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At the end of Real Madrid’s 2-0 victory against Atlético de Madrid last week, Zinedine Zidane was asked to define Karim Benzema in one word. In the end, he needed two … and then some more. “The best,” said the Real Madrid coach, pausing to add: “I would describe him as a complete footballer. They talk about him a nine, a nine and a half, a 10. He’s a bit of everything. He’s a total ” football player.”
“Everyone who loves football, everyone who likes it, likes Karim.”
That could, and perhaps should have been the last word, the point of the whole thing. But people always want more, the desire to rank everything seems irresistible and sadly often less a compliment from the chosen man as a farewell to the non-chosen one, and a few days later Zidane was asked if Benzema could be the best forward in France has ever produced.
“For me, yes,” he said. “He is the best, for sure. He has been at Madrid for a long time, he played more than five hundred games and there are all the goals. In the end, what he has won speaks for itself.”
Maybe Zidane would say that. After all, he played Stephane Guivarc’h.
Although seriously, and please, a little respect for a world champion whose game and whose importance Benzema himself could have understood and appreciated better than the rest of us, Zidane is literally on Benzema’s side. He had just seen Benzema score two more goals to defeat Athletic Club in the middle of the week. He is Benzema’s manager, and much more: he is his partner and his mentor, his champion, someone who has shared so much with him.
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It was a statement, one to start a fire. Hey, Zizou, Thierry Henry would like to talk. And Jean Pierre Papin. And Eric Cantona. And the winner of the World Cup Antoine Griezmann. And, if we talk about French in Spain, even René Petit, engineer and pioneer, debutant at age 14 and three-time winner of the Copa del Rey. Raymond Kopaszewski would too. “Kopa”, they called him, and “Little Napoleon”, as if the current Napoleon were a giant, and he won three European Cups with Real Madrid. He also won the Ballon d’Or in 1958, the same year that Just Fontaine scored thirteen goals at the World Cup in Sweden. (He was also French).
Zidane knows it. Zidane knows this and, in fact, there is a lot in what he said. Benzema has never won a World Cup. Does not play for France – good morningDidier Deschamps! – and never won the Ballon d’Or. In fact, I’ve never been close. Fewer still made the podium four years in a row as Kopa. When people talk about the best forwards in the world, Benzema is rarely in the conversation.
And yet it should be, and if only for that reason, among many other reasons, it is worth saying. A soft nudge, or not so soft. And why not? Why shouldn’t Benzema be there? Look at what he has won, as Zidane said, although Zidane knows very well that it is not only about that. Three leagues and four European Cups. Four. More than 250 goals.
Benzema’s constant ability to reinvent himself based on the needs of his teammates and what Real Madrid lacks is testament to his work ethic and class. Denis Doyle / Getty Images
Some will say ah, but he played for Real Madrid for 11 years, of course he won a lot. Of course he scored goals, and he didn’t even score that many. Look at Cristiano Ronaldo: now there are many goals. Benzema never won the Pichichi. Not once in more than a decade at the club he’s supposed to dominate, where scoring is a piece of cake.
Those people would be wrong. A simple one to start with: you don’t play for Real Madrid for 11 years if you’re not very, very good at football. And how do you think Ronaldo got all those goals? Benzema, that’s right.
Ok, that’s not entirely true, and it would be absurd to reduce Ronaldo to being the mere beneficiary of other men’s brilliance. But there is something in that. In some odd way, Benzema has always been countercultural and at the same time the ultimate conformist, a complementary component designed to bring out the best in others. An individualistic team man. A Lyon had 10 when it was more than a 9, and 9 in Madrid when it was more than a 10.
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Not long ago, Benzema was interviewed by Jorge Valdano on Spanish television. It was a fascinating, thoughtful and discreetly non-demonstrative discussion in which Benzema talks about his evolution as a footballer. There are many phases of Benzema, different incarnations, conditioned by the men around him. And for women too, he says that when he was a child, his mother entered the goal.
The changes started early, from being the scorer in France to being the supplier in Madrid. He was only 20 when he arrived, and Ronaldo had just appeared as well. It wasn’t easy, but it finally worked.
“I had a guy there who scored double, triple goals and that’s how you adapt,” Benzema told Valdano. “I’m a footballer, so I say to myself ‘don’t worry, I’m going to put that idea of scoring goals behind me and doing what I have to do’. I changed my way of playing a lot. I changed to play with him.”
