Thomas Müller and Lisbon have a magical relationship. The striker played his first game in the Champions League against Sporting Lisbon in the second leg of the Round of 16 on 10 March 2009 and he scored the final goal in a 7-1 win – on Wednesday, nine years later, he made it a century of appearances in Europe’s elite club competition in a 2-0 win for the Reds against Benfica.
“I found that out at the airport. I’m normally better informed about my statistics,” said the somewhat-surprised Champions League winner of 2013 on the day before the game. Müller was happy about his achievement but he sees it as a “staging post” on the way to further success. Just to keep our striker up to speed about the next milestones in his career, fcbayern.com has compiled a number of stats and facts from the 29-year-old’s time on the pitch to date.
2 – Oliver Kahn (103) and Müller’s former captain Phillipp Lahm (112) are the only two German players to have made more appearances in the Champions League than Müller. The FC Bayern number 25 could overtake Kahn this season and, at least, draw level with Lahm if he plays all the games up to and including the final. That is certainly an incentive.
3 – There are big names that can now be talked about in the same breath as Thomas Müller: Only Lionel Messi, Raul and Iker Casillas were younger than the Bayern pro when they made it 100 appearances in the Champions League and he is directly ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo. The Champions League record goalscorer was two months older when he completed his century in this competition.
42 – With 42 goals to his credit, Müller is by far the best German goalscorer in the Champions League ahead of Mario Gomez in second place with 26. Overall, he shares twelfth spot with Alessandro Del Piero.
66 – Just six days after his 29th birthday, Thomas Müller celebrated win number 66 in the Champions League. No other player in the history of the Champions League has reached that level as quickly. Müller replaces Lionel Messi who won his 66th game in the competition at the age of 29 years, five months and twelve days. And the quota of 66 wins in the first 100 games is a new record in Europe’s most important club competition.
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