When Manchester City meets Real Madrid in the semi-finals of the Champions League, one player for “Royal” star coach Josep Guardiola causes a particularly big headache: Karim Benzema, the star striker who is as good as ever in the home stretch of his career.
Karim Benzema did something last week that didn’t suit him at all: the Real Madrid striker, who has been at his best these weeks in his already extremely successful career, botched the league game against CA Osasuna two penalties in less than ten minutes. Twice he ran casually, shot into the same corner and was surprised there by goalkeeper Sergio Herrera. Stupid run for the 34-year-old. But for the man who is likely to prevent Bayern Munich’s goal-phenomenon Robert Lewandowski from winning the damn Ballon d’Or again this year, and his club was unaffected by this mishap. The “Royal” won the away game 3:1 (1:1) and are practically champions. Going into their last five games in the Spanish league, they are 15 points clear of pursuers Barcelona and Sevilla.
Now this bizarre game against Osasuna was almost the antithesis to the current football truth of Real. Carlo Ancelotti’s team needs Karim Benzema. Maybe not in games that are more compulsory than freestyle. But there tend to be fewer of those in the final sprint of a season. Except in the league, this year of Barcelona’s failure. When the titles are played, then it takes great moments from great players. And Benzema is one of those. In his current condition he might be the best on the planet. A remarkable story. Which was not necessarily prophesied. The man from a rough suburb of Lyon has been playing in the Spanish capital for 13 years. Very often he did it well. But more often far under the radar. Because in the long shadow of Cristiano Ronaldo there was no room for a second figure of light. He was his underestimated but most valuable aide-de-camp.
And if there should have been, it would have been Gareth Bale, once the world’s most expensive player, now the most expensive clown on the football circuit, but regularly proving to his native Wales what an outstanding player he can continue to be . When he’s not on the golf course. Now Ronaldo is long gone, Bale is still present but no longer present and their eagerly awaited successor Kylian Mabppé and possibly Erling Haaland are still caught in nebulous transfer queues. The meantime. The time between the eternal duellists Lionel Messi and Ronaldo, who left Real in the summer of 2018, and the time until the successors announce a new duel. A vacuum that Benzema and Lewandowski can now fill. This year. Maybe next year too. Then his valid employment contract with Real Madrid expires.
There the glorious past and there the vision of a fantastic future. It’s Karim Benzema’s time. And this time is so wondrous and wonderful that even at Real they are amazed. Although, of course, the club has its own understanding of a “mia san mia”, that is, an unshakable belief in being an eternal champion.
“K9 is your guardian angel. K9 is God!”
The football world agrees that Benzema is having the best season of his life. The fact that the still unfinished ensemble in upheaval this year is a sovereign champion (despite a 0: 4 debacle in the “Clasico”, but without Benzema) and is playing for the title in the Champions League, that’s what the team of the so comfortable coach eminence has Ancelotti owes much to the French. In 40 competitive games, the Frenchman has scored 39 goals and provided 13 assists. That makes him the best scorer in Europe’s top leagues, he has played equally well in all competitions – but especially made the premier class his stage, which he could win for the fifth time this year with Madrid. And the more the fight for the handle pot escalates, the more spectacular the Frenchman appears.
In the round of 16 second leg, he smashed the luxury project Paris St. Germain with a hat-trick into a thousand worthless diamonds. He dwarfed Neymar, Mbappé, Lionel Messi and Co. into billionaire idiots. A round later, Benzema crushed Chelsea. Scored three again in London in a furious 3-1 win and was then proclaimed at least a world-world-world legend. “K9 is Spiderman. K9 is Wolverine. K9 is the doorman in front of your building. K9 is your best friend. K9 is your grandmother. K9 is the President of the USA. K9 is your parachute minder. K9 is your guardian angel. K9 is God !” tweeted Spanish goalkeeping icon and ex-teammate Iker Casillas of Benzema’s surreal gala at Stamford Bridge.
