The term Der Raumdeuter is one of those uniquely German playing ideals that has no true like-for-like equivalent in American soccer. Or anywhere, really.

The German language is fantastic for this kind of thing. It is full of violent word-strewn car crashes, tremendous pileups of thoughts and ideas and nouns rolled into one screeching morass of glass and fabric. It is said that the German language is easy because every syllable is pronounced. But as each word expands and bloats on the page, the idea becomes something of its own. This is the beauty and mystique of the language itself.

Take, for instance, the German word Torschlusspanik. Literally, it is three words hooked onto each other one after the other, like separate lemmings following one another off the tongue. Soccer fans will recognize Tor; it is the German word for goal. Schluss, which occupies the midsection, literally means conclusion. And panik… well, that one is the same across borders.

Literally, “goal conclusion panic” means nothing, but the word itself is an idea, as if you’d chained freedomdesiredeath together and expected the hearer to simply understand you.

Figuratively, Torschlusspanik is the creeping dread that life is seeping out of you without the realization of your goals, whatever that means to you. Fundamentally it is the fear of irrelevancy in old age. That the German language can pack such a dripping emotional fear into a single word is a sign of the sophistication of the language. The term Backpfeifengesicht might be even better: “A face that cries out for a fist.”

It is no surprise that this bleeds into soccer, and Der Raumdeuter, literally “the space explorer,” is probably the greatest individual contribution. And there has maybe never been a better one than Thomas Müller. This video does as good a job at explaining that concept as any I have seen (excuse the music, please and thank you).

In this way Müller has become something very German: a thing that by its nature is defined by wordplay while defying its bondage in the same breath.

Müller is a physical stick figure compared to the physique we might refer to as an “athlete.” Müller is rarely injured, and when asked about that topic around the 2014 World Cup, he noted that you “can’t get hurt if you have no muscles. My calves are so thin, opponents never hit the bone because they’re so hard to see.”

This is not news now. Müller’s concave chest, gangly arms and surprisingly waifish legs are now a running joke each time he does something inexplicable on the field of play. “Yes,” we nod, “that is the string bean who is perhaps the most efficient soccer player on the planet.” In the history of the game, few have maximized what they have like Müller. He is the spirit animal of the everyman.

But all this talk about his physique below the neck belies the beautiful mind inside his skull.

I have never seen a video point this out in more explicit terms. Müller is constantly on the edge of everything, wherever he finds himself. He is either on the precipice of the midfield line or hanging off the back of the vanguard. He is either pressing the keeper into doing something he would not otherwise do or finding a pocket on the wing where he was not expected.

In this way Müller is reminiscent of the elder days of warfare, before satellite imagery burned off the permanent fog of war. During the era of the American Civil War, armies relied on roving cavalry units to provide eyes on enemy positions, and this was inevitably imperfect. Entire battalions often arrived at the battlefield unbidden.

The morning of the first day of the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, the Union army, which backed up to the Tennessee river in its entrenched spring camp, did not even hear the clinking of the Confederate camp as it drove into its attack position some three miles away. By the time the time Albert Sidney Johnston’s core first pressed into the soft, poorly prepared Union line, the swiftness of the Southern preparation had utterly caught Ulysses Grant’s men flatfooted. By the end of the day, the Confederates had pushed the men in blue so deep into their own lines that they’d nearly pressed all the way to the river by nightfall.

Part of the Union surprise was in the condition of the roads. Surely, Grant reasoned, Johnston and P.T. Beauregard could not push 40,000 men up the 20 miles of mud-choked causeways from Corinth to Pittsburgh Landing in so short a period? Surely we have more time before our reinforcements arrive?

This, in a shell, is the beauty of Müller’s space occupation. He is an entire brigade of force roving into the enemy’s defensive lines as if he were shielded by cover. He sets up the space he ultimately occupies by subtly shifting his line of pursuit and arriving in just the right spot with the suddenness and completeness of a victorious army. Leo Messi may be the world’s best player, but Müller is arguably its greatest on-field tactician.

During the fleeting final days of his professional career, Thierry Henry stepped into his role as the game’s resident philosopher-in-residence with gusto. I’ll never forget a moment during a press conference leading into the 2014 MLS All-Star Game when Henry was asked about Müller. Bayern Munich was on its way to Portland for the match, and Germany had just won the World Cup a month and a half earlier.

His words, to me, are the definitive account of Müller as he will be known by the yellowed pages of posterity. I hope, anyway. This is what he said.