The honorary doctoral president of Bayern Munich has been opened about the club's gap with Thomas Muller and made the 'mistakes' about the contract of the 35-year-old.
The World Cup winner 2014 will end his 25-year association with the Bavarian Giants when his deal ends at the end of the season.
Bayern enjoyed a great campaign under manager Vincent Kompany and has a six -point lead at the top of Bundesliga.
Muller, however, played a bit of a role in their success and has only made nine starts in the competition, whereby Kompany promotes the younger stars of Bayern above him. Muller earns a reported £ 14.2 million (€ 17 million) per season, making him one of the highest earners in the club.
Mail Sport reported last week that MLS Side Cincinnati FC emerged as leading contenders to sign the Germany legend.
Muller, who came from the bank to score in the Champions League Quarter Final Leg League last week by Inter Milan, plays his last games for Bayern at this summer's club and has offered a witness.
However, the distribution of Germany -legend from Bayern has been far from supple.
In February, it suggested that a new deal was still on the table for Muller, but at the same time tried to encourage him to walk into the sunset.
“As a person and as a member of the team, I would expand his contract at any time,” he said.
'But if the situation is such that he is only a replacement, I would advise him to retire.
'It would not be worth his great career to end up on the couch as a replacement. I would like to save him. '
And now Bayern's honorary chairman admitted that those words might have given Muller false hope when the club had already made a decision.
“I am incredibly irritated that I said that because I actually wanted to build a bridge for Thomas, because I already knew that his contract would not be renewed at that time,” Hietheid told Bild.
“And it would have been better if he had made the decision and not Bayern. I have seen a lot of great players retired. Gunter Netzer, Wolfgang Overath, Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller. They all fell apart because they just didn't want to accept that they were no longer as good as they would have wanted to be.
'We made mistakes by giving Thomas the impression that his contract could be expanded. And when sports management had the discussions with him, the decision was actually made not to extend his contract. That was the starting point for a certain amount of unrest.
'Thomas was not prepared for it and was naturally angry.
'This decision was taken jointly by the entire club. And there was no person – no person – in the committees, including the supervisory council, who had a different opinion. It was poorly communicated. You have to take responsibility for that, otherwise you will not. '
With the attitude of the club now clear, Muller wants to close his Bayern career with an incredible 13th league title and a third European cup.
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