All posts tagged: Toni Kroos

Germany’s Toni Kroos To Retire From Football After Euro 2024

Published by Webster

File photo of Toni Kroos© AFP Real Madrid’s German international midfielder Toni Kroos announced on Tuesday he will retire from all football after Euro 2024. “My career as an active footballer will end this summer after the Euro championship,” 34-year-old Kroos, who won the 2014 World Cup with Germany, said on Instagram. Before the European Championship, Kroos has a chance to win the Champions League with Real for a fifth time when they face Borussia Dortmund at Wembley on June 1. He also won the Champions League with Bayern Munich before joining the Spanish giants. Kroos joined Real in 2014 and quickly formed a formidable midfield partnership with Luka Modric. In a statement on their website, Real said Kroos “will go down in Real Madrid history as one of our club and international football’s greatest legends”. Kroos has also won the Liga title four times and won the Bundesliga three times with Bayern. He announced he was quitting international football in July 2021 but reversed his decision in February after talks with Germany coach Julian Nagelsmann, who persuaded him to play on till the …

Real Madrid’s non-Galactico version under Carlo Ancelotti is a lovable side still competing at the very top | Football News

Published by Webster

Last week, Real Madrid were crowned the champions of Spain; this mid-week, they could topple Bayern Munich and reach the Champions League final, their second in three seasons. Such vaulting success is no novelty for the Spanish powerhouse, the most successful in their country, in the continent, the richest club in the world, and an institution that still fills and fuels the dreams of the best talents on earth. But Real Madrid are not as glitzy as they used to be, in the dizzying splash of wealth at the stroke of this century, the dawn of the Galactico era under President Florentino Perez; or the second Galactico iteration upon his re-election. He remains the president, but they spend rather than splurge; the glamour is not as eye-popping as the heydays of Zinedine Zidane and Co, or the peak of Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale. Those Madrid incarnations were as much about stacking trophies as about a parade of football’s most glittering talent. A jewel-shop in boots. These days, it’s a different Madrid, a more likable, …

Real Madrid Can Seal La Liga Title With Girona Assistance

Published by Webster

La Liga leaders Real Madrid have their first chance to be crowned champions this weekend, although they require a helping hand from this season’s shock challengers Girona to make it happen. Madrid host Cadiz on Saturday and if they win and Girona take any points off champions Barcelona immediately afterwards, Los Blancos will earn a record-extending 36th Spanish title. It seems fitting for Michel Sanchez’s side to have a say on a potentially decisive day, after they were Madrid’s main contenders for pole position for much of the season. The wheels came off Girona’s bandwagon after Carlo Ancelotti’s side thrashed them 4-0 in February, but they composed themselves and are on the verge of Champions League qualification for the first time in the club’s history. Girona, in only their fourth season in Spain’s top flight, can make club history with a Catalan derby victory over second-place Barcelona, who trail Madrid by 11 points. They can also guarantee a top four finish if fifth-place Athletic Bilbao lose at Getafe on Friday. Girona, third, are 13 points …

Rapid-fire Florian Wirtz Speeds Germany To Victory Against France

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Florian Wirtz grabbed his first international goal with a strike that will go down in the history books as his Germany side beat France 2-0 in an international friendly on Saturday. On the cusp of seven seconds 20-year-old starlet Wirtz stunned the crowd in Lyon to give Germany the lead, before Kai Havertz wrapped up the encounter just after half-time in an impressive display by the Euro 2024 hosts. Toni Kroos, playing his first international since 2021, received the ball from kick-off and chipped it forward to Leverkusen playmaker Wirtz. Wirtz ventured forward and as he was not closed down, he unleashed a fierce dipping drive that left Brice Samba glued to the spot as the ball flew under the crossbar with the clock ticking to just seven seconds. “I don’t think anyone understood or realised what was happening. We were all quite surprised, but there was obviously a lot of joy. You can’t start a match any better,” Wirtz said to German television channel ZDF. “But for it to work so well and lead …

Kylian Mbappe and PSG: After end of uneasy stint, French footballing superstar ready to fulfill his destiny of becoming a Real Madrid galactico | Football News

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A loveless marriage would soon end. Kylian Mbappe would, potentially, unite with his true love, Real Madrid; Paris Saint- Germain would seek its true path to footballing glory. The Mbappe-PSG wedlock, despite the ingredients for a long and successful bond, even a symbolic bond of romance – the boy from the banlieue of Bondy, the city’s grimy alley, at the heart of PSG renaissance – was always forced and inorganic. That it did not end bitterly — even if it threatened to, at times — is a mini-wonder in itself. For Mbappe, it was always Real Madrid – the love of his life. The group that fired up his imagination were always the galacticos. In his comic-strip autobiography Je M’Appelle Kylian, Zinedine Zidane and Cristiano Ronaldo visit him in a dream, and Zidane hands him out a sparkling-white kit of Real Madrid. He plays keepie-uppie with them. In school, when a teacher asks him about his best friends, he lists out the names Ronaldo, Zidane and Sergio Ramos. Later, in interviews, when probed on who …