Toni Kroos sat down, smiled and made no apologies for arriving empty-handed. Should he not have brought farewell cakes with him? The curtain could fall any day now, after all. It was not hard to envisage that these, just two days out from Germany’s quarter-final tie against an exceptional Spain, could be his final public pronouncements as a professional footballer. “I’m not feeling nostalgic in the least,” Kroos deadpanned. “I don’t expect this will be my final match and I assume we’ll all be seeing each other again.”
The kuchen will have to wait and so, the host nation hopes, will the goodbyes. It was a shock when Kroos announced in May that, at 34 and seemingly with a few more years in the tank, he would retire this summer. He wanted to depart on a high and it gave his decision to have one last shot at international football, made three months previously, a fresh dimension. A European Championship medal has eluded him but there is a growing belief Kroos could ride into the sunset wearing one.
