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Are you sick of talking about Toni Kroos yet? If the answer is yes then I don't know what to tell you because we're probably going to be talking about him for quite a while longer. Hopefully for another 12 years. Or maybe for another 6-18 months. But, oh, will those 6-18 months be filled with 12 years worth of drama!
In the interest of preserving our collective mental sanity, it's in Bayern Munich's best interest to extend Toni Kroos. He's only 24 and already one of the most complete midfielders on the planet. He's been the lynchpin of dominance in Bayern Munich's midfield this season, taking the proverbial bull by the horns in implementing Guardiola's vision. His passing has been sublime and at times completely unerring. He should be a Bayern Munich player for a long time to come. However, the sticking point as we all are acutely aware is the salary considerations. Toni Kroos wants his salary doubled. Bayern Munich are resistant to add another huge contract to their payroll. But how huge is a doubling of Kroos's wages?
Below is the list of every Bayern Munich player and their wages thanks to SportBILD who were courteous enough to compile them but not courteous enough to develop/buy a slideshow viewer widget that didn't crash every third click.
| Name | Salary(in millions) | |
| 1 | Ribery | 12 |
| 2 | Götze | 12 |
| 3 | Lahm | 10 |
| 4 | Schweinsteiger | 10 |
| 5 | Müller | 8 |
| 6 | Alcantara | 8 |
| 7 | Neuer | 7 |
| 8 | Alaba | 7 |
| 9 | Robben | 7 |
| 10 | Boateng | 6 |
| 11 | Martinez | 6 |
| 12 | Rafinha | 5 |
| 13 | van Buyten | 5 |
| 14 | Mandzukic | 5 |
| 15 | Kroos | 4.5 |
| 16 | Pizarro | 4.5 |
| 17 | Dante | 3.5 |
| 18 | Badstuber | 3.5 |
| 19 | Shaqiri | 2.5 |
| 20 | Contento | 2 |
| 21 | Starke | 1.5 |
| 22 | Hojbjerg | 1 |
| 23 | Weiser | 0.5 |
| 24 | Green | 0.5 |
| 25 | Raeder | 0.5 |
| 26 | Schöpf | 0.2 |
| 27 | Weihrauch | 0.2 |
As you can see Toni Kroos and Dante, two of the more important players on this Bayern Munich squad, are in the bottom half of wage earners per season. It automatically makes sense why Bayern Munich are targeting them for extensions; a bigger part of the squad earns a bigger part of the pie or your players start to chafe and look elsewhere for employment. At those salaries, it's also relatively easy for many teams to meet a value high enough for Bayern Munich to pull the trigger on a transfer should the player want to leave.
Doubling Kroos' wages brings him into the top 5 earners on the team which is a serious commitment from Bayern Munich. €9M a season is more then Müller and more then Kroos' direct counterpart Thiago. I'd be hesitant to to add a second of a very similar, some might say nearly identical, skillset when the cost is that high.
Furthermore, it's important to look at what else is coming for Bayern Munich. Dante is angling for a raise and you can expect him to receive Jerome Boateng style money. However, the big piece of the puzzle is the reportedly €11M a season Robert Lewandowski is set to come in on in addition to the relatively paltry €5M Mario Mandzukic makes. If Bayern expect Mandzukic to hang around, play second fiddle, and challenge Lewandowski for minutes, they better be prepared to shell out a bit of extra money to the Croatian. Playing time is important, but at the end of the day it comes down to money in 99% of cases. Mandzukic will get better playing time elsewhere and he can find comparable wages to what earns now in almost any other big Champions League squad. Then there's Sebastian Rode who'd will probably be on comparable wages to Kroos' current salary.
So in all Bayern Munich are looking at the following salary changes before next season:
- Lose Pizarro, -€4.5M
- Lose Van Buyten, -€5M
- Add Lewandowski, +€11M
- Add Rode, +€4.5M (estimate)
- Add Mandzukic raise, +€2M (estimate)
- Add Dante raise, +€2.5M (estimate)
All in all, before we start adding in Toni Kroos' wage bump Bayern Munich are looking to shell out an additional €10.5M. Doubling Kroos' salary takes that all the way up to €15M in additional salary considerations going into next season. Bayern Munich already shell out €133.9M a season in wages to their players and adding an additional €15M to bring that total all the way up to €148.9M a season which is absolutely incredible.
For those of you playing the convert-to-USD home game that is $203.5M in salary.
That's an incredible amount of money locked up for the next few years with no regards for what kind of salary increase other players like Xherdan Shaqiri, Holger Badstuber, or Javi Martinez might need to entice them to stick around. We don't know at exactly what level Bayern Munich are going to say enough is enough, no more salary, and the fact that they're an entirely solvent organization makes that completely unknowable. But I'd assume that they're bumping up next to the upper range they're comfortable with. They're dealing from a position now where differences of €1-2M are going to make big differences in the retention of quality depth pieces or in the possible retention of quality youth products. Imagining a situation where a youth product like Kroos was let go on a free transfer should leave an incredibly bitter taste in your mouth.
What we do know is that Toni Kroos is in a position of incredible depth and while Schweinsteiger and Lahm may just have hit 30, they still have 3-5 years of extremely high quality play in front of them. If you asked me right now, all else remaining the same, whether I'd want to commit the next 5 years to Toni Kroos but lose Xherdan Shaqiri and Holger Badstuber, I'd have to think long and hard but in the end I probably wouldn't take Kroos.
