DER BOMBER

MICHAEL STEWART LOOKS BACK AT THE CAREER OF LEGENDARY BAYERN MUNICH AND WEST GERMANY GOAL KING GERD MULLER...

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FOOTBALLERS break records. It's a continuous journey but the trailblazers always leave an indelible mark in the history books.

As Harry Kane continues to make his mark in the Bundesliga, you only have to cast your mind back recently to the kind of goalscoring feats Robert Lewandowski conjured up before his move to Barcelona.

But there is one man who trumps the lot. His name is Gerd Muller. He was a history maker. And still to this day the record goalscorer in the Bundesliga.

'Der Bomber' wasn't what most people would think of as a typical striker. He wasn't particularly fast, he wasn't tall. In fact, he was a short, stocky man.

But the skill he had was to be ruthless in front of goal, especially in and around the six-yard box. He scored 365 goals in 427 games for Bayern Munich in the top league, a record that is unlikely to ever be beaten.

Born on November 3, 1945, he joined his local team 1861 Nordlingen at the age of 13. On breaking into the first team, he made an immediate impact.

At 18, he signed for Bayern Munich, who were in the second division at the time. But with Sepp Maier and Franz Beckenbauer in the squad, one season was all it took to get promotion.

He began scoring regularly but it took until he was established in the Bundesliga in 1966 for him to get a call-up to the West Germany squad. There he made an impact by scoring a goal in his second game for the team in 1967. Still it took until the 1968 European Championship qualifiers - where he scored six goals in three games - for him to really establish his place in the squad.