Ballon d’Or candidate Benzema aging like a fine wine

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This article was published 16/04/2022 (1602 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SHOULD he win the next Ballon d’Or, Karim Benzema will be the second-oldest footballer to win the sport’s top individual prize. Older than Messi, than Yashin, than Di Stefano, than Modric. Only Sir Stanley Matthews, who at 41 claimed the trophy in its inaugural year of 1956, will have uncorked a bottle of superior vintage.

“He’s better every day, like wine,” remarked Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti following his star striker’s hat-trick performance against Chelsea earlier this month. “He’s more of a leader every day. He feels more and more important in this team and this squad. And I think that’s what makes the difference.”

And what a difference.

With an astonishing header that put Los Blancos into the Champions League semifinals at the Blues’ expense, Benzema, 34, returned his 14th goal from nine matches. He is peaking at exactly the right time as the club season enters its final stretch, and should his run continue at Sevilla on Sunday (2 p.m., TSN3) his side, currently atop La Liga, will put 15 points between themselves and second-place Barcelona.

To say Madrid’s success this term is largely down to Benzema would not be an exaggeration. Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski may well be winning the race for the European Golden Boot, but take Benzema out of his team and it loses its captain, its mentor and its swagger—as well as the Spanish top flight’s leader in both goals and assists.

Remove him and you remove the ascent of Vinicius Junior, who recently reached the 100-win mark at the club and did so more quickly than Marcelo, Sergio Ramos and, yes, Benzema himself.

His 38 goals in all competitions — a goal-per-game pace — is already seven better than his next-best season of 2007-08 with Lyon, when he won a fourth straight Ligue 1 title as well as the Coupe de France. A fourth Primera Division crown is all but assured, and given a change in the Ballon d’Or rules that will see the award presented based on the July-June schedule instead of the calendar year, Lewandowski’s early Champions League exit has all but gifted it to him.

Benzema’s application has also been padded by France’s UEFA Nations League triumph, in which he scored in both the semifinal against Belgium and the final against Spain.

It was his first senior championship at international level (he was part of the team that won Europe’s Under-17 tournament in 2004) and made him France’s most decorated player for club and country. It also capped what had once seemed a perhaps impossible return to Les Bleus following an indictment for his participation in a Paris prostitute ring and the blackmail of teammate Mathieu Valbuena.

Both scandals — the former charges were dropped, but he was handed a one-year suspended sentence for the latter — will inevitably and appropriately be part of his legacy long after he retires. And they rather complicate the vintage Ancelotti likes to talk about. If anything, it comes off as leathery, smoky, with notes of toast and tar.

In that, there is some symmetry with former teammate Cristiano Ronaldo, whose own career is inseparable from a credible charge of rape. There is no way to spin it, and it shouldn’t be attempted. If Benzema has since tried to improve himself it is only because he previously used his power and celebrity to cause harm. There is no way around it.

In his football, he has thrived in Ronaldo’s absence.

“I had to adapt. I adapted,” he recently told the BBC. “He left. So it was down to me to make a step forward and show that I could make the difference.”

Where once he operated more with his back to goal to better service both Ronaldo and Gareth Bale, he now works from a deeper position, often drifting to the left of the attack. It’s an approach that suits Vinicius to a tee, which is why they’ve developed such an immediate synergy.

His goals and assists, impressive as they look on the stats sheet, are as much a testament to his smarts and tactical nous as his touch and ability to finish. He is also a reliable contributor on the defensive side of the ball. It’s a combination that makes him the perfect striker—something he’s been for a while but is really only being appreciated relatively late in his career.

But that appreciation could well be recognized with a much-deserved Ballon d’Or. Because right now, at 34, Karim Benzema is the best player in the world.

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Twitter: @JerradPeters