The legends of the Bundesliga
Roughly one spin in twenty in 34-0-0 opens the ⭐ Legends draw — a pool reserved for players rated 90 and above. These are the names that pool is built from, why they belong there, and what they do for your XI.
Why a legend tier exists at all
Player ratings in 34-0-0 come from a public EA Sports FC / FIFA dataset, which is excellent for the modern game and patchy for everything before it. Left alone, it produces some odd results: a merely very good modern squad player can out-rate an icon who defined an entire decade. So the truly historic names are lifted into a curated 90+ tier. It is a judgement call, openly made, and it exists so that the icons feel iconic when the reel finally lands on them.
Legends also carry a bonus beyond their number: each one raises the rating of every team-mate in their line. A legendary keeper or centre-back strengthens the entire defence; a legendary striker sharpens the whole attack.
Goalkeepers
Oliver Kahn — Bayern München, 1990s–2000s
"Der Titan" was less a goalkeeper than a weather system. Ferociously vocal, physically enormous in his area and utterly relentless, Kahn spent a decade dragging Bayern through games they had no right to win. His crowning individual moment came at the 2002 World Cup, where he was named the tournament's best player — still the only goalkeeper ever to win the Golden Ball — before a rare error in the final undid him.
Manuel Neuer — Bayern München, 2010s
Neuer did something goalkeepers are not supposed to do: he changed the job description. The "sweeper-keeper" was not invented by him, but he industrialised it, patrolling the space behind a high defensive line with the composure of a centre-back and the reflexes of a shot-stopper. In 34-0-0 he is the other 92-rated keeper, and choosing between him and Kahn is a genuinely unfair thing to ask of anybody.
Sepp Maier — Bayern München, 1970s
Bayern's keeper through the great European Cup years, and a man of astonishing durability: 442 consecutive Bundesliga appearances, a record that speaks to both his fitness and his reliability. Eccentric, brilliant, and the last line of the side that won three straight European Cups.
Defenders
Franz Beckenbauer — Bayern München, 1970s
The highest-rated outfield player in the game, and it is not an accident. Beckenbauer invented the modern attacking libero — a defender who did not merely defend but conducted the whole match from the back. He won the Ballon d'Or twice, lifted the World Cup as captain in 1974, and then won it again as manager in 1990, one of very few to do both. "Der Kaiser" was not a nickname so much as a job title.
Matthias Sammer — Borussia Dortmund, 1990s
The last German to win the Ballon d'Or, in 1996 — the year he drove Dortmund forward and won the European Championship with Germany. Sammer was Beckenbauer's spiritual successor: a sweeper who treated defending as the opening phase of an attack. His career was cut short by injury, which is football's loss and a small mercy for everyone who had to play against him.
Paul Breitner — Bayern München, 1970s
A left-back who became a midfielder, a firebrand who argued with everyone, and one of a tiny handful of players to score in two different World Cup finals — 1974 and 1982. Breitner played with the confidence of a man who assumed the game would arrange itself around him, and it usually did.
Philipp Lahm — Bayern München, 2000s–2010s
Perhaps the most intelligent footballer of his generation. Lahm could play right-back or left-back to an elite standard, moved into central midfield in his thirties and was immediately one of the best in the world there too, and captained Germany to the 2014 World Cup. Never spectacular, never once out of position.
Berti Vogts — Borussia Mönchengladbach, 1970s
"Der Terrier", and the nickname was earned. Vogts was small, tireless and utterly unshakeable — the man handed the job of marking Johan Cruyff in the 1974 World Cup final, which he did well enough that Germany won it.
Midfielders
Lothar Matthäus — Gladbach & Bayern, 1980s–1990s
The only German ever named FIFA World Player of the Year, and the Ballon d'Or winner of 1990, the year he captained West Germany to the World Cup. Matthäus began as a rampaging box-to-box midfielder and finished, two decades later, as a libero — an absurd career arc that only makes sense if you accept he was simply better than everyone else at whatever he chose to do that season.
Günter Netzer — Borussia Mönchengladbach, 1970s
If Beckenbauer was the emperor, Netzer was the rock star — long blond hair, a sports car, and passes that arrived from angles nobody else had considered. He was the creative engine of the great Gladbach side that turned the 1970s Bundesliga into a genuine two-horse race with Bayern.
Wolfgang Overath — 1. FC Köln, 1960s–1970s
A one-club man across seventeen years at Köln and the elegant left foot of the German midfield through three World Cups. Overath played in an era stacked with midfield talent and still made the position his own.
Michael Ballack — Leverkusen & Bayern, 2000s
The definitive nearly-man of German football, which is desperately unfair on a player that good. Ballack was a complete modern midfielder — powerful, technically superb, a genuine goal threat from deep — and he had the strange misfortune of finishing second in almost everything worth winning in 2002, including the Bundesliga, the Champions League and the World Cup.
Bastian Schweinsteiger — Bayern München, 2000s–2010s
He began as a winger and matured into the heartbeat of both Bayern and Germany. Schweinsteiger's finest hour was the 2014 World Cup final, where he was battered for 120 minutes, kept getting up, and kept playing. If you want one image of the man, it is that one.
Forwards
Gerd Müller — Bayern München, 1970s
The most extraordinary goalscoring record in the history of the German game: 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga appearances, including 40 in the 1971-72 season — a record that stood for forty-nine years. "Der Bomber" was not quick, not tall and not elegant. He simply scored, from anywhere, in any position, off any part of his body, including the winning goal in the 1974 World Cup final.
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge — Bayern München, 1980s
Back-to-back Ballon d'Or winner in 1980 and 1981, and the man who carried Bayern through the years after the great seventies side broke up. Rummenigge was fast, direct and ruthless in front of goal.
Robert Lewandowski — Dortmund & Bayern, 2010s–2020s
The most complete centre-forward of the modern era, and the man who finally broke Gerd Müller's record with 41 league goals in 2020-21. Lewandowski's genius is that there is no obvious flaw to attack: he finishes with both feet and his head, presses, holds the ball up and reads a defence like a book. He also once scored five goals in nine minutes as a substitute, which remains difficult to believe even having watched it.
Franck Ribéry & Arjen Robben — Bayern München, 2010s
"Robbery" — one of the great wing partnerships. Ribéry on the left, all balance and mischief; Robben on the right, cutting inside onto that left foot with the tedious inevitability of a tide coming in. Everybody knew what Robben was going to do. Almost nobody stopped him. Between them they defined a decade of Bayern dominance and, in 2013, a treble.
Jupp Heynckes — Borussia Mönchengladbach, 1970s
Better known now as the manager who won Bayern's 2013 treble, Heynckes was a prolific striker long before that, scoring at close to a goal a game for the great Gladbach side.
Allan Simonsen — Borussia Mönchengladbach, 1970s
The Danish winger who won the Ballon d'Or in 1977 while at Gladbach — a reminder of just how good that club was before the modern financial era pulled it back to the pack.
Harry Kane — Bayern München, 2020s
England's record goalscorer arrived in Munich in 2023 and immediately did what he has always done: score a preposterous number of goals while also being one of the best passers in his team. The modern game's most complete striker not named Lewandowski.
Finding them in the game
You cannot choose to meet a legend — the Legends draw is random, at roughly a one-in-twenty chance per spin. You can, however, buy a Legend scout in the Gauntlet shop, which guarantees one Legends draw in your draft. It is expensive, and it is worth it.