Toni Kroos is the greatest Real Madrid player of the 21st century.

Two days ago, the dismissal of manager Xabi Alonso from Real Madrid was announced. One of the main reasons reported by the media was a loss of confidence among the squad and the coaching staff. His tenure wasn’t a disaster. If we look strictly at the numbers, we are talking about a win rate of over 70%. Second in the league, Top 8 in the current Champions League, and alive in the Copa del Rey. But anyone who watches football beyond Sofascore, like I do, knows that the feeling on the pitch regarding the Merengue team was negative. It is more or less the same story we saw during Carlo Ancelotti’s season. A disconnected team where it seems the attack and defense aren’t speaking to each other, you know? It lacks the glue that holds both sides of the field together.

And that glue was Toni Kroos.

Toni Kroos is the greatest Real Madrid player of the 21st century.

Yes, I know, it sounds absurd. Ronaldo “The Phenomenon” shined at the Bernabéu. Zinedine Zidane displayed his elegance in the white kit. Heck, one of the players considered the greatest of all time made history at Real Madrid: simply Cristiano Ronaldo.

But none of them were as vital to the organic functioning of the team as the German. Cristiano was the hammer that struck and Zidane the brush that painted, but Kroos was the steady hand holding the tool and deciding the intensity of the movement. We are confusing greatness with marketing and impact with goal highlights on social media. Kroos’s greatness lies precisely in what doesn’t appear in TV highlights because his genius was in the invisible consistency of someone completing ninety-four percent of his passes for an entire decade.

He didn’t need to run more than the others because the ball arrived where he wanted it before the opponent even thought about pressing. Look at today’s Real Madrid under Alonso’s recently ended tenure and the melancholic end of Ancelotti’s run. Real Madrid has Olympic sprinters and lethal finishers running aimlessly on a field that seems too vast. What we see now is a heap of individual talent screaming for order in a language no one speaks in the locker room.

Replacing Cristiano’s goals was a difficult task but mathematically possible with the sum of Benzema and Vinícius. Replacing Zidane’s magic was hard but Modric took up the mantle with honor. Now try replacing the brain that dictated when the team should accelerate or brake and you will see there is no spare part on the market, nor even on the bench with a promising coach. Real Madrid learned the hard way that having the world’s best soloists is useless without the maestro. That is why I say he is the greatest of this century, for his absence transformed a team that won everything into a rich, lost giant that runs a lot and thinks little.

Toni Kroos wasn’t just a Real Madrid player. For ten years he was Real Madrid’s football itself, and the definitive proof of this is the deafening tactical silence we hear now every time the ball rolls at the Santiago Bernabéu.