MADRID, 11 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
French striker Karim Benzema is experiencing a spectacular moment in this 2021-2022 season, his thirteenth at Real Madrid, and in which he is very close to surpassing all his goalscoring records.
At 34 years old and practically first captain of the team due to his greater prominence and presence in the eleven than Marcelo Vieira, the man from Lyon seems willing to take a new step forward. His hat-trick against Paris Saint-Germain last Wednesday showed that he is ‘sweet’ and that he is the main offensive weapon of Carlo Ancelotti’s men. All without giving up any of his qualities and not being a traditional ‘9’ as he demonstrates in his impact on his team’s game.
For now, the international has already become the third top scorer in the history of Real Madrid after his magical night allowed him to beat a legend of Real Madrid with Alfredo Di Stéfano. Benzema already has 309 goals, one more than ‘La Saeta Rubia’, and he already has another symbolic player in his sights like Raúl González, who scored 323. Further afield are Cristiano Ronaldo and his historic 451 goals.
The ‘9’ is surely having his best scoring season and is very close to beating his personal records in this area. At the moment, he is the ‘top scorer’ of LaLiga Santander 2021-2022 with 20 goals in 24 games, three less than he added last year and two less than in the 2020-2021 and 2019-2020 seasons.
These last three campaigns have been in which Benzema became the great offensive reference of the merengue team, which had a hard time overcoming the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018. The Frenchman has assumed that responsibility, almost unique in the first two campaigns, and somewhat more distributed this year due to the emergence of Vinicius Jr, who has seen the door on 13 occasions, and is now just one goal away from equaling his best league mark, the 24 goals from 2015-2016, the most productive of the ‘BBC’ which he formed together with Madeira and Welshman Gareth Bale.
But his good goalscoring form has also dragged him to the Champions League, a tournament where it cost him the most and in which in this edition he has already achieved his best record with eight goals, one more than the seven in 2011-2012.
In total, in the maximum continental competition, his night against PSG allowed him to surpass Raúl González’s 66 goals and place himself with 67 as the second best Real Madrid striker in the European Cup, still far from the almost unattainable Cristiano (105). Adding the ones scored (12) with Olympique de Lyon, he accumulates 79, which places him as the fourth best scorer in history behind the Portuguese (140), Leo Messi (125) and Robert Lewandowski (85).
All in all, it is ‘easy’ for Benzema to close his most prolific scoring season as he has reached the figure of 30 goals scored in all competitions, something he had only achieved in 2018-2019 and 2020-2021, both without Cristiano Ronaldo and when he signed his current tally, and in 2011-2012, when he scored 32 in a year in which Real Madrid scored 174 goals.
A NIGHT TO EMULATE CRISTIANO, BUTRAGUEÑO OR SANTILLANA
The Madrid captain also joined that list of great protagonists in other European comebacks for Real Madrid last Wednesday. His hat-trick emulated, for example, the one Cristiano Ronaldo had achieved in what had been the last one achieved by the 13-time European champion, in the second leg of the quarterfinals of the 2015-2016 season and against Wolfsburg German. The three goals from the Portuguese then raised the 2-0 first leg.
Other players who experienced matches similar to those of Lyon were Emilio Butragueño, current director of Institutional Relations of the club and who also scored three goals in the remembered 6-1 against Anderlecht in the round of 16 of the UEFA Cup 84-85 and that traced the 3-0 in Brussels.
He did not manage three goals, but Carlos Alonso Santillana had a great role in the great European comebacks of the 80s. The Cantabrian forward was key in the 4-0 win over Borussia Moenchengladbach and the 5-1 win over Inter Milan in the 85-86 UEFA Cup, and in the 5-1 win over Derbi County in the 75-76 European Cup.
Against the German team, who had won the first leg 5-1, after Jorge Valdano put a quick 2-0, he sentenced with two goals, the last in 89, while the ‘neroazzurri’, winners in their stadium 3-1, he executed them in extra time with two goals. The then English champion, who stood at the Bernabéu with a favorable 4-1, also scored a brace, with the goal from the pass also in extra time.