No German player has achieved as much as him, and Hoeness admitted it was a mistake to let him go. A straightforward personality with little diplomacy.
A stellar career. Perhaps not the greatest, but certainly unique. For Germans, that is Toni Kroos. No German footballer, before or after him, has managed to win the Champions League with two different teams. He claimed the cup with Bayern in 2013 and then five times with Real Madrid. That’s six titles in total. No one in football history has done better. There are also six Club World Cup victories, plus the 2014 World Cup in Brazil with the German national team. Additionally, there are seven league titles (three Bundesliga and four La Liga) and numerous other cups. But Kroos is even more than his countless successes.
He represents one of the greatest mistakes in Bayern Munich’s history, ten years on. The Bavarians let him go in 2014 for just over 25 million. Real Madrid snapped him up after key figures like Rummenigge and Hoeness told him he wasn’t world-class and that his agent was demanding outrageous sums to renew his contract. “We probably made a mistake,” Hoeness admitted it years later.
