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By Oliver Trust
PARIS, June 9 (Xinhua) -- With Euro 2016 only a day away, German head coach Joachim Loew has to solve maybe the biggest problem in a coaching life -- find a leader for his team.
Despite weeks of bad news with many German players out injured or others still struggling to find full fitness, it looks like Loew is close to finding a satisfactory solution.
Behind the success of 26-year-old Toni Kroos from Real Madrid are plain facts and figures. The data is collected by a new system which in turn relies on a previously unknown system run by the Germany-based company, Impect. It counts the number of opponents that players take out of the game with their passing.
According to the statistics, Kroos topped the ratings with 85 opponents. The average for the German Bundesliga is 28. The team with the better passers, according to "Impect" , wins 86 per cent of the games.
Despite his poor off-the-pitch entertainment qualities, Kroos can fall back on the experience gained by winning the Champions League twice and, more than any other German player, he seems to be imperturbable.
"I don' t feel stress before games. I think it' s my key to success. I can count on my skills no matter what kind of game is lying ahead," said the midfielder.
He is also pleased with the new data system which he believes offers a more precise match analysis, "because it is about the quality of passes not about their number and frequency" .
Facts and figures might speak for Kroos, but is a better than average passing ability enough for a player to become a good leader?
If he is to take over the leadership of the German team, Kroos will have to succeed a man like Bastian Schweinsteiger who drove the side to the World Cup win in 2014.
Kroos should have no problem in taking over the role as he has just won the Champions League with Real Madrid alongside stars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale. However German fans can still see the pictures of Schweinsteiger propelling his team to win the final against Argentina with blood running down his cheek after he suffered a cut.
Maybe that is one of the reasons why Loew has nominated the injured Schweinsteiger after a poor season with his club. Having a man like him that can only currently play for 20 minutes is far from being ideal. An ice-cold Kroos therefore seems to be the best solution for the time being.
Kroos appears to be the last man standing in Germany`s midfield as Sami Khedira is also lacking fitness for the role alongside the next German leader, whoever it may be.
"I always want the ball and take responsibility and am never overawed," Kroos said. "In the end it all comes down to the fact that the more we have the ball, the more we dominate the game and the better the chance we have of winning."
Winning the Champions League twice and being a vital part of one football' s big guns does not seem quite enough at the moment for him to become Schweinsteiger' s natural successor. Kroos will have to fight for leadership and the fans' hearts.
When he left German champions Bayern Munich in 2014, many regarded him as being a valuable player but there were few tears when he departed. Kroos left feeling he had not been fully appreciated in Munich. In Madrid however, he has generally proved that he is a class act. Not only when it comes to the new data-system, Kroos is the best passer of a football. The German Football Association honors the best passer on its homepage which provides training routines for all kinds of footballers.
"Pass like Toni Kroos" is the headline of one of the sections telling young players. "Hardly anybody is a greater epitome of perfect passing than Toni Kroos who always finds space and his teammates," the story describes.
"Toni Kroos was already a top player at Bayern Munich. Even though he was already a class act, he has managed to take another step forwards in Madrid," Loew said.
But before providing an answer to the question as to whether he already has found his new leader, Loew may well wait until the first games are done and dusted. Enditem
