Vesper 31,181 Posted May 29 Share Posted May 29 The Soccer 100: Gerd Müller — Germany’s greatest goalscorer https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7198965/2026/05/29/world-cup-gerd-muller-germany-bayern-soccer-100/ As part of our buildup to the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, we are publishing excerpted chapters from The Soccer 100, The Athletic’s definitive book on the 100 greatest players of all time, courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers. The 10 players we are featuring are the highest-ranked World Cup winners of our 100. Today, it’s the prolific striker, ranked 13th in our original list, who scored for West Germany in the 1974 final. There is one thing every footballer in this book has in common. It’s a bit technical, so apologies for blinding you with jargon here, and please don’t feel too bad if you don’t completely follow, but here it is: They’re all really good at football. Well, that’s sort of true. It depends on what you mean by “really good at football.” One of them did not boast the same skill or grace or innovation or mystery or fantasy as the others. He wasn’t so much really good at football, but really good at scoring goals. Are those two things different? Maybe not. But Gerd Müller made up for not being stellar at the other stuff, the things we often talk about when we talk about the “greats”, by being maybe the best there ever was at the game’s most fundamental task. Here are a few statistics. He scored 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga games. He scored 40 in one season, a record that stood for five decades. He scored 85 for club and country in one calendar year. He scored 68 in 77 European matches. He scored an astonishing 68 in 62 international appearances for West Germany and would have managed many more had he not retired from the national team in 1974, aged 28, after the German federation banned the players’ wives from attending the post-World Cup victory celebration banquet. Among those international goals, he scored 14 over 13 games at two World Cups, a record that stood for 32 years until it was broken by Brazil’s Ronaldo in 2006. Gerd Müller (right) guides a header beyond Australia goalkeeper Jack Reilly and defender Doug Utjesenovic at the 1974 World CupStaff/AFP via Getty Images He scored 566 goals in 607 games for Bayern Munich, the club for whom he made his debut in 1964 when they were still playing in the German second tier and, along with Franz Beckenbauer, played as much of a role as anyone in making them the behemoth they are today. He made it into double figures for league goals in each of his 14 full seasons with Bayern. He can be forgiven for the only time he managed fewer than 10 league goals in a campaign with the club — Müller scored nine in 19 games in the first half of the 1978–79 campaign before moving to Fort Lauderdale Strikers in the United States. Goals were his obsession, and it was the what rather than the how that consumed him. The method of the conversion did not matter, but the result did. Müller would score by whatever means necessary: tap-ins, scuffed shots, headers from three yards out, in off the thigh, the shins, the torso, scooped in from the floor, left foot, right foot, head — whatever body part could propel a football over that line. If you watch clips of Müller’s goals, one of the things you’ll notice is how often he just seems to… emerge. And then score. The ball will disappear into a melee of defenders, only for Müller to suddenly appear, completely free, like a cartoon character calmly stepping out of a cloud of flailing arms and legs. He appeared to have an ability to be in the right position to score, and often you weren’t entirely sure how he arrived there. It’s pretty hard to explain how he did it. Some attribute it to his short, stocky frame, thus allowing him to have a low centre of gravity to wriggle away from hulking defenders, but also with the strength to muscle his way into advantageous positions. He had thighs like beer barrels and calves like hams, giving him the sort of power you might not expect from a relatively diminutive man. Gerd Müller (left) scoring for his country against Poland at the 1974 World CupAFP via Getty Images The most appealing, perhaps romantic, explanation for why he was so good is that it was something intangible. He could, in the traditions of the great goal poachers, smell opportunities. It all just happened. He just… knew. “You can’t learn that,” he said in a documentary produced by the Bundesliga. “You just have to have the instinct to score goals.” Top FIFA MEN'S WORLD CUP Stories After fumbling through reply on Milan, Pochettino reiterates pledge to USMNT USMNT World Cup prep shifts from 'City That Never Sleeps' to ... a former cow pasture What we're seeing and hearing from Canada's training camp — as players focus on 'winning' Müller’s single-season Bundesliga scoring record of 40, set in 1971–72, was thought for decades to be insurmountable. In fact, between him setting it and Robert Lewandowski establishing himself as an elite striker in the mid-2010s, the only other players even to break 30 goals, never mind come close to the record, were Jupp Heynckes in 1973–74 and Dieter Müller (no relation) in 1976–77. When it became clear that Lewandowski was going to break the record, as he did by scoring an extraordinary 41 for Bayern in 2020–21, it felt like there was a move in the German footballing consciousness to preserve Müller’s status as still the greatest striker their league had ever seen. “Robert’s definitely a great striker, but he didn’t score goals like Gerd, with his shin, his chest, or