Many analysts and journalists specialized in sports argue that his technique was comparable to that of Marco Van Basten, that splendid player who walked his football and his goals throughout Europe and who formed the fearsome trident of Arrigo Sacchi's Milan with Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard from the late eighties.

Gerd Müller marked an era.

 The difference, subtle if you will, remarkable if you analyze in depth, is that in reality the German was much more goalscorer than the Dutch, at parity of technical resources.

After his start at TSV Nördlingen he moved to Bayer Munich where he played for fifteen years (1963-1978) to close his sports career at Fort Lauderdale Striker in the USA for the last two years, from 1979 to 1981, a team of Florida no longer plays in the North American Soccer League since 2017.

We can say without exaggeration that Gerd Müller marked an era. He pointed to an impressive 661 goals between Bayern Munich and the German national team in 725 games, averaging 0.91 goals per game over his eighteen-year sports career.

The records and the birth of the legend.

Gerd Müller still holds several records: 365 goals in the Bundesliga, top scorer of the Bundesliga seven times, top scorer of his country's national team (68 goals in 62 matches with an average of 1.10 goals per game) until the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, when he was surpassed by Miroslav Klose (Polish nationalized German) who also surpassed the record of Brazilian Ronaldo as top scorer in the World Cups.

The so-called "Bomber of the Nation" by the German press managed to reach truly stratospheric figures as a goal scorer. In the 1971/1972 season, for example, he scored a record 40 goals, won four Bundesliga titles, four German Cup titles, one Cup Winners' Cup (a competition that was discontinued in 1999 to make way for the current Champions League) and three European Cup Winners' Cups (now known as the Champions League or UEFA Champions League).

Even at the end of his career, he continued to be a formidable scorer. During his stay in the United States with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers he scored forty goals in eighty games. And he was already close to retirement. An average of 0.50 goals per game at the age of 37.
 
Irony of fate or predestination, Gerd Müller's transfer also became Bayern's launch pad into the top echelons of European and world soccer.

Bayern, which had always been regarded by the Nazis as the "club of the Jews", had suffered ideological persecution of all kinds that had prevented them from being promoted to the Bundesliga and remaining there.

The arrival of Gerd Müller also marks a new era for the German club. He scores 32 goals in 26 matches. 

In the match that defined promotion to the Bundesliga, he faced Tennis Borussia Berlin and defeated them with an overwhelming 8-0 win. Other players were part of that team who would become glories and emblems of German soccer, not only of Bayern Munch, such as the goalkeeper Seep Meier and the "kaiser" Franz Beckenbauer, the axis on which the power of the German team would be affirmed in the future at national and world level.

He left behind so many memories that it is impossible to collect them all in a single article. In the collective memory is perhaps the goal of the 2 to 1 against the Netherlands in the remembered 1974 World Cup final in Germany.

The German team of Seep Meier, Berti Vogts (that defender who was a mastiff himself), Franz Beckenbauer, captain and leader, Paul Breitner, the extraordinary wing-back with the African-look, facing probably the best Dutch team of all time, illuminated by the immense quality of Johan Cruyff, captain and talent at the service of the team, Johan Neeskens, one of the best midfielders in the world at the time, Reep, Krol and a team where the whole was the strength. Everyone attacked and everyone defended.

When Neskeens scored a penalty kick to give the Netherlands the lead, it seemed all was said and done. However, Paul Breitner and the ever-present Gerd Müller would give the German team the victory. And their second World Cup title in history. 

Source: FIFA.