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Victim of a torn thigh during a training session behind closed doors, Karim Benzema was forced to throw in the towel for the entire competition.
Karim Benzema has undoubtedly said goodbye to his last dream. Caught Saturday, November 19 by injuries, the Ballon d’Or at the peak of his career, magnifying the World Cup. New disillusionment in his upset history with the Blues.
At 34, the striker arrived in Qatar full of hope, with a unique opportunity to be reconciled definitively with the tricolor selection.
But a thigh injury on Saturday in training shattered the ambitions of the native of Lyon, package for the World Cup-2022.
“People’s Golden Ball”
Will the Real Madrid striker get the chance to lift another international trophy? Even Euro-2024 seems far away for the “Nueve”, who will be 35 on December 19. As for the World Cup-2026, it simply seems unattainable, twelve years after its only disputed World Cup, in 2014.
The misfortune is immense for this resilient centre-forward, at the very moment when France had begun to adulate him, finally, after having repudiated him for a long time for his bad boy image and his involvement in “the affair of the sextape”, his darkest memory.
The emotion aroused by his Ballon d’Or, on October 17 in Paris, the first since his “big brother” Zinédine Zidane in 1998, had resonated like a collective forgiveness. His package at the World Cup, a month later almost to the day, leaves a great void among his most loyal fans, this “people” to whom he dedicated his reward.
“I say ‘People’s Golden Ball’ because they participated in it, they pushed me every time despite the obstacles, at all times,” he explained.
Could he fall from higher? Karim Benzema’s 2021-2022 season has been marvellous: with 44 goals in 46 club matches, the centre-forward took Real to their 35e coronation in the league and was one of the heroes of the “White House” in the quest for its 14th crown in the Champions League.
An ambivalent player
And if that wasn’t enough, the international with 97 caps and 37 goals also lifted a title with the Blues, the recent League of Nations, in October 2021.
With hindsight, “KB9” would have exchanged this very honorary trophy for a World Cup at 100% of its capacity, a year later…
But the calendar of the France team did not marry his personal trajectory: when he was recalled to everyone’s surprise to play Euro-2021 after five and a half years of absence, the Blues suffered a major rout, eliminated in the round of 16 against Switzerland on penalties.
And when Qatar approaches, the physical glitches accumulate, until the injury too many, Saturday evening. And to think that Benzema had just restored his image, long tarnished by “the sextape affair”.
In this case, the player decided in June to give up appealing in the trial against Mathieu Valbuena, confirming his one-year suspended prison sentence for “complicity in attempted blackmail”.
Outstanding talent but blurred image, it is all the ambivalence of the player trained in Lyon and originally from Bron, in the Lyon suburbs. Despite a licked technique, an altruistic style of play and an exceptional trophy cabinet, Benzema has long struggled to get rid of a hotheaded image, stuck between his collection of racing cars, his luxury clothes and his frequentations.
A taste of unfinished
In October 2015, his police custody had the effect of a bomb. He will then be dismissed from the Blues for more than five years, unleashing passions in France, torn between the love of his supporters and the hatred that a part of the political spectrum devotes to him, especially on the far right.
His statements to Didier Deschamps, who according to him “gave in under pressure from a racist part of France”, will haunt the coach for a long time, inflexible until May 2021.
But Benzema compensated with an impeccable attitude on the pitch, agreeing to serve Cristiano Ronaldo for almost ten years at Real Madrid.
The departure of the Portuguese in 2018 completes the transformation of the “Nueve”: promoted to captain, he won two titles of best player in La Liga, in 2020 and 2022, and now has five Champions Leagues to his name, one length from the record.
“For me, he’s the best” French center forward in history, judged his ex-coach Zidane last season.
The figures are in favor of Benzema: since March 2022 he has been the top French scorer in history with more than 400 professional goals, ahead of Thierry Henry. But with the Blues, his career has a taste of unfinished business.
With AFP
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