his knee,” Uli Hoeneß told Bavarian newspaper Münchner Merkur. “Gerd didn’t care less how he got the ball in. It just had to go in any which way it could. Robert hammers it into the back of the net, but, with Gerd, sometimes the ball would just stop an inch over the line.” That wasn’t just an old friend of Müller trying to protect his legacy. “In terms of efficiency, he’s second among the best-ever strikers of Bayern’s history after Gerd Müller,” Lewandowski’s Bayern team-mate Thomas Müller told newspaper Sport Bild. Gerd Müller (left) and Paul Breitner celebrate West Germany’s success at the 1974 World CupAllsport/Getty Images It felt like Lewandowski was as keen as anyone to defer to the great man: When he scored his 40th, equaling the record, he lifted up his Bayern jersey to reveal a T-shirt underneath with Müller’s face and the message “4ever Gerd.” There was a poignancy to the fact that, while Müller was alive when the record was broken, he was in a care home, suffering the last few months of the Alzheimer’s disease that would eventually claim his life. Müller’s record-setting season was part of a record-setting year: In 1972, he registered a whopping 85 goals in 60 games for club and country, a mark that held until no less a man than Lionel Messi managed 91 in 2012. (Kids, if you’re reading this having previously not known much about Müller and take just one thing away from this section of the book, let it be that it took 40 years and the greatest player of all time to eclipse the German.) He didn’t just score goals in quantity, but also quality — not in terms of them being spectacular strikes that would make golazo compilations for years to come, but crucial goals, high-pressure goals, trophy-winning goals. He scored four in various German cup finals for Bayern, and three in two different European Cup finals; two in the 1972 European Championship final for West Germany; and, of course, their winner in the 1974 World Cup final. You can also throw in two in the “Game of the Century” — the 1970 World Cup semi-final that West Germany ultimately lost 4-3 to Italy, plus two in the 1972 Euros semi-final against Belgium and four in the two-legged 1967 Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final against Standard Liège of that same country, which Bayern would win and then go on to claim their first European trophy. Which is to say that his goals didn’t just make for impressive statistics, but made his country continental and then world champions, and his club among the biggest in Europe. Or, as Beckenbauer put it while giving a speech at Müller’s 50th birthday party: “Without Gerd Müller, we’d probably still be in the wooden hut that was once our clubhouse. He’s the most important player in the history of Bayern.” Gerd Müller scores West Germany’s second goal against the Netherlands in the 1974 World Cup finalAFP via Getty Images The noble art of goal-poaching is often treated a little sniffily, but consider the following: Müller scored 14 World Cup goals for West Germany across the 1970 and 1974 tournaments. Here are short descriptions of all of them: heads in a rebound off the crossbar from two yards out; turns home a low cross from about four yards; a penalty, high into the top corner; a header from a right-sided cross from about 10 yards; brings down a ball from deep on his chest, pokes in from seven yards; converts a low cross from six yards; header from seven yards; hooked in from three yards; bundled over the line from two yards; header from four yards; near-post header from five yards; miscontrol, then scooped in while on the floor from four yards; low finish from 13 yards; miscontrol, then steps back and scores from eight yards. Obviously, the distances are all rough estimates, but from those descriptions, the average gap between Müller and the goal was about 6.2 yards. He barely needed to leave the six-yard box. Helmut Schön, the manager of West Germany at both those World Cups, famously described him as being “a man of small goals”. Again, that was not intended as an insult. Take the winner in the 1974 final, which you can look at in a couple of ways: either as a stumble, a piece of opportunism, or a man mopping up his own mistake, having allowed the low cross to skew off the side of his boot. But watch it again with softer eyes and you may instead see a man showing incredibly quick reactions, followed by extraordinary strength to change direction so rapidly, implausible balance to avoid falling on his backside, and then great poise and finishing ability to shoot low into the corner, giving the goalkeeper no chance. And you could go through plenty of his goals and give them similar treatment. Just because they were from close in — or were not necessarily from chances created by him, or are not your typical screamers — does not mean they lack beauty or skill. The Gerd Müller statue outside Bayern’s Allianz Arena home stadium in MunichChristof Stache/AFP via Getty Images One thing that has sprung to mind repeatedly while considering all of the incredible names in this book is whether the great players from the past would be superstars today. Talents such as Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini, Pelé, Marco van Basten: It seems inconceivable that if they were born at the right time, with the advantages of modern training, nutrition, and so forth, they wouldn’t have been just as great. With Müller, though, you’re not so sure. There isn’t much space in the modern game for someone who does not offer a huge amount other than goals, as absurd as that sounds. Maybe he would have adapted, but it feels like he existed in an era suited to him. Müller