Real Madrid midfielder Toni Kroos has spoken of his team’s need to improve significantly should they retain the desire of competing for major honours this season. “It’s true we’re missing something,” he said to Marca. “It’s not a secret. We need to be constant – if you look at our results, you see two good, one bad. We have to do better. We have to improve if we want to win something.”
Los Blancos currently sit fourth in LaLiga, four points behind league leaders Real Sociedad and ten clear of bottom-placed Huesca. They’ve suffered unexpected losses domestically to Cadiz and Valencia and have also been performing below-par in Europe – Madrid currently sit third in Champions League Group B, ahead of Inter Milan but trailing Borussia Monchengladbach and Shakhtar Donetsk. Coach Zinedine Zidane has come under pressure.
“[Zidane] knows that at Real Madrid if you don’t have the results and you don’t meet expectations, there will be discussions,” Kroos said. “That’s why we’re at this club – it’s normal. With Zidane, we’ve already lived through times like this and we usually come out of them. In the end, all we can do is improve and try to win games. The coach will find the solution.
“Bayern have been the best team in the world for these past few months – I have no doubt about that. Real Madrid were like this for a few years but it’s difficult [to sustain it]. It’s impossible to win everything ten years in a row. If you see how they’ve been playing in recent months, there’s no game they don’t win by four goals. They won the Champions League, and for me whoever wins that is the best team in the world because it’s the most difficult competition to win.”
Kroos has won the Champions League three times since joining Madrid, alongside two LaLiga titles, two Spanish Super Cups, two European Super Cups and four Club World Cups. He also won the competition with Bayern back in 2013, to complement the small matter of the World Cup, which he won with Germany, in Brazil the following summer. Kroos is undoubtedly the elite of the elite, but he’s wary of talk about a European Super League.
“There are certainly positive things about it,” he said.” We’d be seeing many matches of a very high level, matches we usually only see in the semi-final of the Champions League, and we like those games. It will make football interesting for the fans of the teams involved and for those without a specific one. We all like to watch football at the highest level, but you also have to take care of the small teams. I worry more about other things, that more competitions will be created. We have two or three weeks in which there are no matches and I’m sure FIFA and UEFA are going to look for another new competition – that’s not good for the health of the players. Playing every three days leads you to be tired, and play games that aren’t at the level you want. You can’t squeeze us more – players aren’t going to like it.”
Kroos moved to the Spanish capital after his triumph with Germany in Brazil in 2014. Before that, he had spent the previous eight years at Bayern, whom he joined from Hansa Rostock aged 16. Aside from his Champions League title, Kross won three Bundesliga titles, two German Cups, the German Super Cup, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup with the Bavarians. The playmaker will be an important part of the Germany team that takes on Spain in the Nations League on Tuesday evening.
Featured image courtesy of Eurosport.
