Benzema's Galactico Status Can Be Secured In Saturday's CL Action

With last weekend seeing both the English Premier League and the Spanish La Liga campaigns come to a close, one domestic league was certainly more enthralling on the final day of action.

Real Madrid romped to another La Liga title, comfortably beating rivals Barcelona into second place with a convincing 13 point gap, but Liverpool’s battle with Manchester City went down to the final ten minutes in their respective games with Wolverhampton Wanderers and Aston Villa.

Ultimately Pep Guardiola’s side won out by a single point to take the English title, and that now means that all attentions turn to this Saturday’s Champions League Final out in France. Former Liverpool and Real Madrid winger Steve McManaman will be an observant viewer of the Stade de France final and he recalled some interesting Champions League memories of his own in a recent interview with Betway Insider for those that are interested and one such memory was the difficulty French legend Zinedine Zidane had in settling in at the Santiago Bernabeu when he joined them back in the summer of 2001 for a reported, then whopping fee, of £45.6 million – still pretty big by today’s standards in fairness.

“I think it’s fair to say that his first six months of joining the team was difficult. We all knew that he was an incredible football player because we had seen what he had done previously, he was World Player of the Year. We knew what we were bringing into the club. It was just a question of where he would play in the system that we played, and that was the hard part for him. He played in a number of positions, on the left, central, behind the forward, and I think he struggled, really, to settle in initially.”

In many ways that was a story repeated upon Karim Benzema’s arrival at Real Madrid back in the summer of 2009 when he made the switch from Lyon for a reported £25 million. The Frenchman’s debut season at the club would be described by many as being almost a disaster and he definitely struggled, finding the net only nine times in 33 games.

Like Zidane though, he soon found his feet and with over a decade in La Liga now under his belt, he has gone on to only not get into double figures in the league on one more occasion back in 2017/18 – however, even then across all competitions he still contributed 12 goals – only failing to score 20 or more in 2016/17 and 2017/18.

Following the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus in the summer of 2018, Benzema stepped up even further to truly earn the Galactico title. 2018/19 saw him score a total of 30 goals, 2019/20 saw him hit 27 and he was back to 30 in 2020/21.

He has been absolutely outstanding in the 2021/22 campaign though where he has scored a phenomenal 44 goals in 45 appearances for Los Blancos and that rises further if you include his international games for France.

Liverpool will know they have a battle on their hands to keep him quiet as if he maintains those standards for a final 90 minutes, Carlo Ancelotti will be very confident of lifting another trophy in his already extremely successful managerial career and Benzema would add a third medal to his already bloated trophy cabinet, having already picked up the La Liga and Spanish Super Cup ones this year.