On Friday evening, FC Bayern not only won their league match against Hoffenheim, but also bid farewell to Franz Beckenbauer. Thomas Müller expressed his special thanks
FC Bayern started the new year with a 3:0 win against Hoffenheim – and yet the Munich team knew that things could have gone differently. Midway through the second half, there was a tricky phase in which TSG could easily have equalized. But because Manuel Neuer refused to be beaten, Munich still won in the end – and thus ensured a finish that would probably have pleased the Kaiser too, on the day on which the record champions bid farewell to the recently deceased Franz Beckenbauer.
After the final whistle, Beckenbauer was of course also an omnipresent topic. Double-packer Jamal Musiala revealed on “Sat1” that they were determined to win the game because of Beckenbauer. “He’s a legend and we wanted to go out here and give everything to win the game and show him respect. I think we did that well. “
Musiala admitted that he only knew Beckenbauer from stories and videos – hardly surprising, given that Bayern’s number 42 was separated from the legendary number 5 by a whopping 58 years. The gap between Beckenbauer and Thomas Müller was not quite as great, but at 34, he is also a different generation
Müller emphasized that he was “unfortunately too young” to experience the Kaiser in person on the pitch, “but I was able to learn a lot about how he went through life.” Beckenbauer also exemplified that “sometimes it’s all about enjoying life, soccer and winning together. Franz was a good role model in that respect.”
Müller also took the opportunity to explicitly thank Beckenbauer – for what he did for FC Bayern and thus indirectly for all the players who came later. “You don’t know what FC Bayern would look like without him, without this generation. He also did it for us. So you can say thank you,” Müller said later on DAZN, admitting that he found it difficult to find the right “words. “
