Kroos: Guardiola changed German football, I loved playing for him

In the recent interview with The Athletic, Toni Kroos has praised his former coach Pep Guardiola.

Plenty of commentators thought Kroos’ focus on possession was needlessly slow and anaemic, keeping the ball in an area that was considered football’s equivalent of the fly-over states: barren territory that had to be traversed to get to the places that really mattered.

“In Germany, they were more interested in what happens in the boxes, defence and attack,” he says. “No commentator raised their voice when the ball was in the centre. We, the guys in the middle, hardly mattered. Sometimes, they didn’t see us.”

But then, a Spanish manager came to Munich in 2013 to radically redraw the map. Midfield was suddenly where it’s at and midfielders such as Kroos, adept at dominating space and possession, were now king. The 30-year-old is in no doubt about the depth of gratitude he and the game in his homeland owe to Pep Guardiola.

“He was the key figure for German football and for me personally. He opened everybody’s eyes to the importance of control,” says the Real man. 

“Many coaches and club officials came to [the Bayern Munich training ground at] Sabener Strasse to see his sessions and talk to him about his novel way of playing. Midfield was his always his main concern. Because of the brilliance of his team’s football, the perception changed. People began to see football and midfielders in a completely different light. He was a trailblazer, for coaches and supporters alike.”

Without the groundwork Guardiola had previously laid with Kroos, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Thomas Muller and Philipp Lahm in his first season at Bayern (2013-14), Joachim Low would have found it immeasurably harder, if not impossible, to turn Germany into the world’s best passing machine at the 2014 World Cup.

“If you ask the players at Bayern today, they will still tell you he’s the best coach they’ve ever had in sporting sense, and they’ve had plenty of others to compare with,” Kroos says. “I loved playing for him that one year.”

Is there a chance they could work together again?

“I want to finish my career at Madrid, so I’d say it’s very unlikely,” he laughs, “but I loved playing for him and could have renewed my contract at Bayern, of course. I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to sign a deal just because of the manager, however. Pep wanted me to renew but what would have been the point of me signing a five-year deal if the manager was off again soon?

“He went to Man City two years later but we’re still in touch and get on very well. I will never forget it because I learned so much.”