Unlike most football protagonists, Thomas Müller can also joke about supposedly serious topics such as the transfer theater between his FC Bayern Munich and Robert Lewandowski. The 32-year-old is thus disarming a business that may take itself a bit too seriously in its public image. A comment.
With serious faces, Serge Gnabry, Leon Goretzka or Joshua Kimmich preferred not to say anything. But you don’t do that either – unless you’re Toni Kroos – so they said a few more sentences. As is customary in the industry, they had been asked at their press conferences in the past few days about the escalating dispute between their club FC Bayern Munich and their teammate Robert Lewandowski. As is usual in the industry, they were annoyed by it.
Then Thomas Müller came – and he saw it all very differently. “It’s the summer slump. It doesn’t hurt if there’s still a little movement in there,” he said after the German national team’s 1-1 draw against England on Tuesday and laughed. “It doesn’t bother me if the soup keeps cooking.” After all, this soup of rumors would also taste warmed up, Müller asserted: “Like from the microwave.”
It almost resembled the call: keep speculating and discussing! And don’t forget the wink! Once again, Müller disarmed a business that may take itself a bit too seriously in its public image. Ultimately, it’s about football. A sport that has long since become part of the entertainment business.
As the name suggests, this industry primarily serves to entertain the fans who ultimately finance all of this. Whether you like it or not, it has been proven that many of them are not only interested in tactics, goals and titles, but also in rumours, scandals and jokes. Hardly anyone understands this as well as Müller, so he plays the game.
Thomas Müller made similar statements about Alaba and Boateng
Similar to Lewandowski now, FC Bayern was in a minor dispute with David Alaba a year and a half ago. At that time it was about a possible contract extension, about alleged deadlines, about salary demands. “We want something to move around here, and it’s nice when it crackles a bit,” said Müller at the time. “I used to enjoy reading it when it was FC Hollywood again.”
The term FC Hollywood came into being in the mid-1990s as a synonym for FC Bayern, where the so-called alpha animals Stefan Effenberg, Lothar Matthäus and Oliver Kahn had gathered at the time. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a game day or not: there was always something going on, one always messed with the other. They were the first harbingers of where football was going to go. During this time, Müller grew up not far from Munich in the village of Pähl and seemed to enjoy reporting on his favorite club.
He has been serving them with jokes and jokes himself for 13 years now. He hardly distinguishes between loose topics and those that are supposedly serious in the industry. He can’t change anything anyway, so what the heck!
“It would be completely wrong for players to comment on contract histories,” said Müller in the course of Jerome Boateng’s farewell a year ago. “Then it would be here… as it is. Shit, now I’ve caught myself.”
