It was 2019, a year after France had won the World Cup without Karim Benzema, when the striker hinted that he would try out playing international football for Algeria, the country of his immigrant parents.
Benzema had been out of the French team since 2015 November, when he was arrested by the French police for his alleged role in blackmailing fellow France international Mathieu Valbuena in a mobile sex video scandal.
The national coach Didier Deschamps was adamant that he would not bring the Real Madrid man back into the team and the French football association president Noel Le Graet had said Benzema’s “adventure with France is over”.
Cut to 2021.
Benzema’s case is still sub-judice, but the No.
9 – arguably the best after Robert Lewandowski in Europe at the moment – finds himself back in the French national team.
It is not that France are facing a shortage of striking talent ahead of the Euros.
They are overwhelming favourites going and far from being short on talent.
Then what is it that has made Deschamps bring back a man who was labelled a disruptive element till a year ago? Simply, it is Benzema’s incredible form for Real Madrid over the last three years that has made even the most pragmatic of coaches in Deschamps do a turnaround.
The 33-year-old Benzema was always seen as a special player with silken skills, but since Cristiano Ronaldo left Real in the summer of 2018, he has been virtually the lone goal-scoring option of an incredibly demanding outfit.
In the last three years, his goals tally for Real Madrid have been 30, 27 and 30 respectively, and this is when he is not the No.1 penalty-taker of the club side.
But it’s not just the number of goals that make Benzema what he is.
Ronaldo once said that the Frenchman is the best strike-partner he has ever had, and that’s not without reason.
It was his off-the-ball movement and ability to create spaces that made goal-scoring easier for Ronaldo during his Madrid days.
And now the canny Deschamps knows how devastating Kylian Mbappe can be if he has a strike partner of Benzema’s calibre by his side.
The fact that Olivier Giroud – termed not too long ago by Benzema as “karting” as opposed to himself being “Formula One” – has lost his place in Chelsea as the regular No.
9, has helped the Madrid man’s cause.
Manchester United’s Anthony Martial, too, has been extremely inconsistent and Deschamps decided it was time to keep his ego aside and give Benzema a call asking him to return.
Deschamps has had numerous run-ins with Benzema over the last four years and the striker had even hinted that Deschamps was being “racist” in keeping him out.
The Madrid man, not unsurprisingly, found an ally in his mentor and coach Zinedine Zidane who went out of his way to advocate his striker’s return to the Les Bleus.
With Deschamps and Zidane having lived through many memorable outings for country and club (Juventus) in the 1990s, the older partner was eventually bound to listen, but it wasn’t an easy start.
“He is the best in the world,” Zidane had once said after his return as Real coach in early 2019, but Deschamps was prompt to shoot it down saying it was Zizou’s way of propping up his main man.
Zidane didn’t hit back, he just kept working with Benzema eventually fine-tuning him into a lethal weapon that was simply unputdownable for the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000-winning captain.
One of the crucial elements that Deschamps might have liked in Benzema 2.0 is the striker’s openness to allow others hog the limelight, knowing well that he is the best player in the team.
In the last three years, all conversations in Real Madrid have either centred around Sergio Ramos or Eden Hazard, while Benzema quietly went about doing his job, game after game.
The fact that he made 44 appearances in 2020-21 when the team was ravaged by close to 60 first-team injuries and Covid-induced breaks, showed how well Benzema has maintained his body in a very physically-demanding league.
“I’m thrilled that Karim is back in the France team.
It’s what he wanted and always did everything for it …
I just hope that they will leave him alone and let him enjoy his football,” Zidane said.
In the recent practice match against Wales, Benzema was in the thick of things from the start.
A missed penalty didn’t out him down, and the world got a glimpse of the Frenchman enjoying the rush, combining with Mbappe, Griezmann and Dembele, as if the five-year exile never happened.
It showed how much he missed the famous blue jersey.
It’s time for more.