Karim Benzema has been monopolizing covers of the newspaper for a month and a half L'Équipe. His great moment of form in the league resumption, genius such as the heel of Casemiro against Espanyol or the Liga 34 of Madrid conquered with his compatriot Zidane on the bench have led the striker to the front page of the quintessential sports publication in his country . What is not so common is that the flattery reaches Benzema from a world reference generalist medium As the New York Times, away from the usual circle of the football press.
The good work of the 32-year-old forward has attracted the focus of Rory Smith, the football specialist for the prestigious New York newspaper. Karim Benzema: the low-powered galactic, title your article. “The French striker was always the youngest of the Real Madrid galactics. Now he is the last. Why has he been denied the credit he deserves?” Asks the columnist for the US newspaper.
For Smith, “it is strange that Benzema needed to claim. After all, he has survived Madrid, a club where patience is fine and endemic change, for more than a decade, more than many other stars. “And remember that the Frenchman” is the fifth top scorer in Real's history Madrid. He has scored 248 goals in 512 games, an average of almost one goal a game yes and another no, the standard for an elite striker. “
The expert of the New York Times he continues: “Benzema should have had nothing to prove. When debating who is the best 9 in the world it seems that there is always someone more brilliant than Benzema: Falcao, Ibrahimovic, Lewandowski or Mbappé. It is difficult to understand why. Many criticisms really don't make sense. He is singled out for not scoring enough and is not noted for the work he does everywhere creating spaces and interweaving the team. “
The writer points to some causes, such as the sambenito that remained after Mourinho compared him to a cat to go hunting or the context in which his time in Madrid has developed, which arrived the same summer as Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo, bringing together many fewer fans in his presentation than the Brazilian and the Portuguese.
“Perhaps the explanation is obvious, as simple as that no other striker has suffered so directly from the inflated expectations that Messi and Cristiano have brought to football. (…) Whatever the reason, Benzema deserves more, simply because he is the player who arrived as the youngest of the galactics and is the last to remain on the team.“concludes Smith.