By Raphael Honigstein
from espnfc.com
Toni Kroos is more important to Germany than ever before
To paraphrase Marvin Gaye, T played it cool on Saturday evening.
Toni Kroos always does. He was the one Germany player whose belief never wavered during the World Cup in Brazil, and winning the Champions League with Real Madrid in May will have done nothing to dampen the 26-year-old's faith in himself and his team.
"Of course we'll be the better side tomorrow, in footballing terms," Kroos said at the pre-match conference in Lens, France, as if somebody had just asked him for the time of day. "But if that's not the case, fighting spirit and absolute will power will make the difference. We'll see if we need to up it, mentality-wise."
He didn't seem at all perturbed by that eventuality. "Kroos has always had many, perhaps all skills, as well as a degree of confidence that was close to tipping over to arrogance," Spiegel Online wrote this week, matter of factly.
Four years ago, Kroos' confidence was so pronounced that he publicly agitated for a starting berth in the Euro 2012 semifinal against Italy. Joachim Low relented and changed the balance of his side to accommodate the elegant playmaker, then was nearly hounded out of office after losing the match 2-1.
Kroos, though, simply carried on, playing his own metronomic, unhurried game, getting better at being Kroos one pass at a time. "Kroos-ness" reached a new level at Madrid in 2016-17: He touched the ball 1,137 times in the Champions League and found teammates with 95 percent of his pinpoint passes.
The man from Greifswald in the northeast of Germany, a footballing wasteland that had never previously produced a notable player, also set the tone throughout the World Cup and most of all in the 7-1 semifinal win against Brazil, when he exemplified the Nationalmannschaft's cool-headedness in the face of all the misdirected passion from the hosts.
His discreteness made him the hidden boss of the team then, but the secret is out in the open now that captain Philipp Lahm has retired and his successor Bastian Schweinsteiger is struggling to prove his fitness.
Kroos will play deeper, in an even more central role and, if Germany are to overcome their problems at the back, where the defence is inexperienced, and up front, where Mario Gotze and Mario Gomez have not convinced in recent weeks, it'll be no doubt due to Kroos' excellence in the middle. "He's the hub in Low's Germany; everything goes through him," Abendzeitung wrote.
A lack of leadership and a lack of big, loud characters who shout at teammates and take down the odd opponent with a cynical tackle were seen as Germany's big problem in the run up to Brazil.
Strangely enough, despite the success enjoyed back then, you sense that there are still a lot of people back home to harbour suspicions about this side and of Kroos in particular. Old habits die hard. "Schweinsteiger and Lahm, they had to listen to that accusation for years but football has changed," Gomez told Tagesspiegel.
On Saturday, Kroos was saying the same and even went further, if you look at his quote again carefully. Mentality, fighting spirit, will power; all these German virtues are important but still secondary, in his view.
First, you need to play your football. And that includes maximising opportunities from dead balls. Germany scored four goals from Kroos corners and free kicks at the World Cup, and one more in the immediate aftermath.
A significant chunk of time in practice has once again been set aside for these Standards, as Germans call them. Low, who used to almost look down upon such mundane measures, changed his ways after discussions with his training staff two years ago.
Ukraine, Poland and Northern Ireland are all expected to defend deep against Germany, which makes the need for a "door-opener," courtesy of a precise cross into the box, all the more pressing. In Jerome Boateng, Benedikt Howedes, Thomas Muller, Sami Khedira and possibly Gomez, Low's current side has enough aerial power to succeed that way.
Kroos' responsibilities won't end there. In addition to dictating play and taking all wide free kicks and corners, the former Bayern Munich player will also help out in defence more than ever before.
There's no expert holding midfielder behind him to do the job in the expected lineup for Sunday; most of the time he'll find himself as the deepest central midfielder behind Mesut Ozil, restored as a No. 10, and the box-to-box runner Khedira.
It's a challenge for Kroos but also a chance to win over traditionalists looking for signs of sweat and blood on his shirt. He can become a complete German midfielder in France, dominating with and without the ball. It's safe to assume that he feels ready to do just that.
