Thomas Muller Opens Up on Man Utd Transfer Decision That Changed Football History

Bayern’s all-time record appearance-maker had multiple serious opportunities to leave.

Thomas Müller had a choice to make almost 12 years ago. | Lennart Preiss/Bongarts/Getty Images

Thomas Müller has admitted that he genuinely considered joining Manchester United in 2014, revealing an “interesting” offer was put to him to swap Bayern Munich for Old Trafford. It was even, he said, the “right moment” in his career to make such a move.

Had Müller taken the plunge, it would have reshaped the last decade both for United, who slipped further and further away from competing for the biggest honours, and for Bayern, eventually winning 33 trophies by the time of his 2025 exit and topping the latter’s all-time appearance list with 756 games. Müller’s 250 goals also put him third among Bayern’s all-time top scorers.

The former Germany international is a Bayern legend at the status of very few others, but his career could easily have unfolded so differently had he made another decision almost 12 years ago.

“There was a moment, because Louis van Gaal, my most influential coach, was at United and I thought about it, to be honest,” Müller said when he was shown a 2014–15 Manchester United shirt during an appearance on the Away Days YouTube channel.

Müller had almost left Bayern once before, prior to his permanent first-team breakthrough, and was on the cusp of joining Hoffenheim in search of regular senior game time. Hermann Gerland, Bayern Munich II manager, and then first-team assistant coach, worked hard to block the transfer, with Van Gaal immediately making a 20-year-old Müller a key player upon his 2009 arrival.

Van Gaal didn’t have the same levels of success in Manchester, later admitting frustrations about the club’s recruitment, but he was already revered across Europe for his achievements with Ajax, Barcelona, Bayern and the Netherlands national team. It wasn’t only Müller indebted to his impact in Munich, with Bastian Schweinsteiger repurposed from winger to world-class No. 6, Philipp Lahm handed a leadership role and Holger Badstuber also promoted to the first-team.

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Müller: ‘It Was the Right Moment to Join Man Utd’

Müller had won it all with Bayern by 2014. | Boris Streubel/Bongarts/Getty Images

“It was an interesting offer [from United] and was the right moment,” Müller reflected. “But I had three years [on my] contract and Bayern denied [a transfer] from the beginning.

“That was also a good feeling for me, that Bayern said, ‘No, we want to keep you any way, no chance to leave.’ Then, I extended my contract and I was happy at Bayern. There was no decision [to make] about not feeling good at Bayern, but it was a nice offer and with Louis van Gaal as a coach, interesting for me.”

By the end of the 2013–14 season, Manchester United were just one year removed from their latest Premier League triumph. And, despite finishing seventh under David Moyes and missing out on European qualification, it was only the first iteration of a rebuilding job that remains ongoing.

At that stage of his career, Müller had played 256 games for Bayern, scoring 99 goals. He had won 11 trophies, including the Champions League as part of a treble in 2012–13, and was recently also a 2014 World Cup winner with Germany. It was an obvious opportunity to test himself elsewhere.

In an earlier interview, Müller admitted United tried to sign him “many times” over the course of his career. Van Gaal himself revealed to talkSPORT years later that efforts were made in both 2014 and 2015, the latter right before Müller had the single best goalscoring season (32) of his career. The Dutchman alleged it was hesitance from the player’s wife about moving abroad that killed a deal.

It was reported in Germany in 2015 that the Red Devils proposed a £70 million fee, while club figurehead Karl-Heinz Rummenigge claimed in 2016 that a “mad offer” from United the year before would have put a “world-record transfer fee” in Bayern’s pocket. The most expensive transfer at that point in history was Gareth Bale’s 2013 move to Real Madrid at around £85 million.

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Müller Aiming to Make History for Vancouver Whitecaps

A 35-year-old Müller told CBS upon leaving Bayern last summer that the window for him to become a Manchester United player had closed forever. “I’m not the right guy for them and they are not the right club for me,” he said bluntly, embarking on a new chapter in Major League Soccer instead.

Müller signed with the Vancouver Whitecaps towards the end of the 2025 MLS regular season, helping the team finish second in the Western Conference standings and then get through the playoffs as far as the MLS Cup final for the first time.

“Very intense,” is how he described that initial experience, now entering the second season of his contract to the end of 2026. “I joined the Whitecaps in August, so I had a crazy four months, right before the playoffs started. We had a good run, the deepest playoff run in the history of the club.”

Müller is knowledgeable about and clearly very fond of his team, able to seamlessly reference the original version of the Whitecaps winning the NASL championship in 1979.

The next step, having lost the final to Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami last year, is to go one better and become the first Western Conference Canadian team to conquer MLS.

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