Müller the ‘kitman’ and ‘assistant coach’

He stood hard up against the touchline, issuing instructions and gesticulating urgently with flailing arms. He helped Xabi Alonso into a training jacket when the Spaniard was substituted. And when the referee blew the final whistle, he raced onto the field to celebrate. The man in question was not in fact coach Pep Guardiola – it was Thomas Müller, who spent the whole of the 1-0 victory in Cologne as an unused substitute but was simply unable to sit still on the bench. “I had a bit of excess energy,” he explained with a broad grin afterwards.

Later in the evening, Jérôme Boateng couldn’t resist a chuckle either when he saw the relevant footage as a studio guest on Saturday’s Bundesliga highlights show. “I have to laugh when I see him on his own,” said the World Cup winner, who is close to recovering from injury. “Thomas did everything today: He was the kitman, the assistant coach, and he celebrated at the end too.”