On Thomas Müller
There are a lot of reasons to be happy about Germany right now. Comparatively, things are really great there. More importantly, they have an excellent soccer team. As James Tyler wrote at The Classical, they’re a really good soccer team because they’ve decided to stop being German.
As James writes:
“Classic” Germany—the one defined by square-jawed, stoic demigods like Lothar Matthaus, Berti Vogts, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Michael Ballack, and the downright frightening Oliver Kahn—is dead, and pleasingly so. The spontaneous combustion of the new class—Mesut Ozil, Thomas Mueller, and Lukas Podolski swarming in support of Miroslav Klose in the penalty area, with Mario Gotze unleashing his jet-heeled brilliance coming off the bench—seems wholly un-German compared to the controlled explosions of Ballack and Co. But when viewed in context of the system that created them, it feels natural. Compared to the natural ease of Spanish soccer or the fiery genetics of Brazil, the Germans solved their soccer stagnation at the turn of the 21st century with a typically left-brained Teutonic approach to a right-brain problem, the end result being a team drilled in the art of individualism. Where German teams used to collapse so predictably if their Plan A faltered, they’re now so well schooled in self-expression from an early age that their in-game possibilities seem limitless.
But despite the attempt to cast off the characteristics that defined the Germany of the past, the German National Soccer Team is still the German National Soccer Team. And that’s where Thomas Müller comes in.
