Lars ist mein Herz

eileenblue:

German newspaper “World Online” has been looking into some of their national football players‘ school years. The first candidate is Toni Kroos.

Why the young Toni Kroos playing barefoot

Sieglinde Heimann sits in the small, yellow-painted student café on the first floor of the school campus Evershagen and digs into their documents. There are two seagulls prancing around outside.

The wind is whistling across the Baltic, between the blue-gray slab through which shapes the north of City of Rostock, down to the gravel covered with a dark schoolyard.

Inside, Heimann has found what she wanted: the last class photo of Toni Kroos. It shows the current national team in March 2006 amid the sports class 10/4. There is a pale 16-year old who has just signed a contract with the first ever soccer champions Bayern Munich.

Much understanding

Sieglinde Heimann was Toni’s class teacher from the 7th up to 10th Grade, when the campus was still Baltic school, it’s no more than high school. She had him enrolled in sports and history. Upon the first time she learned of the impending deal with Bayern, Heimann said: “I released Toni so that he could fly to Munich for the medical check.”

In her youth, the 56-year-old was herself a competitive athlete in Handball. She knows the needs of a talented young athlete. As Kroos then returned from Munich late in the night of the study, he called her that morning.

“I have now heard that the boy still totally broke what he just said. Excuses brought in for you today.” It was not the first time that Sieglinde Heimann held her head out for their gifted students.

instead of Football school

As early as in the 7th and 8th Grade, Kroos was missing classes up to 40 days per school year. There are training camps, tournaments with national teams, or with Hansa Rostock’s youth team for the sound play since he was twelve years old. “There was always something,” says Heimann.

Often with her complaining, they had to settle with other teachers once again about the poor attendance of young kickers. “But as long as Toni got fairly decent grades, we could accept him in the school.”

Heimann strokes a strand of hair from her face and looks again at the class photo. When she talks about her student Toni Kroos, she laughs a lot, and then laugh with her eyes. No, Tony hasn’t really told Heimann that he is busy.

Unlike the soccer practice, where the exceptional talent as a youth player has regularly pushed extra shifts, he had never been in school longer than necessary. “Nothing but what is necessary to get through reasonablely,” says Heimann. Note two or three in the 7th and 8th Glass, and later three more direction.

No pupil

Daniel Pabel know that Toni Kroos was not necessarily a model student. The 22-year-old was in the ninth and tenth to Toni, in mathematics, physics and biology in addition. He also was a sportsman, medium and long-distance runner, and they both liked each other from Day One. The lanky trainees waited on a wooden bench in front of the old, brightly painted sports hall in the school yard.

Two seventh-graders with packed knapsack passed him. If Daniel Pabel now watches Toni Kroos’ international matches on TV, he must always think immediately of the class work in the Bio-lessons. “Toni was pretty good in Bio, and I’ve always copied from him,” says Pabel and a broad, boyish grin stretches across his face. “But then Toni has depreciated in math and physics. For me it has always been:.. One hand washes away the other”

Toni was also always there when doing brushing. “Because he had no timid feeling.” He had not only controlled forward-power on the board once, he just played the class clown. And even their homework are not as accurate as Toni Kroos did.

Ribery instead of high school

“The most thing he lacked is that he was just more of a lazy student,” says Pabel. Toni wanted to graduate, ” But it was not important to him.” And the girls? “They already liked him, but he did not have a girlfriend,” says Pabel. In any case, he could not remember that anyone in the class couldnot get along with Toni.

While Pabel and his classmates crammed in the Eleventh and Twelfth for the school, Kroos was already with Franck Ribery and Miroslav Klose on the training pitch. After the 10th Grade in Mecklenburg, he joined Bayern in the summer of 2006, initially for junior then soon in the pros. Originally, he should complete technical school in Munich, but the training load was too high, and Kroos soon decided to concentrate fully on football.

Sieglinde Heimann has always suspected that she has once proviede the professional team with one of her students. Toni Kroos seemed unusually determined. “He knew what he wanted and was always much more focused than others,” says Heimann.

Under difficult conditions

Their physical education seems too slow for him sometimes. “When we played football,” says the teacher, “Toni always had to take off shoes and play barefoot. The others would not otherwise even had a chance.” Often they were just staring at Toni.

In order to dig out his sports talent, he was allowed to complete up to twice weekly individual soccer training, while the other students were practicing on Hüftaufschwung high bar. Toni’s father, Roland Kroos, who was in charge of youth development at FC Hansa and he is a youth coach to this day, picked up his son with his car up from school and took him to Baltic Sea Stadium, which is a few kilometers distant, where he trained Toni with fit exercises and Pits.

This manifests itself, what Roland Kroos once described as “our family project.” Roland Kroos and Birgit, formerly East German champion in badminton and now a teacher himself for sports and biology, also provide something for the football careers of her two sons.

Even Toni’s one year younger brother Felix was soon to be a promising talent from last season and moved to Werder Bremen Hansa. Sieglinde Heimann believes that Toni Kroos’ ascent to the national team has possibility at all: “But without his hard work,” says the teacher, “Toni would have probably never done it.”

Secondary school was the minimum target

Birgit Kroos opened the door to a small semi-detached house in a housing development in the southern part of the city. With a strict but friendly face, he talked about his son in a way less than expected. “Yes, Tony was more of a lazy student, but he still always had the ambition to create a reasonable progress,” says Birgit Kroos, while she served coffee on the terrace in the small garden.

For her and her husband, it was clear that Toni at least had to complete the 10th Grade, for which there was no discussion. For God’s sake, her son was never a model student. He had also skipped class once for an hour. “But he knew how to behave more properly and I think the teachers liked him.”

Birgit Kroos know that her son was lucky. Not only because of his class teacher Sieglinde Heimann, with whom she and her husband still keep contact. Who Toni has encounted is not an authoritarian teacher, but rather someone who knew what he could do and gave him trust. Then later, as a professional football player in Munich, he gets along better with the communicative and sensitive Jupp Heynckes, also with the dominant and egocentric Louis van Gaal.

Birgit Kroos thinks of her son as “Great”. In the living room hangs a poster of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, which was Toni’s first tournament on the senior team. When her phone rings, you hear the Bavarian hymn “Star of the South”.

Toni’s parents are proud of their son and the fact that he has remained so down to earth despite his success. Toni still often calls his father after a game to analyze the game. Once a year he invites the family to holiday together in Kitzbuehel.

Native

Just as being humble is always typical of Toni Kroos, says his teacher Sieglinde Heimann, he had never show off his achievements. Not even when all his classmates knew already that he will go to the great Bavaria. And anyway, the Bavarians.

Six years have passed, and Toni Kroos is no longer her student. What he brings there today still occasionally goes into trouble. Because traditionally those who are in the northeast of the Republic cannot respond well to the master record from Munich.

Here you support Hansa Rostock, Werder Bremen or HSV. “We always say this: Toni may shoot his goal, but Bayern had better still lose. ” Heimann says goodbye with a smile, because she knows that in the forthcoming European Championship, hopefully the antipathy with the Bayern will not be a problem.

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