makes for a pretty lousy highlights reel. There aren’t many stories about spectators lining up to gasp at his genius, few misty-eyed recollections of the time he made opponents look foolish. He wasn’t a meme-able footballer, nor one for whom a compilation of his best skills will blow up on YouTube. He didn’t change the game. He didn’t innovate in the way that his contemporaries, Beckenbauer or Cruyff, did. He didn’t have a “move”. There’s a tendency toward over-intellectualising players like that, but not with Müller, which might explain why he often isn’t mentioned in the same breath as some of those other greats. The Allianz Arena in Munich pays tribute to Gerd MüllerChristof Stache/AFP via Getty Images Yet you could make a strong argument that he was the greatest pure footballer of all time because he was among the best at doing the purest thing the game has. There are so many things to find pleasurable in football: a brilliant piece of skill, a great pass, a crunching tackle, a player effortlessly controlling the game, a dummy, a subtle touch here and there. But ultimately, the point of it all is to score goals. You win games, and thus attain glory, by scoring goals. Gerd Müller scored goals. In fact, his contribution to the language of football, in Germany at least, was to lend his name to a verb, but it wasn’t something unique to him: to müllern means to score. Which says it all, really: He was so associated with the scoring of goals that his name was not given to a turn or a trick or a position. It was bestowed on the most fundamental element of the sport. Excerpted from The Soccer 100 by Oliver Kay & James Horncastle with The Athletic Soccer Staff, published by William Morrow. Copyright © 2025 by The Athletic Media Company. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers. Nick Miller is a football writer for the Athletic and the Totally Football Show. He previously worked as a freelancer for the Guardian, ESPN and Eurosport, plus anyone else who would have him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulham Broadway 17,810 Posted Tuesday at 09:56 Share Posted Tuesday at 09:56 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KEVINAA 130 Posted Tuesday at 12:28 Share Posted Tuesday at 12:28 My New Zealand is playing a friendly International warmup match again Haiti later today at inter miami chase stadium in ford Lauderdale, florida and Haiti is ranked 83 and NZL is 85 fifa ranked currently. https://www.flashscore.com/match/football/haiti-nk4v10Z1/new-zealand-rLctHkpU/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 31,181 Posted Wednesday at 23:21 Share Posted Wednesday at 23:21 Is there a justification for Cole Palmer’s England World Cup absence? https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7326700/2026/06/03/cole-palmer-world-cup-omission-analysis/ Thomas Tuchel’s explanation for not taking Cole Palmer to the World Cup was brutal in its honesty. The England manager’s logic was undeniable. Without context, leaving out the highest-ranked Englishman in last year’s Ballon d’Or (Palmer finished eighth, Harry Kane was 13th) could be regarded as hugely controversial. But the Chelsea forward did not play like one of the world’s best for the majority of the 2025-26 season and England’s alternative No 10 options are too strong for that to be overlooked. In a press conference last month, Tuchel explained that not only had the 24-year-old lacked form for his club, but neither was he influential when representing England, citing “outstanding players” Jude Bellingham, Morgan Rogers and Eberechi Eze as better options in that position. “His record with us was just not outstanding, not good enough to make him ‘no matter what, he is coming’,” the German explained. “That is just the reality of it. “It is a very difficult decision. There is no question about his talent, there is no question what he can give you in special moments, but the decision was still against him.” Palmer’s production for Chelsea plummeted last season. He only just crept into double figures for Premier League goals (10) on the final day against Sunderland. Half of his season’s tally were penalties. He registered only one assist in the league, a surprisingly low return for an elite passer who generated 19 across his first two seasons at Stamford Bridge. The underlying numbers were even more worrying. Palmer’s chances created per game fell from 2.5 in 2024-25 to 1.1 last season, while his crosses dropped from 4.1 to 1.7. As you can see in the two graphics below, he exerted a huge creative influence from his favoured spot in the right half-space in 2024-25… … but barely made an impression anywhere in the final third last season. In an interview with the Guardian in April, Palmer was candid about the physical reason for his struggles: a groin injury unlike anything he had experienced before, one without a clear recovery timeframe and which left him barely able to move against Manchester United away in September. When he returned to action as a substitute against Leeds United in December, he was, he said, incapable of sprinting, shooting or kicking the ball long. If the groin is still an issue and surgery proves the wisest course of action, he has his first clear block in his schedule for three summers to receive treatment, having played at the European Under-21 Championship in 2023, the European Championship in 2024 and the FIFA Club World Cup in 2025. He scored or assisted a goal in the final of all three tournaments. “It’s very sad we’ve seen only a glimpse of Cole Palmer during this year,” Maheta Molango, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), said last month as