“I did it with love”
Emotional Müller is apparently facing DFB resignation
12/01/2022 10:24 p.m
Thomas Müller is one of the most successful and popular footballers in German history. And maybe he’s saying goodbye to the big stage – with the second World Cup embarrassment in a row. In the ARD, the Bayern veteran is extremely emotional.
After the dramatic and premature failure at the desert World Cup in Qatar, Thomas Müller is apparently about to end his career in the German national soccer team. “It’s an absolute catastrophe for me,” he said on ARD, adding: “If that was my last game,” he already wanted to thank the German supporters. He ended his words, addressed directly to the television viewers, with the sentence: “I did it with love, I have to see everything else first.”
In the strange victory against Costa Rica (4:2) in the group final, Müller surprisingly got the place in the center. Hansi Flick again did without joker Niclas Füllkrug, which many experts and fans would have liked to have had in the starting XI. And Müller only paid back the trust of the national coach to a limited extent. As before, he could not bring his qualities to the pitch and was only convincing in his role as a driver.
Four years after the historic preliminary round, German football is back on the ground. After Joachim Löw in Russia, successor Flick was also badly hit at the World Cup in Qatar. The poor 4:2 (1:0) in the last group game against the limited Costa Rica after late joker goals by Kai Havertz (73rd/85th minute) and Niclas Füllkrug (89th) was not enough for the entry in Al-Khor into the knockout stages. Japan’s surprising 2-1 victory against Spain tore the DFB selection from all round of 16 hopes.
“It’s an absolute disaster,” said Müller about the German knockout. “It’s incredibly bitter for us because our result would have been enough. It’s a feeling of powerlessness.” All subsequent calculations are “sound and smoke”.
The game against Costa Rica was Müller’s 121st international match. He scored 44 goals. Qatar was his fourth appearance at the World Cup. In 2014 he became world champion in Brazil with the German team. In Qatar, however, he experienced the preliminary round at a World Cup for the second time in a row. After another unsuccessful preliminary round, the disgraced German players, who came here with dreams of the title, fly back to Germany, where restless Advent days with critical questions about the future await the DFB, national coach Flick and national team director Oliver Bierhoff.