Thomas Muller’s Bayern Munich contract might be expiring, but his astonishing football legacy never will.
The 35-year-old lifelong Bayern legend is making headlines in Germany as an impending free agent with no new deal on the horizon.
GettyMuller isn’t a regular under Vincent Kompany, but he’s still a Bayern icon[/caption]
Muller has already stepped away from international duty with one of the greatest records the tournament has ever seen, and he can still add to his Champions League scoring with Bayern in the quarter-finals against Inter Milan.
In fact, so impressive has Muller been in football’s premier international and club competitions that he has a record not even Cristiano Ronaldo can boast.
The Bavarian-born icon features in the top ten of the scoring charts for both the World Cup and Champions League – a feat only two other players can boast.
Muller has ten goals in 16 games for Germany on the biggest stage, and 56 in 161 in Europe’s elite competition.
His World Cup record ranks him joint tenth, while his Champions League tally is the sixth best in the competition’s history.
Only Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe can reach such a feat, showing just what an achievement it is.
Ronaldo, meanwhile, is top of the Champions League scoring charts with 140 goals, but joint 26th in the World Cup with eight in 22.
Despite the incredible success of a Euro 2016 win with Portugal, the furthest the Al Nassr forward has gone in the World Cup is the semi-finals in 2006, although there’s little doubt he’ll still be going in 2026, looking to add to his total.
But for Muller, that time is over. The veteran was controversially dropped from Germany’s squad by Joachim Low in 2019, despite the pair winning the tournament together in 2014.
Low wanted to move on to a younger generation, and also said goodbye to Jerome Boateng and Mats Hummels before reversing that call for Euro 2020.
| Rank | Player (Team) | Goals scored | Matches | Editions scored in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Miroslav Klose (Germany) | 16 | 24 | 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014 |
| 2 | Ronaldo (Brazil) | 15 | 19 | 1998, 2002, 2006 |
| 3 | Gerd Muller (Germany) | 14 | 13 | 1970, 1974 |
| 4 | Just Fontaine (France) | 13 | 6 | 1958 |
| 4 | Lionel Messi (Argentina) | 13 | 26 | 2006, 2014, 2018, 2022 |
| 6 | Kylian Mbappe | 12 | 14 | 2018, 2022 |
| 6 | Pele (Brazil) | 12 | 14 | 1958, 1962, 1966, 1970 |
| 8 | Sandor Kocsis (Hungary) | 11 | 5 | 1954 |
| 8 | Jurgen Klinsmann (Germany) | 11 | 17 | 1990, 1994, 1998 |
| 10 | Helmut Rahn (Germany) | 10 | 10 | 1954, 1958 |
| 10 | Gabriel Batistuta (Argentina) | 10 | 12 | 1994, 1998, 2002 |
| 10 | Gary Lineker (England) | 10 | 12 | 1986, 1990 |
| 10 | Teofilo Cubillas (Peru) | 10 | 13 | 1970, 1978 |
| 10 | Thomas Muller (Germany) | 10 | 16 | 2010, 2014 |
| 10 | Grzegorz Lato (Poland) | 10 | 20 | 1974, 1978, 1982 |
That gave Muller another run at the 2022 World Cup, but he failed to score, before retiring full time after the home Euro 2024 campaign in Germany.
During that rough spell at international level, Muller added his second Champions League win in 2020, and later became Bayern’s all-time record appearance holder.
You’d think all of this would make a new contract a formality, but it seems as though that isn’t the case.
Almost never injured, Muller is on course to play the fewest games in a season since becoming a Bayern regular, with 35 games this season, only 12 of which were starts.
Recent weeks have seen major outlets like BILD and Kicker reporting that he won’t be offered a new deal, and so monumental is that claim that even the usually calm sporting director Max Eberl lost his cool.
“How many more questions do I have to answer?” he said about constant Muller questions before Bayern take on Augsburg. “You can ask three more times, through the back door.
“At the moment, it’s being driven by the media. Neither Thomas nor we have officially said anything about it, except that we’ll announce something when there’s something to announce, once the talks are concluded. That’s happening right now.
“I’m not going to talk about Thomas here; we’re talking with Thomas. When we announce the decision, we’ll announce it.”
All signals are suggesting that Muller won’t be hanging around, and will call time on his career as one of the most legendary one-club players to ever do it – and the records to back it up.
