Do we like Toni Kroos?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Kind off the pitch for a decade, with a couple of contested comments (on coming out and on Özil) but no pattern of harm.
Toni Kroos is the quiet German midfielder who spent a decade running the show at Real Madrid and won a World Cup with Germany, then retired after Euro 2024 on his own terms. These days he is a podcaster who says what he thinks about football, usually with a dry shrug rather than a tantrum.
The loudest stoush of his career was in 2018, when Mesut Özil quit the German team and accused the federation of racism. Kroos told Bild Özil was “out of order”, said the fair points were “overshadowed by a much higher proportion of nonsense”, and that racism did not exist in the team. Plenty of people disagreed, and Özil's side of it is a legitimate part of the story. This is the main mark against him.
Migration is the other thing that gets thrown at him. In July 2024 a screengrab of quotes spread online and critics called him racist and linked him to the AfD, but the Irish Times found the viral words were mostly from the host, not Kroos. What he said was that Germany's welcome of newcomers was underestimated and ended up too uncontrolled. In 2017 he said every normal person should want to help people seeking protection.
The good stuff is the real stuff. He founded the Toni Kroos Foundation in 2015, which supports seriously ill children and the hospices that care for them across Germany. In April 2026 Laureus gave him its Sporting Inspiration Award, only the fourth ever handed out, and he said having a platform comes with an obligation to give something back. A Laureus-backed academy in Madrid teaches respect and responsibility.
Lately he has been in the headlines for the footy. After Germany's loss to Paraguay he said they didn't have a single world-class player right now. It's blunt, but it's about footballers rather than people. Reports of a Real Madrid return in a non-playing role are only media speculation, so we've left them out.
So where does that leave us? There's no slide into conspiracy theories, no culture-war grift and no scandal on the record. The asterisk is two contested takes, and the rest is a solid, quiet decent human who puts money where his mouth is.