Thomas Müller Gives an Interesting Interview

I don't think this is as big a deal as goal.com made it seem, but a few sources have picked up on it now: Thomas Müller gave an interview earlier this week in which he discussed his future. Speaking to Sport Bild, Müller said as follows:

"I am solely focusing on the upcoming Euro at the moment. Everybody knows that Bayern have always been my club, so I'm not really thinking about moving on. However, I'm not in a situation at Bayern where I won't listen to offers ... I'm the type of player who will deal with this like a professional and will try to help the team. However, I will not happily accept being benched in big games regularly. I'm too ambitious for that.

"Staying at Bayern my entire life? I can impossibly say something about that until I'm dead."

First of all, let's start with the obvious: Tommy did NOT say he wants to leave, nor did he say he's "angry" with the club. Even goal.com's headline, "Muller refuses to rule out Inter move," is a little overblown. (Incidentally, here's a free tip, goal.com: if you aren't going to make the umlaut, spell his name M-U-E-L-L-E-R.) It's true that he said he can't say for sure he'd stay at Bayern for life, but only in a philosophical, "who knows what the future may bring" way. I hardly see it as his trying to force his way out.

That said, he clearly isn't pleased with being used as a substitute for most of our important matches in the second half of the year. He's a very talented young player, and I don't expect him to lie and say "nah, everything's fine" when he'd rather be starting. This obviously isn't an issue limited to Müller, nor is it limited to Bayern - Edin Dzeko, Gonzalo Higuain, and several other elite players are dissatisfied with their playing time, and some of them may well be on the move this summer. Barca was spared this year with the Villa injury, but once everyone is healthy, they, too will have too many stars for the spots in the line-up. No matter how big the team is, you can't put more than 11 guys on the pitch.

It's hard for me to be objective about this, because he's my favorite Bayern player, but I really do think that Müller is a substantially better player than Kroos. But, I guess that's an argument that I'd prefer not to have now, because we really don't know who else will be coming or going this summer, and because Müller's comments really weren't very incendiary or threatening. He just said, basically "I'd rather be playing than sitting" and "no one can say whether I'll be at Bayern forever - I'm only 22."

Anyway, for now, I'm going to take Tommy's advice and focus on the European Championships. They start in 2 days, and we're going to try to have rolling Match Day Threads up for all dates upon which games take place. But later this summer, there are some interesting questions that Uli and KHR are going to have to answer. Thanks for reading.