Kroos Control for Manchester United Would Be Worth Losing De Gea For

When Toni Kroos was in high school, his physical education teacher used to make him play barefoot to even things up. It explains a lot. Maybe it is adolescent flashbacks of being trodden on by less gifted opponents that ensures he never gets caught in possession. A fear of having to win the ball back necessitates a need not to give it away.

Bayern Munich stalwart Hermann Gerland once said of Kroos: "With him, the ball is safe." It's the perfect epithet.

On Wednesday evening at the Allianz Arena, the ball will have felt so protected it must have been in danger of drifting off. Of the 78 passes the Real Madrid schemer attempted on his return to Bayern Munich, 76 were completed. Even in the most exalted of company, he was happy to push the ball around with a nonchalant precision uniquely his own. He could not have been more relaxed had he been directing proceedings via a deckchair stationed on the halfway line.

It was a mini-masterpiece of a performance. One of those rare occasions when an elite sportsman is in absolute control of his ability, it was possible to watch Kroos without experiencing the tension that usually goes hand-in-hand with a game of such magnitude. It felt a little like observing Brian Lara hit a century without breaking sweat, the ball conquered to the point it was happy to be part of the event rather than trying to define it.

In terms of timing, it could not have been worse for Manchester United. On the morning of the Bayern game, The Independent's chief football writer Miguel Delaney had run a piece saying United were, "determined to take as hard a negotiation position as possible with Real Madrid over David De Gea this summer and are likely to insist on a star player like Toni Kroos going the other way if the goalkeeper has to go."

Just a few days earlier, Zinedine Zidane's decision to take off Kroos with Real Madrid ahead in the derby against Atletico had been widely criticised. It coincided with Real losing control of a match in which they allowed Antoine Griezmann to score a late equaliser. Kroos' stock has never been higher.

If Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's market value is anywhere near the £35 million mark mooted by the Telegraph's James Ducker this week, what price Kroos? The sound of bickering that could be made out over applause for Kroos' performance on Wednesday was perhaps United executive vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, arguing with the club's bank manager about extending an overdraft facility that already dwarfs accumulative Third World Debt.

In the perpetual discussion of how United could look to reacquaint themselves with former glories, after four seasons in which they have never been better than mediocre, allowing De Gea to leave is rarely at the top of anyone's list of things to do.

The club's first-ever Player of the Year for three successive seasons (from 2013/14 to 2015/16) was dropped for United's last Premier League game, away to Sunderland. Former United man Phil Neville suggested on Sky Sports the player may have been dropped for flashing his gloves at Real Madrid, which manager Jose Mourinho has since half-heartedly denied. 

It was always a case of when, not if he would attempt to resurrect a return to the city of his birth, after a move to the Santiago Bernabeu failed to get over the line during the 2015 summer transfer window.

De Gea likes Manchester and the privacy a city that respects personal boundaries affords him. He did not sign a new contract that ties him to the club until 2019 flippantly. The heart wants what the heart wants, though. It's unlikely Brad Pitt ever found looking at Jennifer Aniston too much of a hardship, but Angelina Jolie was still too much to resist.

It's often said there is only one way to go after leaving Old Trafford. Myopic views are not uncommon in football. Real Madrid may be a goldfish bowl that has seen its fair share of messy divorces, but every player in the world wants to swim in it.

It's hypothetical at this stage. Zidane letting one of his best players leave seems a little fanciful, while Kroos would need to be convinced to swap Madrid for Manchester. Neither city has a beach, but Madrid can offer UEFA Champions League football. At the least, it seems likely United will need to match that, even if they head into any negotiations replete with the fattest wallet in the whole of Europe. Kroos in the Europa League just doesn't scan. 

Many would argue allowing De Gea to leave to facilitate a move for Kroos, however unlikely, would be akin to selling a hinge to fund the purchase of a bracket. United are nowhere near strong enough to allow world-class talent to leave via the back door, regardless of who is coming in through the front entrance.

Great sides usually have a great goalkeeper, but they can only ever do so much. Leeds United got by with Gary Sprake in the '70s. The argument a De Gea-less United in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson years would have been bad to the point of absolute embarrassment is valid. Nonetheless, accepting a goalkeeper is your best player feels a little like conceding the cure for baldness is wearing a hat. Pardon the pun, but it doesn't quite get to the root of the problem.

United might not need the money from any sale, but they could do with Kroos. If it were a straight choice between him and De Gea, one suspects Mourinho would plump for the midfielder. Especially given the fact it seems his goalkeeper will look to engineer a move over the summer, regardless.

