ZAt the beginning of the 2023/24 season, Spanish record champions Real Madrid looked like one of those generational changes that have worked so smoothly in recent years because the team itself responded to the departure of superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema with a cohort of young talents. Toni Kroos, then 33 years old, five-time Champions League winner and three-time Spanish and German champion, often found himself on the bench.
Next to him sat Luka Modrić, 38, partner in countless football battles. Extremely physically strong players like Valverde, Tchouaméni and Camavinga pushed their way into the starting line-up. A few months earlier, Real had suffered a 4-0 semi-final defeat against eventual Champions League winners Manchester City. A cycle seemed to be coming to an end.
But just a few weeks later, Real coach Carlo Ancelotti had to correct himself, an art he has mastered like few others. The German slipped back into the starting line-up. He played seven out of eight games in the Champions League this season, most of them from the start. The quarter-finals will be against Manchester City again in April. Ancelotti said he just wanted to “try something out”. What that was clearly didn't quite work: a Real midfield without Toni Kroos.
Everyone in Madrid knows that these are precious months that Kroos is giving to the “Blancos”. Remaining term of his contract: up to and including June 30, 2024. Everyone is hoping that he will stick around for another year. Like last year, we have to wait. Kroos wants to decide in peace and he wants to be sure about the next step. He never played poker. His strength is still there, his game intelligence is phenomenal, and the sports press sings his praises almost every weekend. Toni Kroos is a cult again, and he will be by far the most successful German to ever play football in Spain.
So was that really needed? The return to the German national team, which he has stayed away from since 2021, when it reached its lowest point? He was “enough of a footballer,” he said in February in his podcast, which he runs with his brother Felix, that the national coach’s request did not leave him indifferent.
A request in dire need, one could add. A rallying of the troops in which scoffers could see the last line-up for the European Championship in their own country. Not Kroos, who reacted like a youngster to national coach Julian Nagelsmann's recruitment: honored. With the ambition to try again. And without fear of embarrassment.
The team always benefits under Kroos
It is a “great confirmation” that his achievements are being noticed at Real Madrid and “that the national coach thinks that I am needed for the tournament in my own country.” He believes he can still play football at the usual level “and without physical problems”.
Let's take a flashback to understand which player is returning. On August 12, 2014, in the UEFA Super Cup game against Sevilla FC in Cardiff, Toni Kroos wore Real Madrid's white jersey for the first time. The Spanish record champions had recently fished him away from Bayern Munich for 25 million euros. But what happened in Cardiff is much more astonishing.
The first to catch on were the live commentators on Spanish television. Twenty-four-year-old world champion Toni Kroos had barely been training with his new colleagues for seven days when he moved around the pitch as if he had been there for years. At the back there was an alpha male, Sergio Ramos, while further up front played the World Cup star James Rodríguez and the power forward Cristiano Ronaldo, Bale and Benzema. But after just four minutes, the television commentators had classified the German with amazing insight.
He was Real's “compass needle,” said one in the second minute. Former Real player Fernando Morientes joined in as a co-commentator: Kroos is clearly the ball distributor in this team. Shortly afterwards, comparisons were made with Uli Stielike and Günter Netzer. Kroos, according to commentators, is better than both of them. Reaching for the history book in the first half of the very first game should neither be premature nor excessive.
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