Toni Kroos has just announced his imminent retirement as a footballer. At 34 years old He is completing one of his best seasons at Real Madrid and has confirmed his return to the German team to try to say goodbye as a professional this summer by winning the European Championship. The midfielder who has spent the last ten years of his career at the white club could have been from Barça in 2014. In fact, at that time it was the option he most imagined, when for various reasons his relationship with the club with which he had introduced himself to the elite, Bayern, put him on the market at a bargain price for a player of his category: 25 million euros. In the first instance, due to his characteristics, he seemed an ideal profile to fit into Barça’s style of play, with a lot of touch and association. The Barça club took him into consideration, but the temporal context in which there was this market opportunity harmed his candidacy.
In 2014, Barça was still stretching what has been the best midfield in its history, the one made up of Sergio Busquets, Andrés Iniesta and Xavi Hernández, who at that time was 34 years old, the same age as Kroos now, and was contemplating the possibility to speed up his career in another football. Finally, Xavi stayed on for one more season, although with clearly less prominence than he had had. At that time, Kroos saw Barça as a plausible way out after his presence at Bayern was poisoned. His agent, Volker Struth. He explained years later to Bild that “in September 2013, Bayern wanted to extend his contract, but Toni did not. They offered 6 million per season. Did they forget that I knew they were paying 10 million a year to Mario Götze? So we asked for 10. Guardiola wanted to keep him. ‘I need you here,’ he told him,” the representative explained to Bild.
Ivan Rakitic scored Barça’s first goal in the Champions League final against Juventus in the 2014-2015 season
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To Kroos, who He evolved as a great generating midfielder classic cut, He was then seen as a playmaker more advanced. With Luis Enrique Martínez on the bench, Barça in 2014-15 poured its football into one of the best offensive tridents in historythe one formed by Leo Messi, Luis Suárez and Neymar -122 goals between the three in the 2014-15 season-, so in the wide zone the intention to combine a spirit of sacrifice and technical level To support this turn towards the rival area, it was interpreted that Ivan Rakitic could embody it very adequately, as it was. The Croatian, then leader of a great Sevilla FC, was just 26 years old. Barça took Rakitic for 20 million euros plus the loan of Denis Suárez. Rakitic knew well what job he had to do in that great team which at that time was Barça. Triplet in hand, in June 2015, Rakitic legitimized his role as starter with a formula assumed in advance: “If your back has to hurt and you have to run 10,000 meters in a team like that, you’ll run.” In 2024, he remembered that idea: “In Seville I was the captain, but when you arrive in Barcelona, your role changes.” In fact, Rakitic triumphed as a culé: he was a starter in Barça’s second treble, also having his focus of individual glory by scoring 1-0 in the Champions League final against Juventus, which ended 3-1. Then, until his goodbye from Barça in 2020, he won 4 Leagues and 4 Copas del Rey. In fact, Rakitic is still one of the most profitable signings that Barça has made since then.
The dates help contextualize the puzzle. Rakitic recently recalled that his arrival at Barça was finalized when “Andoni Zubizarreta – sporting director – called me before the World Cup started, the next day Luis Enrique called me, and in three days we closed my transfer.” The 2014 World Cup began on June 12 and Rakitic’s signing for Barça became official on the 16th of that same month. The signing of Real Madrid was official on July 17; That is, more than a month after the culé hiring of Rakitic.
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For its part, Real Madrid made the right decision by taking advantage of the situation and signing Krooswho will leave this summer with 22 titles for now, 23 if he scores his fifth Champions League as a merengue and the sixth of his career, after having won the 2013 one with Bayern precisely against the rival that awaits Madrid at Wembley on Next June 1, Borussia Dortmund.
2024-05-22 10:37:40
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