After more than 750 games and 30 titles, Thomas Müller moved to the Vancouver Whitecaps in August. Our members’ magazine 51 joined the FCB fan club in the Canadian city for our record appearance maker’s debut and first home match. It’s clear: the Müller boom will last at least until the 2026 World Cup.
The wonderful thing about being a fan is that the shared experience of extreme emotions creates a stronger bond than the result shown on the scoreboard after 90 minutes. And that’s why the members of the FC Bayern fan club ‘Mia san Vancouver’ didn’t really care that the Whitecaps conceded an equaliser just before the end of Thomas Müller’s debut against Houston Dynamo. They prefer to talk about the crazy emotions that the Bavarian new signing gave them on this Sunday: the excitement when coach Jesper Sørensen called him from his warm-up. The goosebumps when the stadium announcer presented him as “our number 13” and ‘Mia san Vancouver’ founder Artikas Keschvari “really believed for the first time that it was all actually happening”. And then, of course, the collective explosion just three minutes later, when Müller, like so often in his incredible career, read the space perfectly and stood where the ball came and no else was – and hammered it first-time into the left corner from 20 metres.
“What a moment; I’ll remember that for the rest of my life,” says Keschvari, 39. Müller saw it similarly in the post-match interview: “The way the fans went crazy, the way my team-mates reacted, that was a fantastic moment.” The fact it was only a brief moment because the strike was chalked off just seconds later due to offside is completely irrelevant. The excitement, the goosebumps, the ecstasy – no one can take that away from them, they experienced it and burned it into their minds. They’re now raising a glass to that memory in the Wings bar, shortly before midnight; to the 17th August, a historic date; to their number 13, a true global star. From here you can see the stadium and also Müller’s home in a tower block not far away. If he were standing on his balcony now, he could toast back – and the ‘Mia san Vancouver’ boys are certain: he would do it.
For the FC Bayern fans on Canada’s Pacific Coast, around 9,000 air miles and nine time zones away from Munich, this day closes a circle. Keschvari came to Vancouver from Vienna as a teenager in 2003, with memories of watching football together with his now 88-year-old dad, an ardent Bayern supporter and fan of the German national team. However, Vancouver is an ice hockey city, and the only place you could watch football communally was the Alpen Club – and at the start of the 2014 World Cup, Keschwari had had enough. He couldn’t get in for Germany’s first game against Portugal because of overcrowding. “If they’d let me in, none of this would’ve happened,” he recalls – just like Franz Beckenbauer liked to tell the story that he only went to FC Bayern and not 1860 because of a slap in the face.
9,000 km west of Allianz Arena
So he organised his own public viewing event in a bar. Fifteen people came for the Ghana match. “After that the numbers doubled and tripled with each game. Hundreds of fans came for the semi-final against Brazil with drums and trumpets,” he describes. The best bit: “The Brazilians were in the sports bar on the floor below us.” After the final victory a few days later, in which FCB players such as Neuer, Schweinsteiger and Müller played a leading role, Keschvari asked the other fans if they’d be interested in an FC Bayern fan club. The first who agreed was Michael Hughes, a friend since high school days and hardcore Whitecaps fan. He sits opposite Keschvari and having analysed Müller’s goal from all angles, including a still frame of the moment the ball was delivered, he maintains: definitely no offside! “The view through the club glasses is always better,” he smirks. Feelings are greater than facts.
The fan club’s first trip took place less than four weeks after the World Cup final. A five-hour drive to Portland, where Pep Guardiola’s Bayern were making a brief 24-hour stop with their new world champions. Bayern were the best and most exciting team in the world at this time: Manuel ‘The Wall’ Neuer in goal, ‘football god’ Schweinsteiger in the middle, ‘Robbery’ dancing on the wings and somewhere, the genius Thomas Müller was always in exactly the right place. It’s no wonder that the number of fan club members worldwide increased by over 50 percent between 2010 and 2015. In the new world, more and more people were backing red. “The WhatsApp groups with the fan club presidents from North America is still going today,” adds Keschvari. And the chat began to hot up over the summer when rumours grew that Bayern’s record appearance maker would actually move across the pond.
