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Page 1 — What a difference a single player can make
Page 2 — The first half was a bit old-fashioned at times
The kick-off in football is usually a mundane matter. With Toni Kroos it can become an art, as we now know. At first he seemed to be moving towards his own goal with the kick-off in Lyon, but then he turned to the other side and hit a – listen, you critics – through ball. Florian Wirtz accepted it, used the space that the duped French gave him and scored his first goal for Germany after seven seconds.
The national coach appointed a new boss on the pitch, he immediately received a new boss on the pitch. Toni Kroos returned to the national team after almost three years, and from one second to the next everything changed. In the autumn the team lost against Turkey and after a terrible performance in Austria 0:2. The football nation of Germany seemed to have finally shrunk.
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So what could be possible this time against France, Didier Deschamps’ team, which was in the last two World Cup finals, which is favorite for the European Championship title in the summer, and where the German team is after a relaunch by Julian Nagelsmann has to sort things out again? A 2-0 victory was possible, so convincing, confident and deserved that the euphoria now had to be curbed.
Ein Paganini am Ball
The history of this game can be boiled down to a formula: What a difference a single player can make in the team sport of football. Lyon made a comeback, compared to which Elvis’s in 1968 was a footnote in history. Toni Kroos showed what Germany had been missing about him for a long time, and in many ways. On the one hand, one could marvel at his extraordinary class. My goodness, what a playmaker, what a Paganini on the ball this Kroos is! The timing was right in every assumption, the passes came with exact sharpness, the angles in his turns were precisely measured. Anyone who masters these subtleties will obey the ball like a trained poodle.
At the same time, Kroos gave his teammates security. Jonathan Tah and Antonio Rüdiger behind him proved to be a stable central defense, making no mistakes in their build-up play. Robert Andrich dutifully delivered eight of ten of his passes to Kroos on his debut in the starting line-up. Everything was looking for him, everything revolved around this sun. It was the fine art of the often maligned cross pass with which Kroos slowed down and increased the tempo, kept his own team in rhythm and brought the others out of it. Under his guidance, Germany hid the ball from their opponents, who sometimes couldn’t get to it for a minute or longer.
The kick-off in football is usually a mundane matter. With Toni Kroos it can become an art, as we now know. At first he seemed to be moving towards his own goal with the kick-off in Lyon, but then he turned to the other side and hit a – listen, you critics – through ball. Florian Wirtz accepted it, used the space that the duped French gave him and scored his first goal for Germany after seven seconds.
The national coach appointed a new boss on the pitch, he immediately received a new boss on the pitch. Toni Kroos returned to the national team after almost three years, and from one second to the next everything changed. In the autumn the team lost against Turkey and after a terrible performance in Austria 0:2. The football nation of Germany seemed to have finally shrunk.
