Thomas Müller praises “superb” Jadon Sancho, reflects on his own resurgence under Hansi Flick

Thomas Muller leads the Bundesliga in assists thus far for the 2019/2020 season (12), and he is closely followed in 2nd place by Borussia Dortmund’s Jadon Sancho (11), who’s one of the league’s most exciting, young talents. Impressively, Sancho also has 11 goals to his name this season. In a recent interview with Sport Buzzer (via Bundesliga.com), Muller highlighted Sancho’s play-making ability:

Jadon Sancho is a superb player. He’s a menace with his technique, speed and dribbling. There are other players in the Bundesliga with those qualities, but they don’t have his exceptional decision making.

After an impressive debut campaign for Dortmund in the 2018/2019 (12 goals, 14 assists), it was hard to imagine Sancho improving on those numbers this season. But after just nineteen matchdays, he’s well on place to surpass that with ease.

While Müller’s own statistics for this season might not read as impressively as Sancho’s, he has experienced a real resurgence under Hansi Flick. After failing to start in half of Bayern Munich’s league matches under Niko Kovac, Muller has been a regular under Flick, starting 8 matches in which he has scored 4 goals and provided 8 assists.

Müller said, he could not understand why he was on the bench for six league matches in a row under Kovac in the first half of the season:

I couldn’t understand it then and I still can’t now, about why I was on the bench for six competitive matches in a row, because I really felt I could help the team. It wasn’t what I envisaged my role to be when I’d only just turned 30. Since then, though, it’s been going really well for me and the team — apart from the two games against Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Mönchengladbach where we played well but lost.

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By contrast, Müller said that the belief in Hansi Flick that both he and the entire squad feel has helped Bayern propel back up the table after difficult spells during the Hinrunde:

Hansi is doing a fantastic job as coach and has a massive influence on the team owing to his human qualities. Expectations at Bayern are so high, though. We can’t say we’re happy just because we’re playing well, when we’re still doing the chasing. But if we continue in this vein [and win the title] Flick is surely the club’s first port of call.

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