Ahead of today’s Champions League match, it’s a good time to remember when Gerrard tried to sign a Real Madrid star for Liverpool.
Steven Gerrard was one of Liverpool’s most important figures during his career as a player, to the point where he even tried to sign players. With the Reds’ facing Real Madrid later today, there is one star who plays for Los Blancos that nearly played at Liverpool. This was before he decided to go to Spain, right after the 2014 FIFA World Cup. As the English club’s frontman, Gerrard had the job of trying to convince other players to sign for the Reds. During the era in which Brendan Rodgers coached the squad, he asked Stevie to convince a very special midfielder.
We are talking about Toni Kroos, who played for Bayern Munich at the time. Even though Real Madrid was already circling the midfielder, Kroos was still undecided on what he wanted to do with his future. He was fresh out of winning the World Cup with Germany and a treble with Bayern a year prior to that. We finally got to know more details about Gerrard’s attempt to sign Kroos during this time.
Gerrard shares his experience in his book.
In his book known as ‘My Story’, Stevie revealed the story about Kroos: “I had an unofficial role at the club, trying to persuade some great players to join Liverpool. It was the same ritual every summer. The club would let me know which long-shot target they had in mind and then ask me to contact him. They thought that a request to consider moving to Liverpool would have more impact coming from me. Our target in 2014 was ridiculously optimistic. Brendan asked me to take a crack at trying to talk Toni Kroos into signing for Liverpool. He smiled when I said we’d be p*****g into the wind with this one. We both admired Kroos immensely.
“I knew Real Madrid were gearing up to make Bayern Munich an offer and so I felt a bit awkward when I texted Kroos. The German was on his way to winning the World Cup with his country and Real were the champions of Europe. But God loves a trier, and so I gave it a whirl. Some of the best footballers in the world can also be the most respectful. Kroos didn’t make me feel like I was a total idiot. But, of course, he would soon sign for Real Madrid. We had a nice little exchange of texts and I said well done and good luck.”
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