Real Madrid: Three players whom Toni Kroos has made better

Ferland Mendy

The French left-back has successfully managed to replace an aging Marcelo from the Real Madrid starting XI, but he hasn’t been able to show the same confidence and skill with the ball at his feet that was exhibited by the legendary Brazilian. He has often been criticised for his heavy touch and improper decision-making skills with the ball at his feet. But Toni Kroos has helped him to a certain extent to make the best use of his skills.

Instead of letting the media throw light on the weaknesses of Mendy, Kroos has enabled the team and Mendy himself to make the best use of Mendy’s strengths. Mendy’s obvious strengths are his physical attributes, specifically his pace and strong physique. Mendy has a habit of making some underlapping runs down the left flank, which help the team a lot when a winger like Vinicius or Hazard stretch the opposition defence.

Kroos often finds to pick out those underlapping runs made by Mendy with a simple pass. He either finds the speedy fullback with a simple forward pass or an aerial pass to let the fullback get in behind the defence. Given his pace, Mendy is often at the risk of being offside while making those runs, but Kroos doesn’t usually fail to release him at the perfect time.

But Mendy has the tendency to slow down when he reaches the final third, and he doesn’t have many options after defenders recover. At this instant, Toni Kroos advances up to Mendy to provide himself as an immediate option who can be found with a simple backpass, and he bails out Mendy from high-pressure zones. And Kroos manages to find Mendy while taking a short corner, and one such sequence involving both of them and Modric led to a Mendy goal against Atalanta.

In this way, he isn’t just making good use of Mendy, but also improving the confidence of a player who is highly prone to giveaways by trusting him and supporting him by often passing the ball to the Frenchman.