Thomas Müller: Would his departure be the right decision?

It is difficult to let go, this applies to politicians as well as to athletes. Only a few catch the right moment for saying goodbye. The fact that Thomas Müller now does not obviously do not get a new contract at FC Bayern actually only has advantages for both sides.

The record champion has to do the generation change, not only in the Müller case, but also in the goal at Manuel Neuer. Müller’s high content can no longer be justified in terms of sport, because the 131-time DFB international has hardly played a role in the squad of coach Vincent Kompany. He was only eight times in the Bundesliga in the starting eleven, and he only scored a goal in 23 games. Thomas Müller still has his special moments at almost 36 years. But just at times – and FC Bayern needs more than that. After 25 years in the club, nobody should know better than Müller himself.

The Bayern leadership now puts one of its most deserved players more or less gently at the door. This ends an era, as it rarely exists in modern football: Müller will most likely have made more than 500 Bundesliga games for the record champions at the end of the season. With 32 titles at FC Bayern, he is already the most successful player in the club. And he was still world champion. A great career for which Thomas Müller can find a worthy conclusion. Better a rushing farewell than at some point a departure through the back door, possibly with a serious injury.

Thomas Müller, one hears, would have liked to have hung a year. Perhaps later he realizes that the time for the end of his time in Bavaria is not that bad. The twelve -time German champion can end his career for a few more years, maybe experience something completely different in the United States after such a long time. Just like his buddy Bastian Schweinsteiger, who describes his time in Chicago in retrospect as his “most beautiful years”. Just please not for Saudi Arabia, but that would not fit the down-to-earth miller anyway. And every bet: Soon or later, Thomas Müller lands again at FC Bayern.

That should have been? The largest club legend of this millennium just hunted off the farm? Thomas Müller experienced everything you can experience in Munich. He poured the lawn of the Allianz Arena with his tears after the lost “Finale Dahoam” in 2012. Only a year later to stretch the Henkelpott in Wembley. He survived all coaches from Van Gaal to Ancelotti, from Guardiola to Tuchel. And for a long time the motto “Müller always plays” (Louis van Gaal).

Sure, it was a few years ago, and even if it looked like this for a few years: the time does not go by without a trace even with a Thomas Müller. But despite everything, he has shown again and again: he is still there. He’s still fit. It is still an important part of this team.

Simply sending him off the farm is a stab in the heart of every Bayern fan. Where we would be with the biggest problem: Thomas Müller is FC Bayern. Nobody has stood as much for the record champion in the past decades. Nobody has held up his – apparently very elastic – bones so often. The Müller-Thomas was and is the absolute identity figure of the Munich.

Now the association could get into the dangerous temptation to turn it into a peasant victim. For progress, for the future, for upheaval. But to carry out such a change from coercion, reliably backfire. The (former) long -term rival from Dortmund can sing a song about it. After sorting out the two icons of Mats Hummels and Marco Reus almost silently last summer, the once so proud BVB bumbles around the table in the no man’s land. Plandless, aimlessly and above all without identity.

The fans are emotionally distancing themselves from their clubs if they have no players to look at. Should FC Bayern Müller just let go, they sell their emotional silver silver – and that is a rarity in Munich anyway.

Müller may no longer be the fastest (he was never), he may no longer have the highest level of play (he never had), but what he still has is the dedication, the use that can set fire to an entire stadium. FC Bayern Müller should rather keep two new mercenaries in summer, who don’t care where they play.