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Karim Benzema and Luiz Suárez are aging like fine wine … Both 33-year-olds have been dragging Real and Atlético de Madrid away from Barcelona as they show that the old-school number 9 is in vogue.
- Karim Benzema has benefited from the lack of international football with France
- He is still the main attacking man for Zinedine Zidane and looks at his best
- Luis Suárez has scored seven goals in 11 and none of them have been penalties
- Both forwards are desperate to end this season with a LaLiga trophy in the bag
As Atlético de Madrid and Real Madrid play their last two games of 2020 to see who will spend the New Year at the top of LaLiga, both clubs thank the 33-year-old forwards for putting them where they are.
Luis Suárez has scored seven goals in just 11 attempts, placing him second in the scorers’ chart behind Gerard Moreno, who has eight. None of his goals have come from a penalty, unlike Moreno’s four.
He struggled in his first two games after testing positive for coronavirus, but his brutal effectiveness has not faded over time and he wants that top scorer and league champion double.
Luis Suárez (left) has been excellent for Atlético de Madrid and is second in the scorers’ table
Karim Benzema (left) was the only man who made a move for Real Madrid when Cristiano Ronaldo left
Benzema wants the same. He has also scored seven goals so far this season, also without penalties. This month he turned 33, making him a year younger than Suarez, who will turn 34 in January. He has also been able to focus on club football since October 2015, when he played his last game for France.
As Suarez flies across the Atlantic during international breaks to play for Uruguay, Benzema rests ready for the next domestic challenge.
It’s starting to show. He is playing better than ever: the race into space, the first touch of velvet and the end of Sunday in Real Madrid’s victory over Eibar were his best harvest.
France can say they won the World Cup without him, but what a waste for him not to have been part of that team by forming what would have been an extraordinary striker with Antoine Griezmann and Kylian Mbappé.
The Frenchman has benefited from the lack of international soccer and now looks so sharp
He may still have a chance to play for Mbappé, although the 22-year-old will have to exhaust his contract at Paris Saint-Germain because Real Madrid don’t have the finances to sign him for a transfer fee.
The club cut player salaries by 10 percent last season and will have to do the same this time. Last summer was the first time in 40 years that they never bought from anyone.
Benzema has repaid the faith that the club president, Florentino Pérez, has always shown in him leading the club in this period in which they cannot go out and get whoever they want.
Benzema and Suárez would love another league title this year. For the French it would be his fourth and his second without Cristiano Ronaldo. When the club sold the Portuguese in 2018 to Juventus, they were desperate for other big names in the club at the time, and Eden Hazard, who signed a year later, to stand up. Nobody did it apart from Benzema.
It was always a nine in number only. He wore the center forward shirt but his job was to open that space so that Ronaldo could fill it and score his goals. After Ronaldo he had to become a center forward and he has done spectacularly well.
Suárez loves to show Barcelona that he was wrong in his decision to expel him from the club
Benzema is repaying the faith that both Florentino Pérez and Zinedine Zidane have shown in him
He is currently scoring a higher percentage of Real Madrid goals in Zinedine Zidane’s second stage at the club than Ronaldo achieved in Zidane’s first stage.
Suarez is also desperate to finish the season with a winner’s medal. Abandoned by Barcelona in a 60-second phone call from Ronald Koeman, who did not want to lose him but was following the club’s orders, he left greatly disappointed in the manner of his departure.
But the way he arrived at Atlético has made him a distant memory. The last time Barcelona sent a veteran forward to Atlético, he won the league with Simeone.
David Villa scored 13 goals in the 2013-14 season, proving his Barcelona critics wrong.
With a third of the season out, the table may not yet be telling the absolute truth, but there are certainly fewer lies: Teams are pretty much where they expect to be for most of the season. In Barcelona that means fighting to get into the top four. They don’t seem to have a center forward to help them do it.
Lionel Messi (right) made the ‘false nine’ famous but the center forward game is back in fashion
Former Toulouse, Middlesbrough and Leganes striker Martin Braithwaite is the closest, but in recent times Koeman has preferred to use the Dane out of bounds.
Barcelona once hypnotized their opponents with centerless formations. But those were the days of Andrés Iniesta, Xavi and Lionel Messi’s ‘false nine’ at the peak of their powers.
Now they are Suárez and Benzema playing as true number nine and leading their teams away from Barcelona in the table. Barça have only won one away game all season and if they fail in Valladolid and Atlético beat Real Sociedad and Real Madrid beat Granada, both could have a difference of 11 points over their rivals.
Center forwards are back in fashion and the two LaLiga veterans are making the decisions. If the trend continues, the title will stay in the city of Madrid; the only question will be which club will claim it.
The teams of Zidane and Diego Simeone seem more likely to take the title home this season
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