title. This means he now has one more than the legendary title eater Toni Kroos.
As a resident of one of the snootiest football countries in Europe, I too have previously considered the MLS to be second class at best; a venue for aging stars who want to make some serious money in sunshine and medium game intensity. But Müller took the trip to the Wild West seriously from the start. And when I look back on his first few months in the second division, I have to say: respect.
As he ate the last Leberkaas upon departure at Munich airport, the melancholy that surrounded him when he said goodbye to his life’s club, FCB, had disappeared. He was offended that he was no longer wanted there; his career seemed to be languishing in a bad mood, like that of many others who missed the right moment to leave. He later posted a video that showed him with his father and brother in a western outfit on the banks of the Isar, breathing a final, melancholy “Sheee was it” into the dusk. But when the grieving Bavarian cowboy is welcomed a little later in Vancouver by Canadian indigenous people and their drums, he is already his old self again: “Hot for titles,” as he says, and always up for a joke, even a stupid one.
In the first meeting with his new team, he wins their hearts: he brought along a pair of original Bavarian lederhosen for Ralph Priso, the young Canadian midfielder who gave him the number 13 jersey. Because Müller, with his world champion number on his back, is supposed to push the team to higher goals. The new playmates cheerfully greet the leather garment and its bearer; He cleverly introduced himself, not as the legendary world champion and World Cup top scorer, but as a fun boy.
So Müller carries on, jittery like a young talent who is happy to finally be able to play with the big boys. When he was presented with a small cake on the pitch after a game for his 300th career goal, he laughed: “You must have counted the goals in training!” With his new buddy Ryan Gauld, the midfielder from Aberdeen, he establishes the “Scottish kiss” as a celebration ritual, in which the two men rub their foreheads together like two stags in heat. And after reaching the MLS final, he creates a new headwear style – a sandwich made from two baseball caps and a Whitecaps wool hat, in which he looks wonderfully stupid.
But Müller has a natural authority alongside the joker gene. He wore the captain’s armband in the second game and was also allowed to take penalties. Nine goals and four assists in twelve games are not bad for a 36-year-old man, even if you take into account that some defenders sometimes keep a respectful distance from the Raumdeuter’s stork legs.
And he doesn’t just let goals speak for themselves: Radio Müller also continues to broadcast on the Pacific coast, and the goalgetter has also become something of a fatherly player-coach for the no-name Whitecaps squad. Before kick-off, he swears to his “warriors,” as he calls them, in the team circle: Help each other! Everyone should want the ball! Be ready for him! Once we have it, we form triangles! We have to be in the gaps and play there! Trust our system!
And something happens that I wouldn’t have thought possible: a single footballer can change an entire team and make it better. Nobody scoffs at the Punch and Judy in the operetta league, but rather admires the enthusiasm with which Ol’ Man Müller is trying to win his 36th title.
If he doesn’t end up injured, there will now be a big showdown with the biggest in the MLS, oh no, in the whole world, Lionel Messi. Portraits of the two adorn the poster for the finale; The two bearded men look grimly forward to the summit meeting with furrowed eyebrows. When they first met on a soccer field, they were still young and clean-shaven; it was in 2010, a few months before the World Cup in South Africa, where Müller’s star rose (Messi has always been one). It was Müller’s first international match, a 0-1 loss against Argentina, at home in Munich at that. However, the German won seven of the following nine meetings between the two, including spectacular defeats such as the 4-0 World Cup in Cape Town, Bayern’s 8-2 win against Barcelona and of course the final in Rio 2014.
This time, however, Messi’s Miami is considered the favorite, especially since the football god’s pink team includes other veteran stars such as Luis Suárez and Sergio Busquets. But there is this Müller factor. Even if Messi is ahead in all other statistics (international matches 196: 131, international goals 115: 45, club goals 787: 301) – our man in America remains unpredictable. And unlike Marco Reus, who won his very first title as a newcomer to the MLS last year, everyone is excited about Müller. Even though there are more than 8,000 kilometers between Munich and Miami, where the MLS final begins on Saturday evening at half past eight German time – Thomas Müller has remained our popular footballer.
