KARIM BENZEMA, 34
Striker, France Club: Real Madrid (Spain)
For five-and-a-half years, Karim Benzema was exiled from the national team for his role in a sex-tape/blackmail scandal involving a France team mate. In that time, Didier Deschamps forged a team capable of being world champions, one that rode on an unstoppable force called Kylian Mbappe to the title in Russia.
“There was a difficult period when I wasn’t in the French team but I never gave up,” Benzema said while receiving his first Ballon d’Or in Paris last month at 34 years of age (he turns 35 one day after the World Cup final on December 18).
Giving up is something Benzema hasn’t done since he began kicking a ball against a wall in a Lyon suburb. He has been brilliant at Real Madrid -- first doing the running for Cristiano Ronaldo, and then the bulk of the scoring after
Ronaldo left in 2018. It was repeated acts of pulling Real Madrid back from the brink that fetched Benzema the Ballon d’Or and made his club the champions of Europe last season.
His return to the national team though hasn’t been without pangs. Kylian Mbappe has said he prefers playing with OIivier Giroud, who is two goals away from Thierry Henry’s national record of 51, as the focal point of the attack because his hold-up play gives Mbappe more freedom.
“A plus for us? Of course he is. When you are the second-best striker in the French team if you are not a plus you will never be a plus,” Mbappe has said of Giroud.
Benzema and Mbappe didn’t hit the high notes in the 2020 Euro (played in 2021). Mbappe didn’t score and though Benzema got four, France were eliminated by Switzerland in the Round of 16 at Euro 2020 (played in 2021). France have also struggled this season to avoid relegation from the Nations League, a competition they won in 2021.
“It’s perfectly normal for a team to go on slightly less successful runs, but France remain a really competitive force and are among the top teams in Europe and the world,” head coach Didier Deschamps, who has been in charge for 10 years, has said. “We’re the defending world champions. When you’re at the very top, it’s difficult to do any better.”
No team since Brazil in 1962 have won back-to-back World Cups. If France are to emulate that, they will have to sort of issues in defence and midfield, hope Benzema can fire, and that he and Mbappe can find a way to bring the best out of each other.