Gerd Müller: the 'bomber of the nation'

"Gerd Müller was probably the greatest striker that we have ever had in Germany," said former national team coach Joachim Löw when "Der Bomber" turned 70. "We will probably never see another striker like him."

At age 18, Gerd Müller moved to Bayern Munich from his hometown club Nördlingen in Bavaria in 1964. At first, coach Zlatko Cajkovski was not impressed by the diminutive striker. But "fat little Müller," as he was dubbed, quickly changed the coach's mind.

After winning the German Cup with Bayern in 66, the young striker helped the Bavarian club lift its first international trophy — the 1966-67 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup. The 1966-67 season also saw Müller become the top scorer in the Bundesliga (28 goals) and the German Cup (7 goals) and Bayern win the German Cup for the second straight season.

Gerd Müller soon had another reason to celebrate. He married his then-girlfriend Uschi Ebenböck in August 1967. It was a marriage that would last a lifetime.

Thanks to his short legs and a particularly low center of gravity, Gerd Müller was capable of scoring goals from all kinds of positions: lying down, with his backside, or even while falling over. He scored a record 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga appearances.

Gerd Müller soon became an integral part of the West German national team. His 10 goals during his first World Cup in Mexico in 1970 earned him the tournament's Golden Boot. He also played a crucial role in a spectacular quarterfinal win over reigning champions England, in which he scored the winning goal.

On July 7, 1974, Gerd Müller scored the winning goal in the World Cup final against the Netherlands at Munich's Olympic Stadium. It gave West Germany their second world championship, their first coming in 1954. He regarded the goal as the most important of his career.

During Gerd Müller’s 15 seasons at Bayern Munich, the club won four league championships, four German Cups and the European Cup three years running. Together with goalkeeper Sepp Maier and Franz Beckenbauer, he formed a trio that was regarded as a guarantee of success.

Having won all those titles with Bayern, Gerd Müller did what a lot of veteran stars did at the time, moving to the old NASL for a big pay day. He scored 38 goals in 71 games over three seasons in America with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers.

The striker took over "The Ambry" steakhouse in Fort Lauderdale in 1981, renaming it Gerd Mueller's Ambry. The steakhouse exists today, though the name of its former owner has since disappeared.

In 1983, he took to the pitch one last time to play in his testimonial for Bayern Munich. It was around this time that he began to have trouble with alcohol.

His friend and former teammate Uli Hoeness helped him through this difficult time. Hoeness persuaded Müller to seek treatment for his alcoholism and got him a job at Bayern Munich. He began serving as an assistant coach for the club's amateur side in 1992.

Not long before his 70th birthday, Bayern Munich made it public that Gerd Müller was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Just a few years earlier, he was still physically active, but after the diagnosis, he lived in a nursing home. He passed away on August 15, 2021, but the memories of an all-time great remain.