German football legend Gerd Müller passes away
The legendary, former Bayern Munich striker passed away on Sunday, aged 75. With 365 goals in 427 games, Müller remains the Bundesliga's all-time top scorer.
The world's football community is in mourning today with the announcement that German football legend Gerd Müller has passed away. He was aged 75. Müller's former club Bayern Munich broke the news on their Twitter account shortly before 14:00 hours on Sunday afternoon. The former Bayern and West Germany striker had been battling a number of health issues, including Alzheimer's Disease, with which he was diagnosed in 2015.
Natural-born goal scorer
During his playing career, Müller, nicknamed Der Bomber, scored an incredible 365 league goals in 427 games for Bayern and remains the Bundesliga's all-time top scorer. But even before he joined Bayern his goal-scoring talents were already in evidence - he contributed an astonishing 180 goals out of the 204 goals which his home town club TSV 1861 Nördlingen had scored during their time in the 2. Amateurliga Schwaben (IV) division. It wasn't long before he was noticed by Bayern, who signed him as a teenager in 1964. In total, he netted 566 goals in 607 competitive games for the club during his 15 seasons in Munich, where he won four Bundesliga titles and three European Cups. He remains among the top goal scorers in the history of the European Cup/Champions League, occupying 20th place in the list with 34 goals in 35 games but with a higher ratio than anyone else, averaging 0.97 goals per game.
He also held the Bundesliga record for the most goals in one season up until quite recently. Müller scored 40 goals in the 1971-72 season but Robert Lewandowski went one better to take his record back in May this year.
Bayern tribute
Bayern president Herbert Hainer paid tribute to Müller in a club statement: "Today is a sad, black day for Bayern and all of its fans. Gerd Müller was the greatest striker there has ever been and a fine person, a personality in world football. We are united in deep sorrow with his wife Uschi and his family. Without Gerd Müller, Bayern would not be the club we all love today. His name and the memory of him will live on forever
Müller scored 68 goals in 62 international matches for West Germany, winning the World Cup in 1974, and is third in the all-time list of most goals in the competition with 14 goals behind Ronaldo (15) and Miroslav Klose (16).