Kroos: More Than Just A Passer — A Cyborg And Unicorn Wrapped In One

  Kroos: More Than Just A Passer — A Cyborg And Unicorn Wrapped In One

He is the greatest to ever do what he does and he leaves at the summit. It will never be the same.

met with multiple pressers. He evaded. He broke high-pressing schemes with one-touch, one shoulder-drop, one-pass; unbothered.

Some of that is down to pure ability and talent, some of it down mental fortitude — an underrated trait of his. Real Madrid will lose an irreplaceable footballer, but they’ll also lose his cold blood and leadership. How many times has Real Madrid played an away game, under hostile conditions, against aggressive teams? How many times has Kroos’s composure, alongside Luka Modric, been the team’s main source of oxygen? Real Madrid probably don’t escape to the Champions League final without him.

“Many of our players played big games so we know how to stay calm in difficult situations because we know we can beat everyone,” Toni Kroos said back in 2018 en route to another Champions League triumph. “Even when we’re not winning we can change the game. We’ve experienced all kinds of situations so we don’t feel anxious.”

Over two legs against Manchester City, Kroos was tremendous under pressure — always making the right pass and right touch. His serenity was desperately needed, particularly at the Etihad. In the ensuing game in Munich, he slung one of the best passes of this entire Champions League campaign to open the scoring. One week later, he levitated against Bayern again, completing 18 of 20 long balls (insane accuracy on high volume) while having the most touches of anyone one the field.

Still, his skeptics will talk about him as a ‘sideways passer’ — a narrative spun by a minority group of fans who don’t understand the game, even fuelled by Bayern Munich’s honorary president Uli Hoeness, who even once proclaimed back in 2021 that “Kroos has no place in today’s football”. (Kroos has arguably been the best midfielder in the world since.) some point.

Even bringing in a progressive passer won’t necessarily replace Kroos, because no one can progress the ball at the elite clip that Kroos does.

Changing schemes may be the best approach. With Kroos leaving, that opens the door for Eduardo Camavinga to be the team’s mainstay left central midfielder. It may even push Jude Bellingham deeper into midfield. There are plenty of options, including a signing that may help.

But that article will come after the Champions League final. Even with Kroos’s departure, Modric, Camavinga, Dani Ceballos, and Bellingham can all play that position. There will be more onus on Aurelien Tchouameni to be a vertical passer from deep. Perhaps Arda Güler, as his career unfolds, can grow into a role where he drops deeper to help the team’s ball progression with his passing.

Playing differently is not necessarily a bad thing, but it could mean a change of pace, a change in scheme. Real Madrid has always been tactically malleable. They shape-shift, like water, based on the strengths and weaknesses of their squad. It is one of the reasons they are more successful than anyone else — especially those clubs who hand-cuff themselves to a singular identity without a Plan B.

Some iterations of Real Madrid have a traditional 9, in the Ivan Zamorano / Ruud van Nistelrooy mold. In other eras, more mobile, roaming link-up players like Emilio Butragueño, Raul Gonzalez, Karim Benzema appear. You adjust. The post-Kroos world will have to adjust to tailor the younger superstars like Bellingham and Camavinga.

If this situation arose a mere two years ago, you would talk yourself into a collective improvement on defense without Kroos, but that is no longer the case, and part of the argument that supports Kroos having the best season of his career. His defense has gone up a level.

Before the World Cup last season, I had documented how Kroos had gone up multiple levels on defense, tracking runners, bullying midfielders off the ball, and sliding in for vital last-second challenges. Post World Cup, his defense dipped again, and, to be fair, nearly the entire team collapsed after that international tournament.

But this season he re-found his defense. Some nit-picked plays in isolation, like Foden’s goal at the Bernabeu in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals. But the team broke down collectively before that goal, and Kroos was often dragged in multiple directions with other players missing assignments. And even then, fans and media need to learn how to look at the totality of things, rather than plays in isolation. Kroos saved more goals then he was at fault for. His cost-benefit analysis has always been overwhelmingly positive, especially when he defends the way he has this season.

(Kroos has also always been fantastic defensively behind the ball as a presser. What came into question more was his tracking, which he cleaned up tremendously to close out his career.)

 Coming back full-circle, if Kroos wanted to retire on top, he got it. Though, for him, a player that fit like a glove the moment he played his first match for the club back in 2014 when he dominated Sevilla in the UEFA Super Cup, it may be more than that.

“As much as this football game is fun, sometimes you think, ‘Wow, I’m traveling for 3 days, in a hotel, what could I do at home in that time?’” Kroos said on Wednesday. “These thoughts have been haunting me for a while now.

“The way we were welcomed was very special. I didn’t have the feeling that I had to play well & then be loved. I felt that I was immediately accepted into the Real Madrid family. Over the years, it became a relationship that is still considered inseparable today.”