Since Toni Kroos’s retirement, Real Madrid’s attack seems largely like an orchestra without a conductor, unable to find someone to cohesively pull the strings on a pitch filled with talented footballers with distinct skillsets. The de facto leader of Madrid on the pitch in the later years of his career, Kroos attempted over 100 passes per 90 minutes in La Liga in his final season at Madrid, completing nearly 95% of his passes, and 82 pass attempts per 90 in the Champions League. By comparison, Madrid’s leading passer from midfield last season was Aurélien Tchouaméni with only 65.5 pass attempts per 90 in La Liga and 55.7 per 90 in Champions. In fact, with Luka Modric’s subsequent departure, it was two centre-backs (Antonio Rüdiger in La Liga and Dean Huijsen in the Champions League) that led Madrid in pass attempts per 90 for the first time in nearly a decade.
Two of the criticisms of Madrid post-Kroos/Modric is that the deeper players like Rüdiger and Fede Valverde don’t: i) circulate the ball quickly enough or ii) provide sufficient incisive passes to the forward line. We analyzed both points to see the validity of these concerns as it relates to Madrid’s midfield.
Let’s first tackle quick ball circulation. Kroos’s final season at Madrid saw him attempt 22.2% of his passes one-touch (fourth percentile amongst midfielders in the top five leagues) and 53.7% within two seconds of receiving the ball (eighth percentile amongst midfielders in the top five leagues) in league play while Modric that same season saw 23.5% of his passes come via first touch (10th percentile) and 52.6% under two seconds (seventh percentile). By comparison, Aurelien Tchouaméni and Valverde last season distributed 26.4% and 26.3% of their passes, respectively in La Liga one-time (higher percentages than Kroos and Modric in 2023/2024) with nearly the identical percentage of quick passes (passes within two seconds of receiving the ball) as the German legend and Croatian maestro had in 2023/2024 (Tchouaméni: 53.8%; Kroos: 53.7%; Valverde: 53.3%; Modric: 52.6%).
It is a popular misconception that being a tempo controller often requires playing the ball quickly and having a significant percentage of one-two touch passes. Kroos was not a great tempo controller because he often passed the ball first touch. As the chart above demonstrates, Kroos actually circulated the ball slower his final season than many of Madrid’s midfielders last season. The best tempo controllers know when to play first-time, when to hold on to the ball for several seconds, when to progress the ball and when to value retaining possession, understanding that the scoreline, moment in the match, and positioning of players on the pitch dictate when to move the ball quickly and when to slow the play down. Vitinha, considered by many to be the best deep-lying playmaker in the game today, distributed less than our out of every five attempted passes (18.3%) during live play last season in Ligue 1 from a first touch. In fact, the vaunted PSG starting midfield were amongst the European midfields that played the least number of quick passes. Less than 50% of the PSG’s midfield trio’s passes were distributed in under two seconds (Vitinha: 46.8%; Fabián Ruiz: 44.1%; João Neves: 49.4%). Rodri also saw less than half of his passes (49.3%) last season in the Premier League be in under two seconds.
The following table demonstrates the correlation between passing the ball after one-touch and overall passing accuracy. Unsurprisingly, midfielders that pass the ball first-touch with higher regularity often have lower passing accuracy than midfielders that circulate the ball slower.
Now let’s address incisive passing. For this we reached out to Madrid-headquartered Driblab, a leader in football data analytics. Driblab prepared for Managing Madrid an in-depth passing analysis of midfielders in the top-five leagues last season, looking at their line-breaking passes per 90 minutes and the percentage those passes represented of their total completed passes. Driblab’s analysis indicates that no Madrid midfielder featured in the top-20 in the top five leagues in line-breaking passes per 90 minutes, in part because of the low volume of passes from its midfielders. Vitinha led the top five leagues in distributing these incisive passes, averaging more than 10 per 90 minutes, with Juventus’s Manuel Locatelli and Bayer Leverkusen’s Aleix García coming in second and third — the Italian and Spaniard averaging more than nine line-breaking passes per 90 minutes. Both veterans had previously been mentioned as low-cost solutions to fill Madrid’s deep-lying playmaker role.
