He was as good as anyone I ever played against: John Greig looks back on his tussles with Gerd Muller

Sepp Maier, Paul Breitner, Franz Beckenbauer, Hans-Georg Schwarzenbeck and Uli Hoeness, to name just a handful, all started for Udo Lattek’s team in both legs of the double header.

Yet, nullifying the considerable threat posed by just one of the Bayern players, their free-scoring striker Gerd Muller, was perhaps the key factor in the epic triumph. 

Muller had played when the Bavarian giants defeated their Glasgow opponents after extra-time in the final of the same competition in Nuremberg five years earlier to lift their first continental trophy.

And the late free-kick which he won and then curled in to the net at Ibrox two seasons before that had knocked Willie Waddell’s men out of the Fairs Cities Cup in the first round.

So stopping “Der Bomber” from scoring in the semi-final - which the Scottish side, who would go on to beat Moscow Dynamo in the final, won 3-1 on aggregate - was crucial to their success. 

John Greig, the legendary Rangers captain who was involved in all five of those encounters, rates Muller, who passed away aged 75 on Sunday after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease, as one of the toughest opponents he ever faced. 

Greig feels he deserves to be regarded as one of the greatest strikers of all-time.

“I think his goalscoring record would certainly vouch for that,” he said. “He was definitely as good as anyone I played against in my career.

“You can’t score the amount of goals he scored in his career and say he was lucky. That’s talent. You have either got it or you haven’t got it. He was successful at all levels, at club level and international level, as well.”

He certainly was. Muller plundered a record 365 goals in the Bundesliga and netted 66 times in Europe with Bayern. He was also on target on no fewer than 68 occasions in 62 appearances for West Germany.

The 1970 Ballon d’Or winner helped his club to lift the European Cup in 1974, 1975 and 1976 and his country to triumph in the European Championship in 1972 and the World Cup in 1974.

He held the World Cup finals scoring record – he bagged a total of 14 goals in 1970 and 1974 – for 32 years until Ronaldo of Brazil broke it in 2006.

Greig can fully understand why he was so prolific. “He wasn’t the prettiest of players,” he said. “He wasn’t a Lionel Messi or a Bobby Charlton or a Jimmy Greaves. But he could score goals.

“He was a difficult man to play against. He was an unusual centre forward because he wasn’t that big. He wasn’t big and strong. But he was small and strong.

“He also had an unbelievable idea of where the ball was going when he was in the 18 yard box. He could sniff out a goal from nowhere.

“Players have different qualities about their game. He was a hard worker and a goal scorer who led the line brilliantly. The way Bayern played suited him down to the ground.”

Football has changed enormously since Greig and Muller’s heyday. But the man who was voted the Greatest Ever Ranger in 1999 still feels that aspiring professionals would benefit from studying his old adversary’s style of play.

“If young players, young strikers, could get old videos and watch him playing in the 18 yard box they would learn an awful lot,” he said.

In the first leg of the European Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final in the Grunwald Stadium in 1972, Muller hit the crossbar with a header early on.

But Colin Jackson performed well against the diminutive predator thereafter and the visitors earned a 1-1 draw - a Rainer Zobel own goal shortly after half-time cancelled out Breitner’s first-half opener – at the end of 90 torrid minutes.

“Bayern in those days were like Barcelona in the modern game,” said Greig.  “They had six members of the West Germany team playing for them. That was a big, big win against a team of stars.

“But in the first-half of the first leg I think everybody in their team had a shot on our goal apart from their goalkeeper, Sepp Maier. Every single one of them.

“We were under so much pressure in that match. They were a fabulous team. Muller was the final cog in the wheel for them so to speak.”

Rangers won 2-0 in the rematch in front of 80,000 fans at Ibrox thanks to goals from Sandy Jardine and Derek Parlane in the opening half an hour.

Greig, who was renowned for being a ferocious competitor who would win at all costs, can recall Muller being a handful that evening as well. 

“I didn’t get to know him at all,” he said. “But the language barrier didn’t matter on the field. He would have known when I was threatening him! Seriously, though, he was a hard wee man, a tough player. He wasn’t bothered.”

The triumph over Bayern was celebrated joyously by the Rangers players afterwards – so much so that Greig felt the need to remind them work remained to be done.

“I remember saying to the players that night 'just because we’ve beaten them in the semi-final doesn’t mean to say we’ve won the cup’,” he said. “We still had a final to play.”

Muller moved to the United States and signed for Fort Lauderdale Strikers in 1979 after 15 trophy-laden years with Bayern Munich.

Greig watched him in action for the North American Soccer League franchise and can recall him being just as clinical a finisher as he was in his younger years. 

“I went on holiday to Florida and saw him playing for his American team in Miami,” he said. “He was still exactly the same. He was every bit as enthusiastic about the game. And his career was nearly finished.”

Rangers’ honorary life president was, like the rest of the football world, upset to hear that Gerd Muller had died this weekend.

“It’s always sad when you see somebody like that going,” he said. “Ally Dawson, one of my old players, passed away a few weeks ago too. He was a nice lad and it was sad news.”