Müller: Let's see if I can keep this rhythm going for the entire season. But to be honest, obviously it's a great feeling for me personally. We showed a good performance as a team and created our goals nicely by working together as a unit.
Question: What impressed you the most?
Müller: I was impressed with our mentality. We had a 2-0 lead at home against Hamburger SV and kept playing forward, looking to score more goals. We are as motivated as ever and aim to keep it going.
Question: How impressed are you with Douglas Costa?
Müller: He obviously has extraordinary energy and that helps us. The fact that he also scored a goal makes it even better. He is a great guy and fully dedicates himself to the team. I hope he can keep it going.
Question: It seemed as if you weren't expecting Costa to cross the ball with the outside of his foot ahead of the 3-0.
Müller: I had to be on the move in the opponents' penalty area. If I stand still, it would be too easy to defend. I'll admit that I wasn’t expecting the best of crosses from where he was, but I also knew that he would try to aim the cross close to the near post and that's where I positioned myself. In the end his cross was fantastic.
The defending Bundesliga champions kicked off the new campaign with an impressive 5-0 home victory over Hamburger SV – a result that will ring warning bells across the rest of the league. World Champion Thomas Müller, who scored two goals to the convincing display, spoke with the media after the game to discuss the victory, the first-half performance, his brace and new signing Douglas Costa.
Question: Mr. Müller, was this the start of the season that you were looking for?
Thomas Müller: I think we managed to please our fans with the performance. It was nice to see how active we were. We’ve proved often enough that we can play good football, but you still have to bring the performances on the pitch and we did that today. We can take confidence from that for our next games. It was quite fun to watch, even if I wasn’t able to watch it myself.
Question: You still required some patience before you were able to break away.
Müller: It's not really unusual for teams to come here and sit deep. At times, Hamburg had six players in defence and their wingers dropped back deep into their own half as well. It's never easy then and we had to stay patient. We moved the ball around well but obviously weren’t able to create chances minute by minute. We knew that would be the case before the game.
Question: What broke the deadlock?
Müller: We had more space in the second half, because Hamburg was unable to keep up the intensity. That's normal in football, since you can't go full throttle for the entire 90 minutes. We then managed to convert our chances clinically and secure a nice result.
Question: A brace of goals is quite a good start to the season for you personally as well, right?
Müller: Let's see if I can keep this rhythm going for the entire season. But to be honest, obviously it's a great feeling for me personally. We showed a good performance as a team and created our goals nicely by working together as a unit.
Question: What impressed you the most?
Müller: I was impressed with our mentality. We had a 2-0 lead at home against Hamburger SV and kept playing forward, looking to score more goals. We are as motivated as ever and aim to keep it going.
Question: How impressed are you with Douglas Costa?
Müller: He obviously has extraordinary energy and that helps us. The fact that he also scored a goal makes it even better. He is a great guy and fully dedicates himself to the team. I hope he can keep it going.
Question: It seemed as if you weren't expecting Costa to cross the ball with the outside of his foot ahead of the 3-0.
Müller: I had to be on the move in the opponents' penalty area. If I stand still, it would be too easy to defend. I'll admit that I wasn’t expecting the best of crosses from where he was, but I also knew that he would try to aim the cross close to the near post and that's where I positioned myself. In the end his cross was fantastic.
