Vancouver Whitecaps 'close' to signing German great Thomas Muller

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The Vancouver Whitecaps apparently need a new stadium and a new owner, but that’s not hindering their ambition.

As first reported by Transfermarkt’s Manuel Veth, Postmedia has confirmed the MLS team is near a deal to bring in Thomas Müller, the legendary German attacking midfielder.

“Attacking midfielder,” of course, undersells the way he plays the game. He’s not really a midfielder, but he’s not really a striker either — he’s a famed attacking threat.

A player so famed, his nickname has become the descriptor of the role he plays in his team’s formation: “Raumdeuter,” which means “space interpreter.”

After Müller scored a hattrick against Portugal at the 2014 FIFA World Cup, German coach Joachim Low gushed about Müller’s talents: “He is a very unorthodox player and you can’t really predict his lines of running, but he has one aim and that is: ‘How can I score a goal?’ That makes him so dangerous, especially in the box.”

According to a league source, as of Monday evening the Whitecaps efforts to land the attacker are “not done, but close.” Tuesday morning, Givemesport’s Tom Bogert reported the Caps had managed to reach an agreement with FC Cincinnati to transfer Muller’s “discovery rights” to Vancouver for about $400,000 in general allocation money. A contract between the Whitecaps and Müller still has to be officially agreed upon, although a second league source tells Postmedia a deal is already well understood between the two parties.

Under Major League Soccer’s complicated transfer rules, FC Cincinnati held Müller’s discovery rights, meaning they have first right of negotiation with the player. But Müller, who scored 250 goals in 756 appearances for Bayern Munich before becoming a free agent this summer, did not want to sign with the Eastern Conference side.

According to Givemesport, Cincinnati’s best contract offer to Muller was just under $2 million per season, but the German star turned it down.

There was some thought that he might join LAFC, but that has not happened. Instead, the Whitecaps have shown interest and Müller has been very willing to consider a move here. According to Veth, there was also interest from Sydney in the Australian league, which sparked MLS officials to get involved, not wanting to lose a top-notch European veteran to rivals Down Under.

Because of how the Whitecaps have chosen to structure their roster this season, they do not have an open designated player spot — and thus not able to sign him to a conventional big contract that goes far beyond the salary cap — but would be allowed to add him using targeted allocation money. The maximum salary this season for a TAM player is just over $1.7 million per season.

He will be a designated player next season, suggesting his contract will be structured to lower his salary this year and higher next year.

In getting his rights moved from Cincinnati to Vancouver, the Ohio club obviously recognized what a huge addition the Raumdeuter would be for Vancouver and extracted a solid sum of internal GAM, i.e. cap space, from Vancouver.

It will be interesting to determine how the Caps are financing this signing, given the uncertainty around ownership. The team’s current ownership group, led by former software developer, now property developer Greg Kerfoot, declared their intention last December to sell the team after two decades of ownership. Kerfoot owned the club before they made the leap to MLS in 2011. But progress on finding a new owner has been slow, although CEO Axel Schuster indicated on the Sekeres and Price podcast last week that there had been some interest from prospective buyers.

At the same time, ownership may be losing money on the club as they claim, but they are still well-heeled. They may not enjoy losing money year over year, but the value of the franchise has grown at least 10 times since they bought into the league in 2011. The franchise fee then was $40 million. The team was valued by Forbes last year at $420 million.

All this said, MLS is run as a collective and in the past the league as a whole has helped individual clubs bring in big-name players, in a bit of a “rising-tide-lifts-all-boats” mentality.

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For once, it would seem, MLS is bending the rules for one of their less-flashier clubs to add a big-time star player. Müller has also scored 45 goals in 131 career games for Germany.

Even at 35 he would be, without question, the biggest name the Whitecaps have ever signed in MLS, far exceeding the likes of Fredy Montero, Kenny Miller and Pedro Morales. Even Ryan Gauld, who is the most talented player to suit up for Vancouver in the past 15 years.

Integrating Müller and Gauld together in the lineup will be interesting, as Gauld is a pure No. 10 and Müller’s role often sees him lining up in a similar slot, but he roams far more than a traditional No. 10 does.

Müller’s strengths as a player are all about his intelligence and ability to read the play. He’s not fast, he’s not a powerful striker of the ball. He is not a wondrous dribbler.

He’s just very shrewd, at all times.

This signing, at this point, appears to be a matter of when, not if.

pjohnston@postmedia.com