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

These observations — where I look at Real Madrid’s history, its players on loan, Castilla, tactical tidbits, and other relevant thoughts — are now a regular thing. All previous editions can be found here.

There is perhaps a peace-of-mind in knowing that in less than two months, Toni Kroos will be done playing the sport that he was better than most people at, and in some niche circles, like passing and controlling matches — better than everyone. We now fully know how special it’ll be to see him play in the Champions League final on June 1st in his last ever match for the club.

If we had known sooner, maybe we would’ve appreciated him more. Maybe we would’ve given him the farewell tour — the same standing ovations that were given to Luka Modric as he exited every away stadium in Spain. Ironically, Modric might stay after Kroos’s departure. And even more interestingly, the half-joke of ‘Kroos will retire before Modric’ has come true, despite the age-gap.

But in truth, the half-joke was a manifestation of what we knew: Kroos wanted to retire on top; Modric wanted to play until his legs no longer worked. If it’s leaving at the top that he wanted, he got it: Kroos is going out on arguably the best season of his career.

“I mean, that’s not easy to answer to be honest,” Kroos said when I asked him whether or not this was his best season back in February. “We’ve had so many successful years over the past 10 years, it’s difficult to choose one over the other. But of course I’m happy to reach this stage and be able to compete. But as we know, the real season for a team like Real Madrid starts in March, so let’s see where it’ll rank at the end.”

We’re now in late May — days away from the Champions League final. Regardless of how the final pans out, and how the Euros shake out this summer, Kroos’s legacy is quite definitive: He is arguably (and in the mind of this author, definitively, for reasons explained here) the best passer in football history, and a top-five central-midfielder of all time. His 10th season for Real Madrid is probably his best. If he wins a sixth Champions League at the end of the season, and, wins the Euros, he is starting to bolt down unassailable proof of his greatness, catapulting himself into top-3 all-time in his position.

But we’re not there yet, and we don’t need to be to know how great Kroos is.

When we think about who Kroos was as a footballer — what his identity was — we’ll think about his passing. But sometimes we focus so much on his passing, rightfully, that we lose sight of his all-around game. Kroos was a specialist; a sniper — elite at his trade and the greatest to ever do what he’s good at. But there is more.

We’ll get to the “more” later. Circling back to his passing: Kroos, in his 10 years at Real Madrid, completed 94% of his 22, 088 passes in La Liga, per Opta. This season in the Champions League, he’s averaged a 91.7% pass succession rate. That number is staggering when you think of how much instant pressure he faced against Manchester City and RB Leipzig specifically over four games. He was swarmed at every hurdle. Every touch was 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.)

The ‘sideways passer’ narrative has always been a myth. No player in Champions League history has slung as many progressive passes and passes into the final third as Kroos. In 2023, Kroos executed the most line-breaking passes in Europe, and in that same year, he was Europe’s highest-usage ball progressor. That his accuracy has always been so high is not a by-product of ‘easy sideways passes’, but even made all the more impressive because he launches high-degree-of-difficulty passes.

But there are things beyond passing that sometimes get lost, in part because he’s so good at that one thing, it’s what we think of when we close our eyes and evaluate Kroos’s legacy.

His press-evasion is second-to-none. He may not have a high volume of dribbles like a line-breaking winger might, but the low volume he does carry-out is clinical. Kroos’s dribbling doesn’t manifest itself in the form of taking players on, but it does become apparent when he’s swarmed by defenders. He’s nearly impossible to dispossess. Flying out at him means you risk being completely hoodwinked the wrong way. Press him, and he’ll punish you by finding the open man as the team breaks with numerical superiority. Give him space, and he’ll lick his lips playing quarter-back from deep to create chances from nothing.

Kroos’s first touch is always away from the defender. He creates space for himself and separation from his marker by opening up his body away from the press. The next touch is either past his man with the aid of a shoulder-shimmy, or the ball is already slung across the field, diagonally, in one masterful motion.

The long-ball diagonal switch to Dani Carvajal is somehow underrated, even though we’ve seen it infinitely over the past decade. My theory: We’re desensitized to it, and, Kroos makes it look so easy that we forget how difficult it actually is. The most impressive thing about it: It happens before it actually happens. Kroos knows where Carvajal is before he receives the ball. He knows where the defenders are (mostly congested to his side of the field), and he knows his first touch will set him up for the second or third touch — which is to get the ball, diagonally across the field, to a wide-open Carvajal. It’s automatic, and crushes defensive lines who are suckered into thinking they might have a chance of thieving possession on the strong side.

“He’s irreplaceable,” Dani Carvajal told the media after Kroos announced his retirement. “We will have players who might come close, but at the end of the day Kroos is just a unique player.”

The uniqueness is what will make Kroos hard to replace. It’s only natural that you can’t replace him for a like-for-like figure. If you could, it would mean Kroos was not transcendant in the annals of football history. Kroos cannot be replaced — the same way Cristiano Ronaldo couldn’t have been replaced, the same way Karim Benzema, Alfredo di Stefano, Marcelo (and a handful of others) couldn’t have been replaced. We will have to have the same sad conversation about Luka Modric, at 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.)

WATCH / LISTEN: Managing Madrid Podcast: Toni Kroos Tribute

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.”