French striker Karin Benzema At last he has in his hands his longed-for prize, his Golden Ballwhich he received this Monday for being the best player of the year for the magazine FranceFootball.
The Whites’ striker, author of an exceptional season, culminating in victories in the Spanish league and in the Champions Leaguesucceeds the Argentine in the record Leo Messiwho last season won his seventh Ballon d’Or, but was not among the candidates this time.
Benzema becomes the first Frenchman to win the Ballon d’Or since Zidane did it in 1998 and becomes the fifth, along with Raymond Kopa, Michel Platini and Jean-Pierre Papin.
The French striker beat Senegalese Sadio Mané, Champions League finalist with Liverpool, Belgian Kevin de Bruyne, Premier League champion with Manchester City, and Pole Robert Lewandowski, winner of the Bundesliga with Bayern, in this order.
Benzema’s numbers last season left no room for doubt. He was the most decisive element in the Spanish league titles, with his 27 goals in 32 games, which gave him the ‘Pichichi’ trophy for top scorer, and his 15 goals in the Champions League (compared to 13 for Lewandowski), with triplets in the round of 16 and quarter-finals against Paris Saint Germain and Chelsea, and a double in the semi-finals against Manchester City.
Added to this was his return to the French national team, after six years apart for his alleged involvement in a case of blackmailing his partner in Les Bleus, Mathieu Valbuena, for a sexual video, with which he won the League of Nations, on October 10, 2021.
Benzema’s emotion
“It’s the people’s Ballon d’Or,” said an emotional Benzema, wearing gold glasses and a tuxedo, after receiving the award from one of the men whom, along with Ronaldo Nazario, he recognized as his “motivation.” Benzema thanked his teammates, the coach and in a very special way the president, Florentino Pérez, whom he said is “one of the family” who has always shown his trust in him, since he moved to Lyon to convince him to sign for the Madrid.
“This is every child’s dream, but it’s also a lot of work and there are also many difficult moments, like when I couldn’t go to the national team. But I didn’t give up, I kept working in training, thinking I was lucky to play football I am proud of my career,” said the Frenchman.
The player assured that this award shows that anyone can fulfill their dreams, because, he recalled, he comes from a humble family, and dedicated the award to his mother, who went on stage to accompany her son. So did the footballer’s father and his son, a family image on the Benzema stage, who became the oldest player to win the award since the first of all, the British Matthews in 1956.
“There is no age, every day more players after thirty show a desire to improve. I train more than the others and that has allowed me that after 30 it has allowed me to maintain myself, always with the dream behind my head, which has allowed me improve,” he said.
Benzema had words of admiration for Zidane, but also for Ronaldo Nazario. “He is my idol, there is no other striker like him, what he has done is impossible to repeat, it is history, he is the only striker who is impossible to catch. He is the phenomenon for all strikers”, he commented.
EFE
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