At the age of 34, Karim Benzema is experiencing a new youth and, after having been second guitar for a long time at Real Madrid, today he is responsible for the white club reaching the semifinal of the Champions League and coming out with options to reach the final in Paris, in a match in which Manchester City was able to thrash him.
Benzema has not had an easy career, in which he has had to overcome questions about his game, but also for non-sports reasons that took the shine off his career. Now, in a World Cup year, the Frenchman wants to take revenge and show that he is a top-class player. His numbers continue to rise.
In the French National Team they left him out for a long time, just him, who at the time denied his origins so that they would take him into account. His is one of the many stories of African immigrants who came to Europe in search of better living conditions.
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In Benzema’s case, his family came to Lyon in the 1950s. His parents, Hafid Benzema and Wahida Djebbara, are Algerian. And he had to put up with ridicule at the Catholic school in which he was enrolled.
The only way to put up with that was with soccer, for which he flew home from school to chase a ball, and with it, the dream of being someone. At the age of 8 he came to the Bron Terraillon club and, in a match against Lyon, he scored two goals. He was immediately booked.
While he began to make a career at Lyon, Karim had two great references. With one of them he shared the fact of being of Algerian origin, Zinedine Zidane. The other was the French national team striker, Thierry Henry.
His goalscoring figures began to show that there was a talent to be polished there: when he was in Lyon’s under-16 team, he scored 38 goals in one season. Upon reaching the under-18s, in just 14 games, he celebrated 12 times. That opened the doors of the first team for him. And from the outset, he showed that he had personality. “I came to take your job away!” he said when he was introduced to the campus.
On January 15, 2005, at the age of 17, he made his first-team debut, assisting in a 2-0 win against Metz. and shortly after he signed his first contract, for three years. He won four leagues, one Coupe de France and three Super Leagues with Lyon and was the top scorer in Ligue 1 in the 2007-2008 season, with 20 goals. The following year, he was second in that table, behind André-Pierre Gignac. He was ready to take a big leap.
In 2008, Sir Alex Ferguson wanted to hire him for Manchester United, where he could have met much earlier with the one who, years later, was his running mate at Real Madrid, the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo.
“The first time I played him, Sir Alex Ferguson wanted to sign him. I was talking to him in the tunnel after the game and the Lyon officials had to get him out,” former defender Rio Ferdinand recalled in a chat with BT Sport.
The jump to Madrid, a key moment in his career
The Frenchman decided on the offer from Real Madrid, who paid 35 million euros in 2009, 12 more than what United offered. However, the first years of him dressed in white were not calm. He was barely able to score eight goals in his first season and even for a couple of months he wasn’t even called up.
To all this, non-sports issues were added: recently arrived in Spain, he was investigated for allegedly being a member of a child pornography network. And then, in 2010, he was accused of having sex with an underage prostitute. He was acquitted in both cases, but his performance caused coach Raymond Domenech to leave him out of South Africa 2010.
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From then on, his performance at Real Madrid began to grow. Except for the 2017-2018 season, he always scored in double figures. And with the arrival of Laurent Blanc instead of Domenech, he became an important player in the France National Team scheme, especially in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, in which he scored three goals in five games, which was enough to reach until the quarterfinals.
The problem for Benzema is that, although his scoring contribution was important, the one who had the spotlight on him was Cristiano Ronaldo, who never dropped below 25 goals in the League in the nine years he was at Real Madrid. So the Frenchman assumed the role of complement: to date, he has 157 assists with the white club.
In Madrid, Benzema had no discussion. But in the National Team he entered a shadow cone because of another scandal, the so-called ‘Valbuena case’.
In 2015, Mathieu Valbuena, also a member of the national team, was extorted by a group of people, including an alleged childhood friend of Benzema. They asked him for 150,000 euros so that a sexual video in which he appeared with his partner would not be made public.
Valbuena exposed the case in front of the entire French team and Benzema recommended that he pay that money so that they would leave him alone. In November 2015, in an interview with the newspaper Le Monde, the victim directly pointed to the Real Madrid attacker and said he felt “very disappointed”. He ended up linked to the investigation.
Finally, in November of last year, Benzema was sentenced to 15 months in prison, subject to release, and to pay a fine of 3,000 euros. Everything that happened in this case took him out of the National Team and that is why he was not part of the team that was crowned world champion in Russia 2018. He spent almost six years without being called up, until the current coach, Didier Deschamps, decided to include him again for a friendly match against Wales. That allowed him to play the European Championship and the auction of the tie for Qatar 2022.
The new air of Benzema with Real Madrid
After the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus, and in the midst of the austerity that Real Madrid accepted, giving priority to the remodeling of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, Benzema assumed the role of scorer and leader of Real Madrid.
“When Cristiano Ronaldo was at Madrid, Benzema had the humility to take a secondary role because he knew it was the best for the team. He now he has come out of the shadows. He is 34 years old and is the best ‘9’ in the world. He is on another level. Goals, assists, combinations, he gives another rhythm to the match, ”said Río Ferdinand to BT Sport.
However, Benzema initially had a transition stage at the club, with the end of the first cycle of Zinedine Zidane, his childhood idol. Julen Lopetegui and Santiago Solari passed until, in March 2019, the Frenchman returned to command the club.
Zidane left again in the middle of last year and Real Madrid decided to repatriate Carlo Ancelotti from Everton, with whom he had won the Champions League in 2014. And with the Italian, Benzema reinvented himself.
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What have been the keys to Benzema’s change? In short, the Frenchman already assumed that the weight of the team, due to experience and career, had to be carried by him, and he has done so at key moments of the campaign, especially in the Champions League.
In ten games played in the current edition of the Champions League, the Frenchman has scored no less than 14 goals, nine of them in the knockout stages: three against Paris Saint-Germain, four against Chelsea (one in the defeat in the first leg of the quarterfinals, at the Bernabéu, and three in the second leg at Stamford Bridge) and two against Manchester City in the first game of the semifinal.
Ancelotti himself, after the defeat against Chelsea in Madrid, recognized the weight of the Frenchman in what his team is doing. “We depend on Benzema, it is like that, we are not going to deny it. And I am very happy that we are dependent on Karim. It’s a reality and it’s a good thing.”
Despite being 4-3 down, Real Madrid is still alive, largely thanks to him. “A loss is never good. We are excited about this Champions League. The important thing is that we never lower our arms. We have to go to the Bernabéu, we need the fans like never before and we are going to do something magical, which is to win”, Benzema himself told Movistar+, after the defeat against City.
The Frenchman even overcame a difficult moment of the campaign, the day he missed two penalties in the League against Osasuna. On Tuesday, at the Ettihad Stadium, he had the personality to once again stand in front of the white dot and chip the ball to close the gap.
“If you never take a penalty, you will never miss it. It is a matter of trust. I have a lot of confidence in myself”, added the Frenchman.
Every semester they look for a replacement for him. Some have even pointed out Real Madrid’s interest in Erling Haaland, the Borussia Dortmund striker. But Ancelotti is playing for experience: “Karim is a modern center forward and what is required of strikers. Everything, including defensive work. He is the perfect representation of what a center forward should be in today’s football.”
Jose Orlando Ascencio
Sports Sub-Editor
@josasc
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