Kroos-ify Me

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Real Madrid have struggled so far this season. There are a variety of reasons behind it, but the most notable absence from this juggernaut of an attacking team is passmeister Toni Kroos.

In model land, Kroos was the best midfield passer in the entire world.

Consistently.

Forever.

He was the metronomic maestro that kept things moving for Madrid in possession, and their team has felt his absence more than anyone expected.

At the end of the day, football is a passing game with shots attached to it, and Kroos was the best in the world in that skill.

In our search for Kroos-alikes, there are two possible approaches. The first is using the broad midfield skillset like I did when I found Petar Sucic as a Kimmich-like back in the summer. I chose Kroos’ 22-23 season for reference, as it’s one of his best in recent times. I then filtered for players under 27 who have played at least 600 minutes across the recent data set.

For those who have never used it, searching for similar players is by far one of the most powerful and most popular features we put into the StatsBomb IQ products.

The first thing I noticed from digging into the list is that it skews older — meaning most players who are interesting are already 26-28. When I first started discussing passing models with Lukasz Szczpanski at SmartOdds, he suggested that the age curve for passing ability might actually peak closer to 30 and not the 24-26. That’s a huge shift.

The rationale for this is that it’s more a thinking/evaluation skill and much less a physical one, and older players have learned to better evaluate risk/reward through higher sample sizes. I have also believed that passing players can age more gracefully over the last decade, and usually that’s born out in their career stats, even if every player is different.

But the problem here lies in one’s ability to constantly get yourself into good passing situations, and also to keep covering massive areas of the pitch as part of a midfielder’s defensive responsibilities. There’s still a balance between the high intensity of the modern game and the multi-variate internal calculus of passing in the modern game.

Aleix Garcia from Girona scored very high on the list. You can assume Leverkusen scouts/Xabi Alonso saw a lot of this (or similarities to Xabi himself) when they snapped him up this summer. Andre Horta at Braga shines similarly, but again, fairly old. Nico Barella is on here. Lotta other fairly olds, which is great if you can get them at a discount, but almost none fit the profile Madrid normally recruit for.

I did find a few younger candidates though…

1) Joey Veerman, PSV

This is as hot as it gets. Yes, he’s playing in a weak league, but he’s also doing everything there and won a league title last season. 1.85m tall. A touch older than we want, but physically capable. And… contract expiration is 2026. Verrrry interesting.

2) Angelo Stiller, Stuttgart

With a nose that looks like he has spent 200 rounds in the ring, it’s the left boot we actually care about. Of the 50 or so players I looked at, I think Stiller is probably the most defensively solid. Listen, the passing stuff Kroos did is super rare — you’re going to have to make some concessions to fit a lot of the potential candidates into your squad. Stiller might be the one that is easiest to slot in almost everywhere, even if the passing is merely very very good, and not OMGAMAZING.

Right age, decent league, already allegedly been a candidate for Barcelona this summer when someone put 2 + 2 together with Hansi Flick, but forgot to add Barca’s budget problems to the equation.

3) Mario Dorgeles, FC Nordsjaelland

I felt like I couldn’t put out a list without a young, non-obvious name in it and Dorgeles has really started to excel up in Denmark. Out of the Right to Dream academy and an occasional player at FCN at ages 18 and 19, this has been the season where he’s starting to make the leap. He’s far enough under the football radar that there are barely any highlight videos of him, but he did get mentioned by a Newcastle YT channel about six months ago, presumably because they scouted players like Yankuba Minteh in Denmark recently.

20 years old. Left-footed. Real pace for a midfielder. Not playing in a great league, but talent flows through Denmark and succeeds elsewhere. He’s still pretty raw, which means he’s not the answer for this season, but the building blocks are there. It would be very RM to buy him now and then stick him in training for a year or two to improve his skills until he’s either a great first team player or a saleable asset.

So that’s the broad statistical comparison… what if we just look for the most amazing midfield passers and see if any names come to the fore? It’s Real Madrid, after all, they can literally afford anyone.

To do this, I’m using StatsBomb’s proprietary xpasses model.

Rodri actually tops the list of legit contenders, which makes a ton of sense, as he was also the most rumoured move for them in this coming summer.

Vitinha at PSG appears on the list, but he might be too small to rely on. Old seasons of Verratti (A lot of Verratti. So much Verratti.) and Xabi Alonso appear, as does Cesc’s last season in England, plus prime Jorginho (Napoli edition), and functioning Thiago Alcantara.

Veerman is on this list as well. That’s another strong signal that the output stats and the model align. Kimmich… is also on this list, and probably is the closest thing Germany has to Kroos right now. Would he move?

Oh, there’s one more clear name that possibly fits the bill on both the stats and the passing analysis, and who could even be looking for an exit from his current team.

What do you think? Feel free to abuse us on Twitter with your own takes.
@thetransferflow
@mixedknuts

—TK

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