Two players frequently mentioned as potential Madrid targets, Angelo Stiller and Adam Wharton, also scored high in this incisive passing metric. Stiller provided nearly eight line-breaking passes per 90 last season in the Bundesliga, comparable to Rodri in the Premier League. Wharton provided over six line-breaking passes per 90 despite averaging only slightly more than 42 pass attempts per 90, with nearly 16% of his completed passes being line-breaking passes, a testament to how the Englishman often looks to create scoring chances for his teammates through his passing verticality, but that also indicative that he really isn’t a tempo controller, but rather much more of an accelerator.
Three other players that often come up as potential Madrid targets, Enzo Fernández, Alexis Mac Allister and Martin Zubimendi, did not fare as well in the incisive passing test, albeit in the case of the Chelsea midfielder his significant time playing in a more advanced role at the London club undoubtedly hurt his ability to execute line-breaking passes at a high frequency. Enzo averaged slightly more than five line-breaking passes per 90 last season (fewer than Tchouaméni or Arda Güler) while Zubimendi and Mac Allister each averaged fewer than four per 90. It is difficult to envision a scenario where midfielders averaging fewer line-breaking passes than Tchouaméni improve Madrid’s ball distribution.
Finding the new Toni Kroos is next to impossible. The German was not only a top tempo controller and leading line-breaking passer, but also a prolific long-range passer who in his final season at Madrid had a phenomenal 86.7% accuracy on long passes while distributing 9.4 per 90 minutes in La Liga and Champions. Ideally, Madrid would want to have someone in midfield that not only sets tempo, but also consistently provides incisive, long passes to its dynamic forward line that with the recent signing of Yan Diomandé now features three of the top six dribblers in Europe’s top five leagues last season.
Madrid might very well decide to focus internally and confide in Güler or Bernardo Silva to be its next leader in the midfield rather than look to bring on a new signing. Güler’s more than six line-breaking passes per 90 minutes came despite playing in a more advanced role for part of the season – a position on the pitch where it is more complicated to find teammates between lines – and despite attempting nearly half (59.6) as many passes as Vitinha (116.4) per 90 minutes. Playing in a deeper role, one would expect the Turkish phenom to significantly increase the number of line-breaking passes he distributes to teammates. Güler also proved to be a strong long-range passer, achieving a 71.1% accuracy with long passes last season in La Liga + Champions League and completing 3.3 per 90 minutes. That is significantly higher accuracy on long passes and more completed long passes per 90 minutes than Wharton (48.2%, 2.4 per 90), Stiller (49.5%, 2.6 per 90), Zubimendi (50%, 1.7 per 90), Enzo Fernández (58.7%, 2.5 per 90) and Bernardo Silva (59%, 2.1 per 90). Again, playing in a deeper role on the pitch, we would expect Güler’s successful long passes to increase substantially.
A last-minute insurance policy in the event that Güler or Bernardo Silva do not emerge as the solution in a deeper role (recall that Bernardo has played relatively little in that role having played more over his last 50 matches in advanced positions on the pitch than in a deeper role and questions persist about his long-range passing ability) would be to sign Aleix García from Leverkusen. The Spaniard completed over six long passes per 90 minutes last season in the Bundesliga/Champions, one of only three midfielders (alongside Vitinha and Kimmich) to average more than six successful long passes per 90 minutes in the top five league play and Champions League. García also posted an impressive 76.7% accuracy last season when attempting deep passes. The Villarreal youth product led La Liga in passes that switch the orientation of the field in 2023/2024, his final season at Girona, another indication of his long-range passing capability. A poor man’s Kroos, García combines being a tempo controller with excellent long-range passing ability.