📍Nördlingen, Bavaria, Germany
1945 – 1964“I was born in November 1945, just after the war, in Nördlingen, a medieval walled town in the Ries crater in western Bavaria, the youngest of five children of Johann, a labourer, and Christina. Times were hard, and we had very little money. I left school at fourteen and became an apprentice weaver, working at a local textile mill, and I played football in the streets and fields around the town walls whenever I could. I was short and stocky, with thick, powerful thighs, and people said I didn't look like a footballer. But I had a gift for being in the right place in the penalty area, and for scoring goals from anywhere. A friend persuaded me to come to training at the local club, TSV 1861 Nördlingen, and soon I was scoring goals by the hundred in the youth teams; in one season I scored about 180 of the team's goals. In 1963 I was promoted to the first team, and I scored 51 league goals in my first season. Bayern Munich, then in the second tier, signed me in 1964, and the money helped my mother, who was not well off. The coach at Bayern, Zlatko Čajkovski, called me his little fat Müller, but I scored and scored, and Bayern rose to become the greatest club in Germany, winning three European Cups. With West Germany I won the European Championship in 1972 and scored the winning goal in the 1974 World Cup final, and they called me Der Bomber. Nördlingen named its stadium after me, the Gerd-Müller-Stadion, and I was always proud of my hometown.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today