part of broader comments criticising football’s schedule. Palmer is far too good for this decline to persist, and his quality is only part of his strength. He has all the hallmarks of the “mentality monster” that Chelsea’s incoming manager Xabi Alonso has signalled he wants in his team and has previously demonstrated that no stage or moment is too big for him. In recent years, no player has put two-time Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain to the sword as ruthlessly and brilliantly as Palmer did in last summer’s 3-0 win in the Club World Cup final. But Alonso and Chelsea also have big roles to play in reviving his form. Enzo Maresca’s slow, heavily choreographed possession play rarely seemed to suit Palmer. His comment about being “sick of getting the ball and going backwards and sideways” in last year’s UEFA Conference League final chimed with what many had seen with their own eyes, even if all parties subsequently played down the significance of his words. Back then he did at least have team-mates he connected with. Palmer created 22 chances in the Premier League for Noni Madueke in 2024-25 and 11 for Nicolas Jackson. Both players departed the following summer and Chelsea’s attacking chemistry went with them. Joao Pedro is yet to meaningfully click with Palmer, despite being an unequivocal upgrade up front, and there are no discernible signs of deep understanding with Pedro Neto or Alejandro Garnacho. Justin Setterfield/Getty Images The central spaces in which Palmer likes to operate have also felt clogged at times, particularly when Marc Cucurella inverts from left-back. As a relevant aside, have Chelsea’s No 10 and Enzo Fernandez ever played their best football together for a significant stretch? Chelsea’s summer transfer activity may simplify things. Fernandez and Cucurella could leave and Jackson could return, even if only as understudy to Joao Pedro. It is not yet clear whether Alonso will look to recreate the phenomenally successful system he used at Bayer Leverkusen or build this team differently. Still, freeing up Palmer to receive the ball in dangerous areas, as Florian Wirtz once did for the 2023-24 Bundesliga champions, will surely be high on his list of priorities. Last summer, ahead of the Club World Cup final, Palmer and Ousmane Dembele recreated the famous “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” photo at the Rockefeller Center. The image established two of the world’s best footballers sitting high above not just New York, but the football world. Palmer went on to win the Club World Cup, while Dembele claimed the Ballon d’Or. Dembele was then able to play just over 1,000 Ligue 1 minutes to conserve his legs for PSG’s successful defence of their Champions League title, and France’s tilt at the World Cup. Chelsea and Palmer had no such luxury, but a summer of enforced rest and recovery could be exactly what he needs to scale such heights again. Liam Twomey Liam is a Staff Writer for The Athletic, covering Chelsea. He previously worked for Goal covering the Premier League before becoming the Chelsea correspondent for ESPN in 2015, witnessing the unravelling of Jose Mourinho, the rise and fall of Antonio Conte, the brilliance of Eden Hazard and the madness of Diego Costa. He has also contributed to The Independent and ITV Sport. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 31,181 Posted 9 hours ago Share Posted 9 hours ago Inside the making of Norway’s ‘Viking’ photo for World Cup https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7333438/2026/06/04/norway-world-cup-viking-photo/ They beat Christopher Columbus to North America by centuries. Research shows that Vikings first made the remarkable journey across the Atlantic more than 1,000 years ago. Now, it looks like they’re back. Just take in this gang of grizzled Nordic warriors assembled beside a fjord, weapons in hand, long boats in the background, preparing to raid. But look a little closer at the picture above, perhaps at the sword-brandishing warrior with the long blond hair, and they appear quite familiar. That’s because this group of fearsome explorers is actually the Norway national team, posing for an iconic image to mark their first appearance at the World Cup in 28 years. Star striker Erling Haaland and his team-mates gathered for the shoot in Oslo last weekend, with the pictures captured by renowned photographer David Yarrow. It came about because the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) wanted to do something different for their team picture, and lean into the Scandinavian nation’s history. In recent games, Norwegian supporters have performed their own nod to history with their synchronised ‘Viking row’ performance. So the NFF approached Yarrow six months ago, after he was recommended by Haaland and golfer Viktor Hovland, based on his work with the pair on different projects. “My response was that I wanted to dress them up as Vikings,” says Yarrow, who took one of the most famous World Cup images, of Diego Maradona lifting the trophy at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico 1986. “I like to take people outside of how they’re normally photographed. “I knew it might get some criticism, but I wanted to play on that sense of journey that goes back to the Vikings, as if they’re setting sail for America. “Then it was just a question of doing it right. If you do it in a half hearted way or in a studio it can fall flat but we really went for it. We got the boats in, got everyone dressed in proper Viking gear and not pantomime stuff.” David and his assistants scouted a private beach in Oslo for the location, and got the team together