The little controversy with Carlo Ancelotti was no longer a topic of excitement for Toni Kroos after the final whistle. The midfield strategist spontaneously reacted with an unusually emotional reaction to his substitution in the 75th minute, when Real Madrid was 2-1 behind in the first giant duel with his former club FC Bayern Munich. The 34-year-old didn’t want to go down at that moment. He actively wanted to avert defeat.
“No, I think he understands that too,” said Kroos when asked about his coach and boss: “In a game like this, especially when you have the feeling that you’re doing very well, it’s logical that you’re in doesn’t want to get out of a Champions League semi-final.” But Ancelotti wanted to throw in fresh talent. “Toni played a great game,” he reassured.
Indeed, Kroos was really good at the Allianz Arena, where he wore the Bayern shirt at the start of his professional career until he moved to Madrid as world champion exactly a decade ago. Kroos was Real’s head and conductor. And his magic pass to Vinicius Junior for the first goal of the evening was a stroke of genius. Even if Kroos commented on the action in his own way: “The pass wasn’t actually that special!”
Really? “I’ve been playing with Vini for a few days now,” Kroos explained. The Brazilian dropped into midfield, lured opponent Minjae Kim out from behind and then sprinted into the depth. “That’s his great strength,” Kroos said of the typical Real move. And then the perfect pass came from “through pass Toni.”
In the last creative phase of his magnificent football career, Kroos supposedly mutated from “cross-passing Toni” to “through-passing Toni”, even if Kroos sees it completely differently and doesn’t care about the new nickname. “Oh! The name didn’t bother me before, nor do I jump for air now,” he said calmly in the catacombs.
Kroos knows that everyone who, in his view, really knows about football has always recognized and appreciated his abilities. That is why national coach Julian Nagelsmann persuaded him to make a comeback to the national team for the European Championships at home.
Kroos is enjoying every day at the moment, but his future beyond the summer is still open. Extension at Real? End of career? “We are now in a phase where everything is at stake. To be honest, it’s not about individuals. Nothing has been decided yet,” he said on Tuesday evening. Instead, he is now looking forward to “a lot in the next few weeks.” The most successful German footballer definitely wants to reach the Champions League final again and then hold the trophy in his hands for the sixth time on June 1st at Wembley.
“The result is okay,” said Kroos, who is banking on Real’s Champions League history and the Bernabéu myth in the return match. “We know that we are good at home, but we also know that Bayern can beat anyone in one game.” On June 14, he wants to return to the Allianz Arena in the DFB jersey for the opening match of the home European Championship against Scotland. When asked by a reporter whether he would end his career in the summer after another triumph in the Champions League, the basically already certain win of the Spanish championship and the European Championship title, Kroos replied with a smile: “If you sign that for me, then we definitely have to think about it.”