Mourinho is happy to perpetuate a view profligacy is the reason his Manchester United side is 18 points behind Chelsea, despite being 21 league games unbeaten. To an extent, it's a fair assumption to make. In terms of goals conceded, only Tottenham Hotspur can boast a stingier back line. Going forward, it's a different matter. If the back end of the horse is Marilyn Monroe, the front end is Marilyn Manson.

Of the top six, United have scored at least 14 goals fewer than any of their rivals. They have only scored one more than Bournemouth. In nine draws in the league at Old Trafford this season, some 172 attempts on the opposition goal have been rained in. Six goals have been scored.

Between them, Marcus Rashford (four), Anthony Martial (three), Jesse Lingard (one), Henrikh Mkhitaryan (four), Paul Pogba (four) and Wayne Rooney (two) have managed 18 Premier League goals. Dele Alli has scored 16.

It was the same story in Anderlecht on Thursday in the Europa League. After a 1-1 draw in Belgium, a crestfallen Mourinho went on the attack with a decisiveness his forwards can only dream of, per Ducker: "If I was a Manchester United defender, I would be very upset with the attacking players because they have to kill the game and they didn't."

United will need to bring in a centre-forward in the summer, regardless of what Zlatan Ibrahimovic decides on his future. If the Swede goes, they will need two. It's disingenuous, though, on Mourinho's part, to suggest better finishing will provide anything other than a short-term fix.

Inherent problems with this United side run far deeper than that. The individuals cited have all underperformed in an attacking sense, but they are all good players. They have not all lost form simultaneously purely by chance. Mourinho needs to take his share of the blame.

United's buildup at home is still at times almost as slow as under his predecessor, Louis van Gaal. There's no doubt Mourinho's team is more engaging than the Dutchman's, but it is still far from fluid. Horribly laboured in the way they turn the ball over, it hardly takes Rinus Michels to point out the reason why opposition teams always look so comfortable at a ground where once they would have settled for a 3-0 defeat at kick-off and forfeited the game.

United take so long to move the ball from back to front, visiting teams are already set by the time it is anywhere in the vicinity of their goal. The way Mourinho talks at times, it's as though the other leading clubs never have to deal with teams setting up defensively against them.

Mourinho is much better coaching defenders than attackers. He expects his forward players to break down the opposition the way a comedian is charged with breaking down an audience to make them laugh. The onus is always on them to go out and perform.

That's why Antoine Griezmann is so appealing to him, as Delaney has reported. The Frenchman is a virtuoso performer who enjoys deciding matches via a moment of individual inspiration. At the sharp end of an Atletico side as rugged and wizened as an old oak, he's the rock-star frontman in a band made up of session musicians.

United already have a handful of forwards all capable of producing pretty vignettes of play, but no one to set the tempo. What they lack is someone capable of moving the story on from A to B. They are a team of poets badly in need of an author.

The boundless puppy Pogba would be a different player with a figure like Kroos alongside him. At Juventus, he had Andrea Pirlo to talk him through matches and, on occasion, clean up any mess he left behind. On his return to United, he doesn't look like he's sure whether he's supposed to be Pogba or Pirlo. At various points over the campaign, he's been a pale imitation of both of them.

Kroos is more than capable of being either the furthest forward or deepest member of any midfield. As a quarterback playmaker picking the ball up from his centre-back, he can hit a long diagonal with the languid splendour of Glenn Hoddle, while off a centre-forward, he's equally effective as a No. 10.

In terms of his stature and ability to drive from box-to-box, he's an athlete, but that's the least interesting facet of his makeup.

Forging a triumvirate with Pogba and Ander Herrera, on paper, could be just the ticket. And there's a fair old chance United would score a damn sight more set pieces than they do presently if he were taking them. Sergio Ramos would never score again.

Despite being only 27, Kroos seems to have been around forever. That's probably because he has. Just 17 when making his Bayern Munich debut against Energie Cottbus, he laid on two goals for Miroslav Klose in an 18-minute cameo off the substitutes' bench. Just as it seems some kids fall from the womb picking their nose, Kroos did so picking a pass. He probably didn't have a hair out of place either.

It's now 15 trophies at club level and counting, including three Bundesliga titles and a UEFA Champions League win with both Bayern and Madrid. On three occasions he has made the Champions League Team of the Season. A FIFA World Cup winners' medal is probably worth a mention, too 

That both Alli and Paul Scholes speak of him as a peer is a testimony to the longevity he has achieved already.