Then in the second leg, at the Bernabeu, he saved his overwhelmed team from a knockout against the defending champions in extra time. His header, a force. Serious craftsmanship by an attacker who, with his outstanding technique, has elevated the finish to an art form in its own right. Who has created his own interpretation of the figure of the striker with the way he plays between the front and the hanging tip. Now loved and no longer despised. Now a legend at the club, for which he has played 599 times, scored 318 times (only Ronaldo, 450, and Raúl, 324, have more) and 157 winning goals. He has left behind icons such as Alfredo di Stefano, Santillana and Ferenc Puskás.
It wasn’t always easy with Real
For many years, the relationship between the Frenchman, who still has the murky role in the very bizarre sextape affair involving former national team friend Mathieu Valbuena, and the Madrilenian fans was a difficult one. Because Benzema was not always the savior in the game. He wasn’t always a top scorer, but occasionally also a chance death. In Ronaldo’s last season, 2017/18, he only scored five times in the league, the fans were not amused. He wasn’t always the huge promise he made in Madrid when he came from Olympique Lyon in 2009. Despite leaving the club at the age of 21, he had already achieved iconic status there. A member of the highly talented 1987 generation, he was considered the new hero of French football, scoring 66 and 27 in 148 games for Lyon. Benzema is not only a man for completion, but also someone who constantly creates danger thanks to his game intelligence. Who can decide everything with one action. Which makes the game seem so easy.
But it is thanks to his father that he found his way to football at all. Benzema’s family grew up in Bron, a rough metropolitan suburb in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. A tough place, a place where many young people take the wrong path and drift into the criminal milieu. Father Hafid was driven by this concern, he enrolled Karim in the youth boarding school. He went the good way. A childhood friend took the bad one. He is said to have staged the Valbuena sextape affair. Whether Benzema was an accomplice or wanted to help the footballer will be renegotiated on June 30th. In the first instance, he was sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros for aiding and abetting attempted extortion.
The affair temporarily shook his career. At the end of 2015 he was excluded from the national team by the association until further notice, only last summer, shortly before the botched European Championships at “Les Bleus”, did he return. His long abstinence was overshadowed by accusations of racism against national coach Didier Deschamps when he did not nominate the striker for the 2016 home European Championship, despite outstanding performances at Real. It was followed by two poor years with the royal team. Benzema’s career threatens to collapse. He had to watch from afar as his national teammates won the title at the World Cup in Russia. A huge flaw in his career. In his career, only the insignificant Nations League title stands for the Équipe Tricolore.
But he bit back when Ronaldo left. From a meowing cat to a barking dog. In 2010, a year after his arrival, he was mocked by star coach José Mourinho. Literally he had said: “If you don’t have a dog to hunt with, you have to take the cat.”
“It’s like the wine”
All long forgotten stories. In the time between the glorious past and the vision of a fantastic future, the striker has matured into a formative figure for the Madrilenians. To the gate phenomenon, to the leader. A role that the introverted Frenchman was never given credit for, but which he fulfills all the more remarkably. “Karim is getting better every day, it’s like with wine. He’s becoming more of a leader every day. His attitude is exemplary for everyone,” enthused coach Carlo Ancelotti recently: “Karim is a complete player. He’s already scored a lot of goals, that’s why he’s very important. He helps the team a lot with his obsession, with his dynamism.” The ability to lead, to motivate, it sets him apart from a Lewandowski, who may even be a bit more ripped off in front of goal, but who has the reputation of being more selfish than a team player.
If real now in the evening (from 9 p.m. in the live ticker at ntv.de) meets Manchester City in the semi-final first leg of the Champions League, then it’s not only the duel of the old football world against the new one, but also that of Benzema against star coach Josep Guardiola. In big games, the Catalan tends to let his genius slip into fatal misjudgments. A question that will torment him: How can the Frenchman be taken out of the game? How do the Citizens manage not to be eaten by Benzema, who is always particularly greedy in such games. As he announced after his gala at Chelsea. “I don’t play football to be the best in the world, I play for nights like this.” But nights like this are made for becoming the best in the world. Lewandowski is likely to be particularly tormented by this thought because, after the embarrassing knockout against Villarreal, he is only a spectator when the king of football is played.
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