Manuel Neuer reaches 600 competitive appearances for Bayern

Manuel Neuer reached the remarkable milestone of 600 competitive appearances for Bayern in Friday’s 5-1 Bundesliga win against VfB Stuttgart. He becomes only the fifth player to achieve the feat after club legends Thomas Müller, Sepp Maier, Oliver Kahn and Gerd Müller.

And the 40-year-old says he’s not done yet. “I definitely feel good and enjoy myself every day training with the team and playing games. Starting the season like this is a dream. It’s the result we’d wished for,” he explained after the match.

The current Bayern goalkeeper and captain has been an integral figure in the success of recent years. Since joining from Schalke 15 years ago, the 40-year-old has won an abundance of silverware, including a record 13 Bundesliga titles, seven DFB Cups and two Champions League as he and the team have continually made history. A record of 269 clean sheets underlines Neuer’s status as one of the greatest goalkeepers football has ever seen.

The victory over Stuttgart was Neuer’s 375th of his Bundesliga career, further extending the record he already holds in Germany’s top flight. Across his 546 outings in the league, he has conceded an average of just 0.85 goals per game. No other goalkeeper in the division’s history with at least 100 appearances has conceded fewer goals than matches. Second on the list is Oliver Kahn at 1.04 goals per game. But Neuer wouldn’t be the great that he is if he wasn’t frustrated by the fact he couldn’t build on his already record-setting 241 Bundesliga clean sheets.

“Conceding always annoys you, but you can’t prevent every situation so easily against a good team like Stuttgart. We’ll now try to keep going and do our job,” he stated.