Jamal Musiala: The answer to everything

Jamal Musiala recently signed a contract extension to 2030 and will continue to help shape Bayern’s future. Tactics expert Christoph Biermann explains in the latest edition of members’ magazine ‘51’ the magic of our No.42 and the link to a sci-fi novel. 

What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? In Douglas Adams’ novel ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’, a supercomputer came up with the answer after several million years of thinking. Forty-two – the number worn by a player at Bayern who offers a similar promise of answers. Musiala seems to always have the right answer on the pitch, and not just at present. Hermann Gerland remembers watching him as a youngster for the first time at Bayern. Musiala had just returned to Germany from England with his family and moved from Chelsea’s academy to the Campus, which was being run by Gerland.

“I was thinking he needs to play the ball now. And in that moment he played it. I was thinking he needed to turn to the left. He’d already done it,” Gerland recalls, adding with a smile, “I never even said a thing to him.” This was a 16-year-old with spindly legs and the face of a child out on a pitch producing magic and already in possession of intricate knowledge of how to play football. Musiala understood the game completely, without anyone needing to tell him things. “You can’t teach players what he’s got,” Gerland explains.

Pelé-esque

If anyone knows that, it’s Tiger. He’s a legend at Bayern because he affectionately raised the best of the best at the club, like former cubs Bastian Schweinsteiger, Philipp Lahm or Thomas Müller. Gerland doesn’t like comparing players or ranking them, because they’re like sons to him. But when he talks about Musiala, you quickly realise that he believes the young man, who is saw as a “shy, well-raised boy” at the Campus, is truly special. When asked for a comparison, Gerland is reminded of someone he idolised when he was young: “Pelé, he could do that too.”

But what is this “that” that Gerland is talking about? You don't have to be an expert to realise that Musiala is one of the best dribblers in world football thanks to his incredibly tight ball control and spectacular balance. The fact that he can so easily and playfully outwit his opponents is astonishing, because Musiala is actually quite tall at 1.84 metres. Outstanding dribblers are often small; a low centre of gravity helps them to get away from their opponents. What's more, we tend to find them in wide positions. Only really greats like Lionel Messi or Neymar feel at home in the densely populated centre, where Musiala is best at working his magic.

He is particularly valuable there because it is now difficult to throw opponents off balance at the top level. Teams are so well organised that it's almost impossible to outplay them with combinations and chains of play. But someone like Musiala can cause chaos in the opposition's defence with his dribbling, and that's exactly how he puts it himself. “When I get the ball in the opposition's half, I can be completely free. I then try to create chaos. It doesn't matter that I don't always succeed. The important thing is that I have the courage to keep trying, even after two or three failed solo runs,” he once said in an interview. The despair he causes his opponents is shown by the fact that there are only two players in the Bundesliga who are fouled more often than him.

A game enabler 

Musiala is not a playmaker in the area of a classic No.10 behind the centre-forward who sets up his teammates with cascades of passes, although he does that occasionally. He is more what you might call a game enabler, because he creates situations and spaces that would not exist without him.

Vincent Kompany and his coaching team have been working this season to make Musiala even more dangerous. How does that work? Above all, Musiala had to get in the box more, and that is exactly what he is now doing. Compared to last season, Musiala has increased the number of his touches in the opposition penalty area from 4.6 to 6.0 per 90 minutes and the number of his shots per 90 minutes from 2.6 to 3.4 - an increase of over 30 percent. Another statistic shows just how present he has become in the opposition penalty area. Only his teammate Harry Kane and Eintracht Frankfurt's Hugo Ekitiké have more touches there in the Bundesliga.

There are many more statistics in which Musiala stands out, but whatever numbers and data you look at, they miss the point. A player like Musiala doesn't amaze us because he's efficient or does the right thing. Rather, he is a magician who amazes us because we never thought there could actually be a way through this forest of opponents' legs. One example is the third goal in the match against Frankfurt, when he received the ball from Leroy Sané just behind the halfway line and made his way towards goal quite naturally and confidently - despite three opponents blocking his path (or at least trying to). Musiala amazes us because he sees a passing avenue that we would never have thought of. Bayern’s No.42 finds solutions that are not only practical, but also beautiful, and which have a special magic.

40 percent intuition, 60 percent strategy

He has developed his game further over the years and, in addition to his goalscoring ability, his mix of dribbling and passing has also improved. Germany coach Julian Nagelsmann now attests to the 22-year-old's “good seniority”. Ultimately, the greatest achievement of all his coaches was not to hinder his talent. This starts with his father Daniel Richard, who was a professional footballer himself in his native Nigeria and introduced his son to football at the age of four. At U7 level in Fulda, Musiala scored over 100 goals in one season, sometimes 10 in one game. “Even back then, it was a dream to watch him,” enthused Michael Hoffmann, his first coach at TSV Lehnerz.

His coach Saul Isaksson-Hurst at Chelsea U10s was also amazed, and he was used to top talent: “He was very exciting, a wow player, as we called him, with wow moments.” Fortunately, in view of this “wow”, no one thought of banning him from dribbling or imposing a tactical framework that would restrict Musiala's creativity too much. Perhaps no-one dared to do so simply because his talent was so abundant and Musiala was also a model pupil. Even as a primary school pupil in London, he took courses in the Korean martial art of Hapkido in order to become more agile. He also joined his school's chess club. Today, he says, he is no longer as good as he was back then, but he still likes chess: “You have to think a lot, it clears your head.”

The fact that he has a footballing brother in spirit in Bayer Leverkusen's Florian Wirtz and that the two harmonise well in the national team has led to them being called ‘Wusiala’. There's also a bit of ‘Schweini and Poldi’ or ‘Icke and Litti’ in there, because the country longs for two guys who are close to the people and simply play with childlike enthusiasm. But Musiala doesn't really fit into this mould, because the young man, who has already played almost 200 professional games, is no longer a dreamy ‘Bambi’ footballer. He has a highly analytical view of his game, which he is constantly developing in dialogue with his coaches. Musiala believes that his game consists of 40 percent intuition and 60 percent strategy. Before he sets off on a dribble, he has long since scanned where his teammates and opponents are on the pitch and what options are available. As a result, he is often one step (and often two or three) ahead of those who want to steal the ball from him.

Musiala is neither naive about his abilities nor too modest. He speaks clearly and unambiguously about wanting to shape an era at Bayern. Away from the pitch, Musiala's personality takes on a clearer shape because he has cultural interests, such as listening to music on vinyl records and taking photos with an old camera. As a nine-year-old, Musiala won a poetry competition at his primary school, Corpus Christi Catholic Primary School in London. The poem ‘Moment’ was later published in the anthology ‘Around the World in 80 Words’. In the verses, Musiala describes his first day as a youth player at Chelsea and how his father takes him to training. “Suddenly the car stops. I close my eyes. I take a deep breath. I'm not nervous anymore. I'm happy. I know what I've to do.” Nothing has changed to this day.

Author Christoph Biermann is one of Germany's most respected tactics experts. He has published several football books, such as ‘Matchplan. The new football matrix’ (KiWi, 2018). Biermann comes from North Rhine-Westphalia and is a fan of Westfalia Herne and Bochum.

Illustrations: Davide Barco

This text appeared in the March edition of members’ magazine ‘51’