Ten years later, after Ronaldo left, he changed again.
The transformation can be exaggerated: selflessness, even servility, sacrifice in service to others and to the team, to make their role the only explanation for everything. But for a long time, Benzema played as both a facilitator and a center forward, a man for whom most of what he did was for others. This applies to Ronaldo in particular, and there is deep respect and recognition in that. It is not such an easy thing to do; look, for example, what Griezmann is trying to do in Barcelona.
Sometimes Benzema’s role was to get out of the way. Yes, really: he was a man who made space by leaving it, at the right time, for others to occupy it. He was the man of wings for the men who ran from the royal wings to score. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t score more goals, and by the way, his comeback was very good, but it shouldn’t. That was not what he was there for, even when people demanded that he be.
Besides all those other things.
Zidane, on the left, has nothing but high praise for Benzema, who has scored 10 goals in all competitions this season as Real Madrid’s 9. OSCAR DEL POZO / AFP via Getty Images
There is a moment of the interview in which Benzema says that for his father “football was goals.” And nothing more. Some seasons, there were not as many as could have been. Not as many as his father demanded. “Now I can talk to him,” says Benzema. “He understands my football, what I do on the field. Now. Before, he didn’t.”
I could have been speaking for everyone. It probably was, in fact. There is a very clear sense that Benzema feels misunderstood. That almost embraces that identity, operating on a higher plane. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. “I play football for people who understand the game,” he said. Now there is an appreciation that was not always there before. “I feel happy because people now understand,” he said.
Now, he says, although that may also be exaggerated. It is not simply everyone else who has been on a long journey of discovery and conversion to Benzema’s football philosophy, and has been too slow to appreciate it. He has also been traveling.
It would not be true to suggest that Benzema has always been the way he is now. Some of the doubts surrounding him were real, some of the challenges to his place on the team had some basis. Some of them came from his own teammates. There were criticisms, some of them justified. Sometimes he needed protection; likewise, as it has sometimes lacked projection.
Easy going, Benzema has had defenders, and loud and determined, but he rarely speaks himself. Ask yourself this: how many interviews have you read? How many statements out of turn? In fact, here’s another one: he’s been at Madrid for more than a decade. How many times have you even heard rumors of an exit, even when there were rumors of other signings in your position? How many times have your renovations been mentioned and even less in public?
There is a beautiful phrase from Athletic Club winger Alejandro Berenguer, when asked which Madrid player he likes. “Benzema”, says the extreme, “does not make noise, but it kills you”.
It does now, as well as all those other things. And look back on the race, the most important moments, and there it is. His record for goals in the Champions League compares favorably with anyone’s. And how do you even classify what he did that night at the Calderón?
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Since Ronaldo’s departure, Benzema has had to take on greater responsibility on the scoreboard, returning to being a “number 9”, a role he had left behind a decade ago. And although it was difficult at first, he has done it too.
Here’s a statistic: In Zidane’s second stage as Madrid coach, Benzema has a higher Madrid goal percentage than Ronaldo had in Zidane’s first stage in charge. Just under a third, in case you were wondering. Last year he exceeded 20 goals, the most decisive footballer in the League. If they had given him the sanctions, it would have been Pichichi (top scorer).
That has brought with it an appreciation that was not always there before; statistics help win discussions and win over people. And ultimately, the goals decide everything. Including, don’t forget, games. It is worth noting, again, that it is not true that Benzema has always been there and has always been the same; it is not true that those people are idiots who simply did not know how to appreciate it before … although there are some, of course.
Benzema has changed, and not just because of responsibilities or goals. He is lighter than he was, extremely thin indeed, and there is a greater awareness about him now, even more than before. There is also silent leadership, and security about it. Maybe not playing for France really helped?
And then there is the joy, the art and the quality in his game. It was the glorious heeled assist at Espanyol, not one of the goals that led Madrid to the title, that marked their season last year. “Sometimes things occur to me,” he said. “This is how I see football.”
“That’s Karim,” Zidane said.
Last week, Karim Benzema became the most appearances foreigner of all time for Madrid, and he failed to do so as his career ended limping to the line. He did it at age 33, playing the best football of his career, at a level now where it’s almost like he was levitating. At a level that no Frenchman has ever reached, according to a Frenchman who probably has.
Source: espn.co.uk
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