on Saturday. The only player missing was Arsenal midfielder Martin Odegaard, who was playing for Mikel Arteta’s side in the Champions League final that day. An empty space was left for the 27-year-old captain, and he flew to Oslo on Tuesday to be photographed and digitally added to the final line-up. To make the scene more authentic, a historically accurate wooden jetty was even built, leading to one of the longboats. “We’ve seen a lot of pictures of airliner steps this week,” says Yarrow of other nation’s pictures of players preparing to board flights to the United States, Mexico and Canada. “They get a bit boring. At least the Norwegians have gone out of their way to do something special, and it’s got to be the best team picture before a World Cup.” Yarrow used elements of TV show Vikings for his visual prompts, and says Haaland was influential in getting buy-in from the squad because he has previously photographed the Manchester City star as a Viking warrior. “We got hair and make-up in and they knew my instruction was to be fearsome and have sovereignty. There are a couple of kids in there who looked a bit too angelic to be warriors, but we managed it well. “Erling looks great with his hair down, but I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of the coach Stale Solbakken. He’s a tough guy.” He did two main line-up pictures: one of the squad and another of the whole travelling group, including all the coaches, and the entire technical staff. “Most of them aren’t wearing helmets but (RB Leipzig winger) Antonio Nusa put one on,” he says. “I was going to ask him to take it off, but he showed me his peroxide blond hair.” The Norway team all bought into the project too — and say that it reflects their togetherness. “This is a continuation of how we have worked to describe the national team over time. It’s about showing that this team comes from all of Norway and represents the entire country. The image reflects exactly that: we travel as one team,” says NFF president Lise Klaveness, who is also Norway’s head of delegation for the World Cup. “We recognised early on that the Viking narrative would follow us regardless. That’s why we chose to take ownership of it and fill it with what truly defines us. It’s not about aesthetics alone, but about values: togetherness, team spirit, and standing united.” The term “modern Vikings” is used in the communication, but Klaveness emphasises that it is about values and unity — not about narrowing what the team represents. “This is a diverse and multifaceted team, and that is a strength. The references we use are meant to bring people together, not define one type of player or background,” she says. Such is the uniqueness of the image, Yarrow knows some people might mistakenly assume it is AI. “That’s why we often film our shoots these days,” he says. “We always do the behind-the-scenes stuff. I’m so old, though, I don’t really know what AI means.” After taking the images of the players, some of the background vista elements were photographed by a fjord in Viking Valley, Gudvangen, later in the day. It is not the first iconic sporting team image Yarrow has taken. Last year, he took a photo of the victorious European Ryder Cup team in Brooklyn, New York, beneath the Manhattan Bridge. That image, with the players dressed as prohibition-era gangsters and workers, has since become one of the best-selling sports photographs of all time, and raised a considerable sum for charity. Europe’s victorious Ryder Cup teamDavid Yarrow “The European players loved it, and it actually became the centre-point of their team room,” he explains. “We had it blown up the size of a table tennis table, and now we’ve done the same for the Norway players to have at their base in Greensboro (North Carolina). “Hopefully it brings some levity to what can be a stressful, pressurised time and they can look back at a fun day of team bonding.” Yarrow, a Scot, hopes to raise even more money for charity — the aim is $1million — by organising a party for 900-plus of his countrymen in Boston during the tournament. “We (Scotland) might not be able to win the trophy,” he says. “But we can make an enormous difference for others by gathering every Scot we can from everywhere from Hollywood, professional sports and music.” And what of the raiders from Norway, who face France, Senegal, and Iraq in Group I? “Norway can do some damage at the World Cup,” he says. “They have some top players and also the proper strength in depth to qualify early from their group.” Greg O'Keeffe is a senior writer for The Athletic covering US soccer players in the UK & Europe. Previously he spent a decade at the Liverpool Echo covering news and features before an eight-year stint as the paper's Everton correspondent; giving readers the inside track on Goodison Park, a remit he later reprised at The Athletic. He has also worked as a news and sport journalist for the BBC and hosts a podcast in his spare time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cfccrost 23 Posted 6 hours ago Share Posted 6 hours ago So who do you think will win it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Special Juan 28,871 Posted 4 hours ago Share Posted 4 hours ago Japan hopefully Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KEVINAA 130 Posted 1 hour ago Share Posted 1 hour ago World Cup friendly international warmup England vs New Zealand. Live scores https://www.sofascore.com/football/match/new-zealand-england/nUbsJVb https://www.flashscore.com/match/football/england-j9N9ZNFA/new-zealand-rLctHkpU/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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