Hermann Gerland recalls Thomas Müller’s early days and how he almost left for Hoffenheim

The new assistant coach of the German U-21 team, Hermann Gerland, was featured on the podcast Der Sechzehner with former Bundesliga coaches Ewald Lienen and Michael Born. Gerland is a long-serving manager of the academy and youth teams at Bayern Munich and has seen quite some talent come through the ranks through the years.

Gerland spoke in the podcast about Thomas Müller’s career at Bayern. Despite how impactful of a player Thomas Müller has been in his career, not everyone could foresee this talent. While Müller was always strong, there was no certainty that the German would become a world-class talent.

“I would be lying if I said I had foreseen Thomas Müller’s career. Never! Thomas always scored goals and was strong. But he had games, there was a district class action and then world class. The district class actions used to be more frequent than the world class actions,” Gerland said on the podcast Der Sechzehner.

A major task for Gerland was to prevent Müller from leaving from leaving Bayern Munich. Gerland stood up for Thomas Müller back in 2008. This was a year before Müller had his breakthrough under Louis van Gaal.

The former Hoffenheim trainer Ralf Rangnick stated in a Sport1 interview that the club had already agreed with Müller. Without the intervention of Gerland and Uli Hoeneß, Müller might have left Munich.

Bayern fans should be eternally grateful that Müller stayed.