Toni Kroos expects Atletico Madrid to pressure match official
Toni Kroos is anticipating that Atletico Madrid players will do a fair amount of bickering towards the match official during Wednesday's Champions League clash.
The Real Madrid midfielder spoke with reporters ahead of the match about the tactics Atletico will deploy in an effort to put referees under pressure so that decisions will go in their favour. But he also seemed confident that match official Felix Brych will overcome the constant pestering.
"We all know Atletico," Kroos said. "They play the way they do and they have had success against us. We will have to put up resistance to their game and not let them play. They put the referee under pressure, but we have to play in our own way."
"I am going to talk to (Brych) before the game so that he doesn't give me a yellow card," he said with a laugh. "He is a German referee and is very good, and will do a great job. He already knows what to expect."
The German international, however, went on to describe the style Real Madrid will have to display in order to overcome the flurry of injuries that have hit the squad in recent months.
Gareth Bale, Luka Modric, Karim Benzema and others have gone down with various injuries in the weeks leading up to the encounter, yet Kroos believes Los Blancos have to be consistent and execute the same tactics that have made them successful, even with a relatively new cast of players in the starting squad.
"We have to play the way we normally do," he said. "We did really well in the first half and now we have to do that for 90 minutes. If we do then we will go through. In the return leg of the Super Cup we also played really well and showed that we can play against them.
"We have to avoid stupid errors and we hope to go through at our home stadium. We had a good result in the first leg and now we want to make it through to the next round. It is a good time to get back to winning ways. We just want to get through to the semifinals whatever happens. The most important thing will be to dominate midfield and that is our aim."