Kroos’ genius: The Real Madrid brain showed why he is so important to his team

When Real Madrid reached out to Bayern Munich in 2014 for Toni Kroos, paying just €25 million for him, they knew it would be a great transfer. But perhaps no one imagined that this transfer would go down as one of the best in the last decade. Kroos is showing that he is a footballing genius.

Luka Modric and Toni Kroos have laid the foundations for Real Madrid’s golden generation. The centre of midfield is practically the most important thing in football if you want to control the game. And the Croatian-German duo do it perfectly.

Modric has already received recognition, he won the Ballon d’Or, most pundits and fans have already appreciated his genius enough. A little behind, however, is Kroos, who is consistently a pretty underrated player. Yet Real Madrid cannot imagine building a game without him.

Surprisingly, Real were losing 0:1 to Shakhtar and tried to equalise at all costs. So Ancelotti sent in the great header Rüdiger… or more accurately, this move was devised by Kroos.

In the 91st minute, he received the ball in Shakhtar’s half, kept it at his feet, winked behind him in defence and started waving at Rüdiger to run into the whitewash. He lured his opponent into the box at a walk, waited for the German stopper to run into the box and served him a precise ball on his head. Rüdiger’s header went just wide.

In the 95th minute Kroos had the ball in almost the same position, the last minute was running out, but he didn’t panic, he calmly prepared the ball and looked into the area where this time Rüdiger was waiting. Again, he served him a millimetre-accurate pass to his head, this time the tidy stopper directed his header into the net, although it took a bloody gash.

Kroos’s pointing, however, was not a matter of chance. Back in 2020 during El Clásico with Barcelona, he signalled to Vinícius where to run, then sent the ball there and the Brazilian scored the match-winning goal.

Where Kroos points, that’s where his teammates are supposed to run and even if the opponents see it, they still can’t stop it. The German genius thus showed once again why he is so important for Real.

Source: Youtube, Twitter, UEFA