There were seven Bayern players in the 1974 World Cup winning squad and it was a magnificent seven again 40 years later. The German triumph and the whole of Brazil 2014 bears the mark of FCB. That is not only evident in the official FIFA awards but also by a number of interesting facts and figures discovered by fcbayern.de:
General stats:
- No other club provided more players for the World Cup finals in Brazil as FC Bayern. There were 14 at the start of the tournament, 12 in the Round of Sixteen, ten in the last eight, nine at the semi-final stage and seven in the Final.
- No club contributed as many goals as FC Bayern. Mario Götze's winner in the Final was the eighteenth Bayern goal at Brazil 2014. There is a significant gap to the next two clubs Barcelona (10) and Manchester United (9).
- Only Thomas Müller and Xherdan Shaqiri managed to bag a hat-trick at this World Cup. That rare feat was only achieved once in the previous two World Cup finals (2010 and 2006) by Argentina's Gonzalo Higuain (2010).
- The 64 games played saw the official FIFA Man of the Match award go to 11 FC Bayern players: Arjen Robben (3), Thomas Müller, Mario Götze, Xherdan Shaqiri (2 each), Toni Kroos, and Mario Mandzukic all picked up the accolade. FCB were followed by Barcelona (7) and AS Monaco (4).
The phenomenon of Thomas Müller:
- Müller was the first World Cup goalscorer to repeat his goals tally from the previous tournament: 5 goals and 3 assists.
- He was just one goal short of winning the Golden Boot again.
- Three of his five goals at this tournament gave Germany a 1-0 lead. No other player scored the opening goal at this tournament as often.
- Müller only needed eight shots on target to clock up his five goals (16 shots on goal). By comparison Cristiano Ronaldo, who went out at the group stage, unleashed 22 shots but only succeeded in netting one solitary strike.
- Müller has the best conversion rate of all German players who have scored at least three goals in World Cup finals (since 1966): 41.7 percent of his efforts found the back of the net. Thomas leads ahead of Helmut Haller (40 percent), Gerd Müller (30.4 percent) and Miroslav Klose (28.1 percent).
- No one at Brazil 2014 ran as far as Müller. The 83.957 kilometres he covered is the equivalent of almost two marathons. Toni Kroos was in second place with 82.6 kilometres.
- Müller had 47 touches of the ball in the opposition penalty area, more than any other player. Arjen Robben was next best with 45 touches.
Manuel Neuer:
- 25 saves plus nine successful forays outside his box represent the best performance by a keeper at the World Cup.
- The number one keeper in the world kept four clean sheets. Argentina's Sergio Romero was the only other shot-stopper to equal that return.
- The FCB keeper made a total of 244 successful passes - two more than Lionel Messi! 68 percent of the Argentine's 356 passes found a team-mate - Neuer had an 82 percent success rate.
Arjen Robben:
- With three goals and one assist Robben joins Robin van Persie and Daley Blind as the most successful players in the Dutch team.
- Arjen had the most shots on goal for Holland (19), set up the highest number of chances (17) and won an impressive 55 percent of challenges for the ball.
- Along with Ron Vlaar he played the full 90 minutes in every Dutch game.
Philipp Lahm:
- Nobody made more passes than Philipp Lahm. The FCB captain passed the ball 651 times with 562 reaching their target (86 percent). Second place went to Toni Kroos with 633 passes of which 537 found a team-mate (85 percent).
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