Player of the month January: Thomas Müller
February 16, 2022 One of the best on the pitch in all three games and a constant source of trouble for opposing defensive lines: Thomas Müller, our Miasanrot Player of the Month for January.
Thomas Müller’s January in numbers
Thomas Müller was in the starting eleven in all three of FC Bayern’s January matches and had a significant hand in the two victories. He scored one goal and made three assists.
He needed only 253 minutes for his four scorer points, which corresponds to a goal involvement every 63 minutes.
A Kicker grade average of 2.0 and a Whoscored rating of 7.9/10 confirm the value of his performance both on the basis of a subjective editor’s rating and the purely data-based Whoscored grade.
To put his grades into perspective: In the overall Kicker season statistics, Robert Lewandowski leads with a grade average of 2.45. From the five major leagues in Europe, only one player has a Whoscored average above 7.9: also Lewandowski.
Thomas Müller, the best underrated player in the world?
In the league, Thomas Müller has recorded 18 assists as of matchday 22. He is well on his way to breaking the barrier of 20 assists in the Bundesliga for the third time in a row and beating his own record of 21.
Müller is currently perhaps the best assist maker in the top five leagues in Europe. His closest rival in the assists statistics this year? Domenico Berardi of Italy’s US Sassuolo at 11.
Thomas Müller has collected more assists in his career than Franck Ribéry, Diego, Kevin de Bruyne and Mesut Özil – and yet few would name Thomas Müller as the best playmaker or goal provider of our time. Why is that?
But Müller does not only shine as provider. He has scored ten times in all competitions this season. His role as a leader and director of play in the game without the ball has been well known for years, although “Radio Müller” has become even more widely known since the beginning of the pandemic-induced games behind closed doors.
And yet one looks for him in vain on the Ballon d’Or lists as well as in the FIFA world eleven. He last made it into the top 30 at the Ballon d’Or in 2016, where he failed to garner any points. He has never featured in the FIFA FIFPro World XI.
A look into Thomas Müller’s future
Perhaps it is FC Bayern’s great good fortune that Thomas Müller, for all the high esteem in which he is held at the club, often flies below the radar of global attention. Perhaps that is part of the reason why Thomas Müller has been playing for the German record champions for over twenty years and still seems as motivated as on day one.
His current contract ends in 2023, when he will be 33. An extension is on the cards, with talks with Neuer and Lewandowski, whose contracts also expire, said to be further advanced. Despite the still cautious comments regarding an extension, one can no more imagine FC Bayern without Thomas Müller than one can imagine Thomas Müller in another club shirt.
Müller has already made 612 appearances in the Bayern shirt – only goalkeepers Oliver Kahn and Sepp Maier have worn the shirt more often. If Müller remains fit, he could leave the two legends behind by the summer of 2023.
He has long been there for the major titles: No one in the club’s history tops the number of major trophies he has won with and for Bayern. With ten championships, six DFB-Pokal wins and two Champions League victories, Müller has a total of 18 trophies in competitions that are played out over a whole season. He still shares this top spot with David Alaba, but sooner or later he will no doubt be alone at the top.
