Kroos laughs off claim he was one of WC's worst players after not starring there

Toni Kroos has seen the funny side after being labelled one of the worst-performing players at the World Cup - despite ending his Germany career over a year ago.

Kroos, who earned 106 caps for Germany, announced his retirement from international football in July 2021 after Die Mannschaft were dumped out of Euro 2020.

As a result, the Real Madrid midfielder was not involved in his country's latest World Cup campaign in Qatar, which saw them eliminated at the group stage after winning just one of their three fixtures.

During an appearance on popular Spanish TV show El Chiringuito, journalist Cristina Cubero was asked to name her worst players of the World Cup, and Kroos was somehow one of them.

Cubero first picked out another Madrid player, Brazil's Vinicius Jr, before going on to mention the retired Germany star despite not featuring in Qatar.

Kroos took to Twitter to laugh off her blunder, quote tweeting a clip of the comment and writing: 'I knew someone was going to blame me' along with a laughing emoji.

Cubero later explained her mixup after footage went viral on social media, insisting she meant to name Kroos' former international team-mate Thomas Muller as one of the World Cup's worst players.

She posted: 'You're right. I was wrong. I meant Muller. And for me Vinicius was as much a disappointment as Brazil. Thank you'.

After he poked fun at the gaffe, Cubero also replied to Kroos and wrote: 'Hahahahahaha sorry Toni. Deep admiration for you. I think your selection was a disappointment. But honors to you as a person'.

Germany have now suffered two successive group-stage exits at the World Cup, having also failed to make the knockout rounds back in 2018.

It marks a disastrous fall from grace for the 2014 world champions, and Kroos was left disappointed by their latest shortcoming.

'I know the boys, I played with them until last year,' the 32-year-old told MagentaTV. 'I experienced a group stage exit too four years ago, and of course I can sympathise a lot with them.

'I was extremely disappointed because I had big ambitions for Germany and I absolutely saw opportunities. With the players we have, we should definitely be advancing from the group stage.

'If we get eliminated by Brazil in the quarter-finals, then we can say, "OK, Brazil had maybe eight world-class players and we only had four". But nobody can tell me that we have less quality than Japan and that's why we're eliminated.'