Vielen Dank für alles, Herr deutscher Scharfschütze

Toni getting emotional after the second goal against Bayern was the clearest of the signs. In the ten years I’ve seen him play, the man has never let his mask down. Up by four goals or down by two, he remained the eye of the storm, a calm and unruffled presence in the center of the pitch. Turn on a Real Madrid game, and in the centre of the pitch is The German Sniper, standing over the ball, his eyes piercing the opposition defence, tracing the path that the ball will soon follow.

Never has a player of this calibre, since Zidane, retired at the peak of his career. Toni goes out at the top, retiring from a starting position at the greatest club in the world. He kept his promise to himself, to retire at Madrid. No one expected this, all eyes were on Luka and all along, it turned out to be Toni that hung up first. It’s been like this at Real Madrid for a few years now. It started with Cristiano leaving, and Toni is gone now. I watched them all play football, I am the lucky one.

Like Luka Modric wrote, there won’t be another Toni Kroos. Toni Kroos was the orchestrator of victories, he controlled the Madrid midfield for a decade, holding the center of the squad, usually as the last man. The greatest deep-lying playmaker of all time. I remember so much about this man, his millimeter-precision passes, the trademark Kroos feint while he receives the ball, his diagonal switches to Carva. Teams these days switch play by passing one man to another, and I often wonder why they’re so slow, but they don’t have a Toni Kroos to play that pin-point diagonal ping. No one presses the Real Madrid backline for this one reason, because all Real need to do is get the ball to Toni, and he’s going to send it to the wing, and we score within a handful of touches. There were midfielders that were stronger than him, or faster than him, or far more skillful. But he beat all of them because he could outthink them.

In his 10 years at Real Madrid, he had pass completion percentages of 92%, 92%, 94%, 92%, 93%, 93%, 94%, 94%, 95%, 95% with an average of around 2100 passes per season. Do you know what means? Toni Kroos misses around 100 passes, over the entire league season! I will let you read that again. Remember that he plays in Real Madrid, a team that loves to score goals, and he has to make a large percentage of those passes in attacking transitions. He is unrepeatable, I hope he wins the 6th UCL, then wins the Euros at home, and gets that Ballon D’Or that he deserves so much for the career he’s had.

Remember a ball skimming along the grass into the goal. Remember a pass squeezing between the gloves of the keeper and the far post. Remember a goal scored from the corner spot. Remember a vertical pass beating three lines of defenders. Remember a feint in the penalty box to shake off the press. Remember the ball fizzing in the air to the right back’s feet. Remember the white shoes with the blue tongue and heel. Remember the ice-cold composure on and off the pitch. Remember the personal integrity upheld all through the fame and the success. Remember Real Madrid’s greatest number eight. Remember Toni Kroos.