With news of Jerome Boateng being sidelined for most of the second half of this season, Bayern Munich’s hopes of glory in the Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal and Champions League are in some danger.

The German giants have lost their best center-back, and perhaps their best defender overall. And their options in his stead are scarce.

For Bayern to succeed, they’ll need to adapt their approach to playing and winning games. In part, they’ll need to borrow a page from the book of Louis van Gaal during his time at the club: To simply keep the ball and outgun opponents in attack.

It was a tactic that worked for Van Gaal in 2009-10, in which the Bavarians reached the Champions League final in Madrid with a back five of Hans-Jorg Butt, Martin Demichelis, Daniel van Buyten, an inexperienced and out-of-position Holger Badstuber at left-back, and Philipp Lahm on the right as their only defender of considerable class.

It was a bumpy road to the final, and the Bavarians conceded four goals to both Fiorentina and Manchester United in the knockout rounds, but they managed to equal their opponents in both cases and progress on away goals.

Bayern took a similar approach the following year and blew a 3-1 aggregate lead at home to lose to defending champions Inter Milan on away goals. As the saying goes, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Bayern have a better squad now than in 2010 and 2011, however, and there’s genuine reason to believe they can overcome their opponents with enough quality in attack. But for them to do so, they’ll need their X-factor to be at his very best. That is Thomas Muller.

Looking around the Bayern attack, there is abundant class and everyone has his role. Douglas Costa is the primary playmaker, the creative spark on the wing. He demands the ball and can work magic with it, dribbling through defenses and creating scoring opportunities.

Arjen Robben and understudy Kingsley Coman have similar abilities but are perhaps not quite as adept in creating; the Dutchman is more of a scorer, while the teenager is a bit more balanced in both departments but for now has less responsibility in possession than Costa.

And then there’s Robert Lewandowski, the classic No. 9: He’s the focal point of the attack, the scorer of the most goals and hold-up man who challenges the center-backs.

That leaves Muller, the player whose role is so hard to define that even many journalists struggle to truly encapsulate his brilliance. And many defenders just don’t know what to do with him.

True to his namesake, Gerd, Thomas is the kind of player who can produce goals at any time and in any way. He is the X-factor for Bayern as they approach the business end of the campaign.

The best way to describe Muller is that he simply is effective. In an era in which the Bayern attack was defined by Robben and Franck Ribery (“Robbery!” read the headlines), Muller scored and assisted more goals than his more illustrious teammates.

He’s been remarkably consistent, with Transfermarkt recording 141 goals and 113 assists in 331 games for Bayern in all competitions over the course of his career. This season, the figures stand at 21 goals and eight assists in 27 appearances, in what is looking to be a career season for the 26-year-old. He just gets better and better.

Last weekend, Muller didn’t even have a particularly great game, yet he played a decisive role. He tracked down a hopeful long ball and won the penalty that put Bayern ahead. And later, he took an effort that probably would have been saved had Lewandowski not reacted to deflect the ball into the net.

These seem like flukes, yet they happen all the time. Consider how Muller appeared to badly mis-hit a cross from the right wing in September but had the fortune of finding the net as the ball found its way into the top-left corner of the net.

Defenses have long known exactly what Robben would do, and to his credit, the Dutchman has long been so good that he’s rarely been stopped.

With Muller, it’s a different story; one never knows what he’ll do, but one can count on him producing a goal. Sometimes it’s a fluke, sometimes it’s a moment of sheer genius that one may not have thought him capable of. But one way or another, it happens.

Muller is also a player who isn’t fazed by the big stage, and that can be critical towards Bayern‘s title hopes.

Whereas Costa and Coman have never been tested in the latter stages of the Champions League, the German has won the World Cup and Champions League. In the former, his 10 goals have him already drawing close to Miroslav Klose’s career record. And in the latter, not only has he won, but he’s appeared in three finals. He even scored the go-ahead goal in the 2012 final, a match he may have decided had he not been substituted.

With Boateng sidelined, Bayern have a tough task on hand from now until season’s end. Yet they can still win everything. They have a team of world-class players, and among them, an X-factor in Muller.

If anyone is to produce the magic Bayern need to win a treble, he’s their best bet.

 

@Mr_Bundesliga

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