English words for Müller chant
“And now he’s here,” says Keschvari three hours before kick-off. The diehard Whitecaps fans gather in the Dublin Calling football pub before every home match. All of them wear shirts and scarves, some have coloured hair, and now and then someone lights a blue-and-white flare. Then all the Whitecaps fans, together with the Bayern supporters, march the kilometre or so to the stadium. “The arrival of Müller in Vancouver is something special,” says Hughes, who works in youth sport for the city and also for the Whitecaps academy.
In Vancouver, they believe they could win the title this year. Müller said himself that he hasn’t joined Vancouver to enjoy the view of the stadium and the bay from his balcony. “An adventure is only exciting when you’re playing for the championship.” That's what the Whitecaps are doing this year, even more so with Müller. And that has an impact beyond the city.
Since Major League Soccer began in 1996, only one Canadian team have won the title: Toronto FC in 2017. The Whitecaps have been involved since 2011 and have twice reached the quarter-finals, but haven’t progressed beyond the first play-off round for eight years. In international football, the club is most well known for producing Alphonso Davies. The left-back joined Bayern in 2018 and confirmed to Müller before the transfer that Vancouver would be just the right place for him. And not just because you can see the peaks of mountains in both Vancouver and Munich.
Müller as Raumdeuter coach
The Canadian Bayern fans can also still remember the lightning-fast Davies well. “With him you could already tell back then he was going to be a star,” describes Keschvari. The fact a Vancouver-trained talent once dribbled past Lionel Messi in the Champions League quarter-finals and created one of the most iconic football moments of the 21st century has had a lasting effect. “Since then something’s been going on,” says Keschvari, also in view of the starting line-up. As mentioned, Müller begins on the bench. Starting in his position is 19-year-old Jeevan Badwal, who came to Whitecaps academy aged 13. Ideally Badval should now learn from Müller how to better interpret the spaces, maybe even ahead of the 2026 World Cup. Seven fixtures will be held in Vancouver, including two of Canada’s group games plus – if the co-hosts are successful – their matches in the round of 32 and round of 16.
Vancouver will be the Canadian World Cup hotspot. And there could be no better advertisement for football than a successful Whitecaps season with the legendary Müller. The host of the MLS Cup on 6 December will be the finalist with the highest number of points from the regular season, so why not Vancouver for the first time? Müller himself said: “I want to be part of Vancouver's development into a football city by performing well.” That’s the hope of the Whitecaps and ‘Mia san Vancouver’ fans. And of course, hope is the second-best feeling for football fans after the ecstasy of celebrating a goal. Most fans wear the name of hope on their jerseys; for many, such as Keschvari or his mate Hughes, it’s a Bayern or Germany one since, as Keschvari says: “I really looked but there were no Whitecaps Müller jerseys or scarves anywhere in the city; everything was sold out. I've never experienced that before.”
An hour before kick-off, hundreds of fans march to the stadium, and at this point, perhaps another little anecdote about how it all came together at ‘Mia san Vancouver’. Not all members are automatically Whitecaps fans, even if there is this connection through Davies, which has now become even closer thanks to Müller. Eleven years ago, the fan club founders decided to attend one home game together each year, buying tickets months in advance so that everyone could clear their schedules – otherwise something always comes up. This season's game, no joke: the one against Houston on 17 August. If that doesn’t send a shiver down your spine, nature has put a grey stone in your chest instead of a red heart.
The ‘Mia san Vancouver’ members sit down together long after the first of hopefully many special moments that Müller will give them. They could be the happiest fans after conceding a late equaliser in the history of the sport. They toast to FC Bayern, to the Whitecaps, to Müller and to how it’s all turned out.
If Müller actually is standing on his balcony at this moment, he would have sensed that this city has already taken him to their hearts. After his debut, Vancouver is now his second home – and especially for someone like him who’s spent his entire career in just one city, that’s certainly a wonderful feeling.
Article taken from the current September edition of club magazine ‘51’ – it appears here in an abridged version:
Topics of this article