In a recent interview with Hypebeast, Alli was unequivocal when asked who was the hardest opponent he has faced: "Toni Kroos for Real Madrid and Germany—on his day you can't get close to him. Obviously you want to be thinking about your own game, but when you're pressing, it's quite annoying when he can just pop the ball off so easy—he's just a joy to watch."

Scholes went as far as to say in the autumn of his playing days he tried to model his game on a player 15 years his junior. "Kroos is the best midfield passer in the world," Scholes told Kicker (h/t Metro.co.uk's Sean Kearns). "Towards the end of my career, I tried to emulate him."

Perhaps Kroos is the closest player in Europe to the man United have never been able to replace since he retired for a second time in 2013. Finding a long-term replacement for Michael Carrick will present its own problems.

Statistically, Kroos is phenomenal. In two-and-a-half seasons in Madrid, he has made 43 assists, with the 11 in the current league campaign unmatched. Only Neymar averages more than his 2.9 key passes per game in La Liga, while he ranks third in terms of both number of passes made (72 per game) and completion rate (91.8 per cent).

Given the range and ambition of the passes he attempts, 91.8 per cent is so good his boots should probably be adorned with little blue plaques to commemorate that a famous or eminent person's feet once squatted there. 

As early as October, just a couple of months into his reign at Old Trafford, Mourinho spoke of it being a time in the club's history that called "for men, not kids." A 4-0 defeat at Chelsea was enough to see him revert back to type. 

The rhetoric has barely changed since. It's been a reoccurring lament, a barely disguised call for Woodward to keep delivering him proven world-class talent. Mourinho has always craved the same type of personalities in his teams. Although as controlling a manager as there is, he still favours players who have an innate sense of game-management.

Kroos fits the bill perfectly.

An East German born nine months before reunification, Kroos grew up in Greifswald, a coastal town in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). In Raphael Honigstein's excellent tome, Das Reboot: How Germany Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World, he writes of how Kroos "cultivated his reputation as a cool-headed northerner." 

He should love Manchester, then.

Honigstein goes on to describe how throughout his career, Kroos has demonstrated an "ability to concentrate solely on his game that sometimes veers into a kind of apathy bordering on football autism."

He should love Mourinho, then.

In the buildup to the Bayern game, Kroos was adamant that on returning to a ground where he had made over 200 appearances before leaving for Madrid, he would not be affected on a mental level whatsoever, per Marca: "Anyone who knows me knows that the emotional side of the match has no importance to me."

He's not lying. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a temperament as cool as his passes and a mouth about as sharp.

When he left the Bundesliga for La Liga in 2014, he said, per Marca (h/t the MailOnline's Hamish Mackay): "Real Madrid is the best club there is. It's a step up from Bayern." Usually players would consider making such a comparison to be the same as choosing a favourite child: to be avoided at all costs.

On former Bayern manager Jurgen Klinsmann, who afforded him just three league starts for Die Roten in the 2008/09 season, he offered a withered assessment in what was a wonderfully candid interview with German publication Die Zeit. In it, he picks apart the managers he has played under with not a hint of sentiment.

"During his time at Bayern, I personally missed everything: An idea of how to play football, adequate communication—and success," Kroos said of Klinsmann. 

Just imagine the type of conversations Kroos, Mourinho and Ibrahimovic would have when chewing the fat over a brew before training. Let's not forget Guardiola sold both players. They wouldn't have to worry about any loose-lipped flies on the wall, given the latter almost certainly possesses a Mr Miyagi-style propensity to catch them with chopsticks.

At 27, Kroos has already played under Zidane, Klinsmann, Van Gaal, Guardiola, Ottmar Hitzfeld, Jupp Heynckes, Carlo Ancelotti and Joachim Low. Just think of the player he could have been had David Moyes got his hands on him in 2014. The beleaguered Sunderland boss and former Manchester United manager recently told reporters that, prior to his sacking, he had agreed a deal with Kroos and his agent to bring the player to Old Trafford.

If Mourinho wants to add his name to that illustrious list, he'll just have to hope Kroos doesn't seek Bastian Schweinsteiger's counsel. Even gentlemen have limits of tolerance.

Although, even then, one suspects Kroos is sure of his own mind. If he plots his future the way he plots his passes, he'll already long-since have worked out what the rest of us can only speculate on. 

 
All stats provided by WhoScored.com.