Thomas Müller is one of a kind.
What he does on the pitch looks so simple, but it's ingenious.
The perfect run with the perfect timing.
Müller does this all the time, it doesn't matter whether he scores himself or provides the assist.
He is one of the most successful players there has ever been
and yet no fan really has him on their radar as a superstar.
Maybe because his dribbles don't look like Lionel Messi's,
maybe because you never know for sure whether it's just luck or skill.
At first glance, his game looks unspectacular.
His style how, he works is not visible for a human.
It's only when you take a closer look that you appreciate his unique abilities.
Müller is a World Cup winner, two-time Champions League victor and nine-time Bundesliga champion.
No German player has won so many trophies,
played so many Champions League games and assisted so many Bundesliga goals.
Like no one else he is always in the right place at the right time.
In Germany he's known as the "Raumdeuter", in English...
So what is a "Raumdeuter" and why is Müller one of the most underrated players in the world?
Let's take a look.
There is simply no one like Müller in the football world,
a rare one club man he has been wearing the Bayern Munich jersey for 21 years.
And there's one thing he's always had in his DNA:
identifying open spaces even when they're not yet visible to most.
Müller always knows unlike some of his opponents where to move and where the ball will end up.
What makes him special is he is...one could say like two steps ahead of his opponents.
In the summer of 2020 Müller explained to
the foreign press exactly what his Raumdeuter position means.
My biggest quality is maybe the game without ball,
to get in the right space to the right time, maybe it's the "space interpreter".
In classic Müller style he coined the Raumdeuter word himself.
Some players, especially Thomas Müller, they have this sense for, um, spaces, the spacial awareness
on the field. They recognize their surroundings pretty well, they read the game.
Ishmael Tari and Statsbomb analyze football matches around the world
and advised top clubs such as Liverpool and AC Milan.
They've recorded,
analyzed and visualized thousands of Thomas Müller's passes, shots and runs.
Here you can see all of Müller's passes which led to a shot under Hansi Flick.
In this example from a match against Bremen
you can see that Müller has moved out wide in order to create a chance for his teammates.
Thomas Müller, what he does is basically often move to the wide range and create spaces, and
like players like Gnabry, they exploit them.
Müller who's actually playing as a central midfielder
slides into space on the right, which opens up room for Gnabry in the middle.
Looking at the match footage Müller's movement and eventual cross doesn't result in a goal.
But a similar move saw Müller and Gnabry combine for a goal in that same match.
It's one reason why Müller has made more assists than anyone else in Bundesliga history.
He has notched up 163 in Germany, more than assist king Ryan Giggs in the Premier League
or Italian maestro Francesco Totti. Only little Messi has assisted more.
Müller burst onto the scene at just 19 under his mentor Louis van Gaal in 2009.
He was brought in to complement a team of established stars.
This time we had the big playmakers with Bastian Schweinsteiger in the middle
and our famous "Robbery", Ribery and Robben on the wings.
They had a lot of the time the ball in their feet, they needed a player to attack the spaces,
then they can use their quality in dribbling or in passing.
He made an immediate impact as a creative force, but Müller also stands out in front of goal.
Why? Because his awareness allows him to pick the perfect moment to take a shot.
His shot selection is represented here by different colors.
Red means a high scoring chance, blue represents a lower chance.
So what we see here is, he is positioned very well, he takes very few shots,
so his expected goals per shot is world class.
Although he takes a very few shots like the conversion rate of these shots is pretty high.
He's like one of the best players in the world in terms of goal conversion, he's very good.
Müller doesn't need to take a lot of shots to score a goal,
like other players. He's extremely effective.
He's often in a position where statistically he can be the most dangerous. It sounds pretty simple
but it's not something that comes naturally to every player.
Thomas Müller is the "Raumdeuter", but are there others who have similar skills?
Marcel Sabitzer from RB Leipzig perhaps or José Callejón from Fiorentina.
Maybe Dele Alli from Tottenham.
In any case, none of them cover the Raumdeuter role as good as Müller.
When you look at these pictures you definitely don't think of a football superstar.
But Müller has been playing consistently at the highest level for more than 11 years
and he's won almost every trophy there is to win in the game.
He's also remained fairly grounded. Some players would have capitalised
on the Raumdeuter brand through marketing ploys
but the boy from a small Bavarian town is still playing football simply for the love of the game.
His stamina is like tremendous, he works a lot for 90 minutes, 90 plus,
and this belongs as well to his playing style which is often forgotten.
This is what is known as a player radar. It records the 10 most important key figures
for any footballer. For example the average goal probability per shot.
The blue area shows an average player in the top five leagues. Red is Thomas Müller.
In 8 out of 10 values he is above average,
and in these five areas he's performing at the top international level, so world class.
Hardly any other player in the world has such a broad range of qualities.
It's not only good or very good in terms of offensive abilities but also his defensive style.
He plays against the ball a lot, like his pressure regains are very high, and this makes him special.
Looking at the data one thing is very clear: the combination of his strengths makes Müller unique
and one of the most effective players in football.
And he's been doing it for years.
But not everyone has appreciated Müller's skill set.
In the summer of 2019 buying coach Nico Kovac wanted to build his team around Philippe Coutinho,
who arrived on loan from Barcelona.
Müller became a squad player.
The gamble didn't end well. After an embarrassing 5-1
defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt Kovac was sacked.
Successor Hansi Flick immediately brought Müller back into the fold.
At the end of the season Coutinho returned to
Barcelona as Müller starred in Bayern's treble-winning season.
Müller was also underestimated in the Germany national team.
In 2019 coach Joachim Löw wanted a fresh start and called time on Müller's international career.
His love affair with Germany was cut short.
Since then Germany have fallen from one embarrassing defeat to the next.
In some ways it may have helped Müller.
He's gone from strength to strength and has continued to develop his game.
He used to focus purely on attack, terrorizing defenders mainly from the right.
Here we can see that under Flick Müller drops deeper and spreads across both wings
and tracks back in defence to help his team win back possession.
He's also one of the loudest on the pitch
as he attempts to fire up his teammates.
After all his records, titles, and big game performances he is far from content.
His motivation remains just as strong.
I'm
really excited to see him one day maybe as a coach, because he has a
special mentality to lead on the pitch,
and now with this, uh, with the games without fans we see
his impact, as a leader as a director on the pitch even better.
So what do you think? Where does Thomas Müller rate among the superstars of football
and is he still the most underrated player in the world?