To see the full size of the FC Bayern training area on Säbener Straße, you have to go up a hill, a few meters high. Walkers and fans also come by there, signs point out the rules of distance. Normally, from there you can occasionally recognize the news of the day: Which footballers of the German record champions are returning to training, who is jogging again after an injury and who is taking a break, things like that.
On Sunday afternoon you could see the back of the office including the glass dome and hardly anyone. There were seven empty soccer fields, five made of turf and two made of artificial turf, empty goals. Before the roar of the city, all you could hear was the hissing of the sprinklers watering the grass.
“Without Gerd Müller’s goals we would still be changing in the wooden house on Säbener Strasse today,” Franz Beckenbauer once said. The whole size of the club’s famous facility also tells something about the size of the greatest striker in history. He scored 566 goals in 607 competitive games for FC Bayern, he scored an unequaled 365 Bundesliga goals and was top scorer seven times. But it’s not just these numbers that make his performance tangible. Where a wooden house once stood, the area now covers around 80,000 square meters, according to the club’s website. Like everything else, it wasn’t in color on Sunday, but in black and white.
“Today the world of FC Bayern stands still”, with these words began the message that the club published in the early afternoon to inform about Müller’s death early on Sunday morning at the age of 75. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for years. “Today is a sad, black day for FC Bayern and all of its fans,” said President Herbert Hainer. “The news of Gerd Müller’s death affects us all deeply,” said CEO Oliver Kahn. And everything else that bothered the club a few hours earlier didn’t matter at first.
On Friday the Munich team played 1: 1 at Borussia Mönchengladbach at the start of this season, on Sunday there was no training. A press conference is scheduled for Monday in which coach Julian Nagelsmann is to speak. According to the announcement on Sunday morning, before the news of Müller’s death, it should then be about the next game, the Supercup on Tuesday at Borussia Dortmund.
Robert Lewandowski met Müller’s wife Uschi in the FC Bayern Museum
The story of the game in Gladbach, that was the two missed penalties for the opponent in the final phase and the bumpy form of the master under the new coach Nagelsmann, after a short preparation for the season with three defeats in four test games and a canceled DFB Cup game most of the training sessions without the national players, most of whom had just returned from vacation after the European Championship three weeks ago. “We still have a lot to do. We have a new coach this year, we haven’t had a lot of time to rehearse things,” said Leon Goretzka, and that said a lot about Bayern’s sporting situation.
The defense must be improved, said Nagelsmann, that was “completely clear”. The defense is the only part of the team that has been completely overhauled in the summer. Access Dayot Upamecano, responsible for the two controversial scenes in the penalty area shortly before the end, has yet to find his role. On the offensive, however, Robert Lewandowski met again.
It was the striker’s 41 goals in the preseason that put Gerd Müller at the center of all thoughts in May at Bayern, because his record of 40 goals this season in 1971/72 was exceeded. Lewandowski showed a T-shirt with the words “4Ever Gerd” under his jersey while cheering, he met Müller’s wife Uschi in the FC Bayern Museum. It was his attempts to live up to history. On Sunday, he shared a black and white photo of Müller’s praying hands on social media.