Thomas Muller and Bayern’s dignified but surprising parting of ways. Will MLS be next?

As everyone knew he would, Thomas Muller is departing Bayern Munich with great dignity.

When he broke the story that he would be leaving the club on Instagram, he made it clear that he wanted to stay, that he had hoped for one final contract, but that he was accepting of the decision and that he respected how difficult it must have been to make.

“I respect this step,” he said, “which the board and supervisory board certainly did not take lightly.”

Within that lies everything that Muller has been at Bayern: it shows the competitiveness and refusal to accept the dying of the light, his unwillingness to be walked over and to be anything other than entirely honest, but — most of all — it highlights, in that public recusal, that the club comes first to him and always will.

It was clear that Bayern wanted him to retire and to be spared the awkwardness of this situation. He earns €17million (£14.5m; $18.6m) a year but the club are concerned about their wage bill and eager to trim it. Given Muller’s dwindling impact — he has five goals and four assists across all competitions this season — retaining him could never have been spun as anything other than an emotional decision. It would have been more popular but, dispassionately, obstructive to the club’s future aims.

Retirement would have been simpler. Had Muller decided that this was the moment to end his career, then the transition would have been easy. One day, he could be Bayern’s president and this summer might have seen him begin that journey, perhaps with a symbolic role first, as he learned to live without football and acquired whatever qualifications he would need, before starting his ascent towards the board.

It would have been a perfect ending and prevented anyone from having to watch Muller play his professional club football in anything other than Bayern’s red.

But the defiance of this moment is probably more faithful to who Muller has been. He is technically better than many give him credit for, but his career has never been about taking the easy roads. Even though this parting is ugly — there is no getting away from that — it is still typical.

Muller has never been technically smooth. He was not quick enough or physically imposing enough as a teenager to be an obvious star and yet, through an innate understanding of the game and a persistence to be the very best player he could be, he has almost willed himself to Bavarian immortality.

A character like that will be done playing football when he decides, not when anybody thinks that his time is up. When the emotion drains from this situation — and there will be Bayern fans angry with the club for allowing this to happen — most will reflect that Muller has been absolutely true to himself here, with a last show of stubbornness and one more flash of that competitive instinct.

A deeper perspective, perhaps one for another day, is that this is also a legacy of how Bayern have managed themselves over the past decade. Too many big contracts were written in the previous era, at the tail end of that run of 11 straight Bundesliga titles from 2013 to 2023, and their transfer dealings have not been the most effective. Had it been so, perhaps the club would have looked beyond their instincts this summer and given Muller the long goodbye he so obviously deserves.

Muller celebrates with the Bundesliga trophy in 2023 (Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)

He has made more appearances for the club than anyone in history. He has won everything worth winning. And he is Bavarian, born and raised. If he does not deserve to stage manage his own departure, then who does?

Football rarely works like that but there is a sense that Bayern have painted themselves into a corner and forced this awkwardness upon themselves. Had Muller not been quite as magnanimous, it would have been politically far tougher for them, too.

But these are incidentals now. What’s more interesting is what happens next. Muller is like a character from a Bavarian fairytale and so typical of the region — in the way he looks, carries himself and lives his life — that it is near impossible to imagine him existing in any other part of the world.

And yet he will have to. There is next to no chance that he will play for another German club; that’s inconceivable. Given that he will turn 36 in September, the attritional physicality of the Premier League is likely not on the table, either. Saudi Arabia is a non-starter, it would seem, leaving only the United States and MLS as a likely destination. Bayern have a partnership with Los Angeles FC, primarily to identify and develop young talent, but Muller has been discussed by the two clubs, though not with any resolution.

Nobody knows what will happen next. Most likely, Muller does not know either, given that he never wanted to leave Bayern and was convinced that he still had plenty to offer them.

“Even after all these years,” he wrote in his farewell message to the club’s fans, “and regardless of the minutes I play, I still have a lot of fun being on the pitch with the boys. I could have easily imagined playing this role next year as well.”

Really, nobody has ever imagined anything other than that ending for Muller at Bayern Munich. He has always been destined to fade perfectly into retirement, and to only hang up his boots once convinced that his successors could be trusted to look after a club that he helped to build.

But it will not be so. He will be back one day. Back at Sabener Strasse, Allianz Arena, and with his horses in the Bavarian countryside, but — for a year at least — he will have to be somewhere other than where he belongs.

(Top photo: Alexandra Beier/AFP via Getty Images)