GONE MAD
Real Madrid hero Toni Kroos ‘agreed’ Man Utd transfer before Glazers cost Red Devils ‘best signing since Cantona’
Kroos has proved high-profile critics wrong and is still an integral part of Germany's Euros squad
WHEN Toni Kroos makes his final exit from club football at Wembley on Saturday, the stage could not be more fittingly ironic.
The curtain call for a modern-day great, as he chases a SIXTH Champions League winners’ medal when Real Madrid face Borussia Dortmund at the national stadium.
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Yet if things had panned out differently a decade ago, Kroos may have been waving farewell at the same venue seven days earlier… in a Manchester United shirt.
As soon as he took on mission impossible – following Sir Alex Ferguson – David Moyes made getting the then Bayern Munich midfielder to Old Trafford his No1 priority.
And a meeting with Kroos and his wife Jessica went so well that the German told Moyes he’d be happy to swap Munich for Manchester.
He admitted so himself, a couple of years ago, when he said: “When we broke up, I had verbally agreed to do it. So yes, it was close - I almost went to United.”
Moyes was naturally bouncing at the thought... he knew exactly what it would mean to have one of the world’s finest playmakers calling the shots in the United engine room.
Some well-regarded footballing figures believe – admittedly with the benefit of hindsight – signing Kroos could have been as pivotal a moment in Old Trafford history as Eric Cantona.
Moyes and United never got the chance to find out. He was sacked in April and when Kroos would have been packing his bags for England, he was flying to Spain instead.
Even though Louis van Gaal – the man who had made him a regular at Bayern – was now in charge, Carlo Ancelotti had convinced him that Real Madrid was a better option.
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Given the fortunes of both clubs over the subsequent years, it is not a decision the player looks back on with regret, for all he’d have loved to test himself in the Premier League.
United fans will forever wonder how different it could have been to have a midfield running on Kroos control, rather than by Marouane Fellaini.
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For as the Reds flitted between chaos and comedy, Kroos, 34, and sidekick Luka Modric formed arguably Europe’s finest midfield double act. Certainly the most consistent.
Modric, 38, has been such a smash that in the last 15 years he is one of only two players outside Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi – Karim Benzema is the other – to win the Ballon d’Or.
Amazingly, Kroos has never even made the top three. While the spotlight has picked out others, he has remained in the shadows.
Although within the corridors of power at the Bernabeu, there has never been a moment doubting the role he has played.
If Ronaldo, Benzema, Gareth Bale and Co were the fast-lane Ferraris, it was the German efficiency of Kroos which kept everything on track.
Five years ago, after his 250th appearance for Real Madrid, one astonishing statistic showed a passing accuracy averaging 90 per cent in ALL of them.
He has been the human embodiment of vorsprung durch technik. Ultra-reliable, ultra unflappable and ultra successful.
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A pensioner on the pitch, but still the one all the young bucks turn to for guidance and advice.
Jude Bellingham is such a generational talent he was always likely to hit the ground running at Real. But he knows the help he’s had in making his debut season in Spain such a success.
That’s why, when Kroos revealed he is quitting this summer, Bellingham was the first to react. His simple tweet – broken heart and goat emojis – said it all.
It has been a similar story on the international scene, too. That’s why Julian Nagelsmann wasted no time talking him into playing for his country again when he got the Germany job.
That was in February… and just seven seconds into his return a month later, Kroos had notched an assist in a confidence-boosting 2-0 win over France in Lyon.
So much for Lothar Matthaus and Uli Hoeness’ claims after the last Euros, that a man who made FIFA’s World Cup dream team in Germany’s 2014 win was no longer up to that level.
That was when Kroos initially called it a day with his country. When he does so once and for all this summer, it may well be as a king of Europe.
By which time, if all goes to plan at Wembley, he’ll have had to make space in his bulging trophy cabinet for one more Champions League medal too.
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If only United hadn’t pulled the trigger on Moyesie, eh….
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