Germany midfielder Toni Kroos

Born in Greifswald in East Germany nine months before reunification, Kroos joined Bayern Munich from Hansa Rostock in 2006 having won the top-scorer and best player awards at that year’s European Under-17 championship.

Kroos became Bayern’s youngest ever player (a record since surpassed by David Alaba) when making his debut against Energie Cottbus in September 2007, setting up two goals for Miroslav Klose in an 18-minute substitute appearance.It was in 2011-12, under Jupp Heynckes, that Kroos became an obvious first choice at Bayern, forming a formidable partnership with Bastian Schweinsteiger, his international teammate, and he was a key part of the side that won the treble last season, although a serious knee injury suffered in the Champions League quarterfinal victory over Juventus meant he missed the last couple of months of the season.

Numerous observers, Matthias Sammer and Joachim Low among them, have wondered whether Kroos, for all his talent, has the necessary edge or hunger really to push himself, but the periods of games when he seemed almost to be admiring a pass he had made or a goal he had scoffed a few minutes earlier have become less frequent under Pep Guardiola, the competition for places at Bayern forcing him to keep pushing.

For most of the qualifiers, Low selected two of Schweinsteiger, Sami Khedira and Kroos to play at the back of midfield, using all three of them only in the 3-0 home victory over Ireland, when Kroos operated behind Mesut Ozil, who, slightly surprisingly, was deployed as a false No.