Karim Benzema

no he is not lol
1) he doesnt fit
2) psg wont sell

His two misses that Ronaldo laid on a plate for him don't get any better on second viewing. Nearly unforgivable considering it's against your defensively solid, cross-town title rivals.

oh here we go again  He made everyone eat crow last year and hard...  will do it again this season.  He had no preseason and came back from the WC to play his first game in the UEFA supercup.  In 6 official games this season, he's taken 10 total shots... and it's not because he isn't open either.

on the 2 shots you're talking about, the first one was a bad control... the 2nd one was a great save by the keeper.  Did everything right on that one:



He's started slow in every year almost in his career.  Just needs time to get himself into rhythm.  But in the end, he'll end up with 20-30 goals like he has EVERY SEASON since he turned pro other than his first year at Madrid.  That's right, 6 out of his last 7 seasons, he's had 20 + and 4 in a row.  

In the last 4 seasons at Madrid, he's averaged 26 goals and 14 assists per season...  yeah, that's ON AVERAGE.

He'll end up right around there again.

championzema / benzeleague does it again

13 th highest goalscorer in CL history at 26 .

not bad for mental midget / big game flop huh ?

farfan wrote:championzema / benzeleague does it again

13 th highest goalscorer in CL history at 26 .

not bad for mental midget / big game flop huh ?

Totally proved his mental strength and big game prowess scoring the 5th goal in group stages against Basel. Legend.

Fußball wrote:

farfan wrote:championzema / benzeleague does it again

13 th highest goalscorer in CL history at 26 .

not bad for mental midget / big game flop huh ?

Totally proved his mental strength and big game prowess scoring the 5th goal in group stages against Basel. Legend.

i was clearly  referring to the 37 goals he scored in every stage of the champions league( save for the final )  against  almost every big european team for both madrid and lyon  .

but nice try tho .

Knockout CL goals Benzema since joining Madrid:

2 vs. Lyon
1 vs. ZSKA Moscow
2 vs. APOEL
1 vs. Galatasaray
1 vs. Dortmund
2 vs. Schalke
1 vs. Bayern

Important ones vs. Lyon (when Madrid used to have their Lyon hoodoo) and Bayern. Possibly Dortmund for giving Madrid hope for the comeback as a super sub. Everything else statpadding against scrubs in high-scoring games. Certainly nothing worthy of praising him as a "standout big game CL player".

Fußball wrote:Knockout CL goals Benzema since joining Madrid:

2 vs. Lyon
1 vs. ZSKA Moscow
2 vs. APOEL
1 vs. Galatasaray
1 vs. Dortmund
2 vs. Schalke
1 vs. Bayern

Important ones vs. Lyon (when Madrid used to have their Lyon hoodoo) and Bayern. Possibly Dortmund for giving Madrid hope for the comeback as a super sub. Everything else statpadding against scrubs in high-scoring games. Certainly nothing worthy of praising him as a "standout big game CL player".

why leave out group stage  and lyon goals ?
the guy scored in his CL debut .
scored an extremely decisive goal against kiev to send  lyon to the second round  in 2006.
scored a  brace against glascow that sent lyon ( again ) to the second round in 2007 .
his goal and performance against  manchester united that earned him praise from SAF .

he scored some important group stage goals for madrid,  like the one against milan in 2009  , and consistently outscored the guy who started more games than him ( higuain ) .

the guy is only 26 and is just 5 goals shy from breaking into the top 10 goalscorers list  . ahead of the likes of van persie , crespo , rivaldo , rooney ,trezeguet ,Eto'o etc....

Surely he is doing something right if he is surpassing the goalscoring records of these legendary forwards.

Because legends aren't born in CL group stage games against Galatasaray, Copenhagen, Moscow, Ajax or Zürich.

Your stat comparison with the likes of Rivaldo actually shows how meaningless those padded stats are. Rivaldo was a 1 man army for a Barca team that could barely qualify for the Champions League. Qualification relied on him delivering a hattrick and the bicycle goal of the century. Benzema is leading the line for a top 3 team in the world where getting knocked out before the semis would be considered a huge failure. Please tell me more about goalscoring stats. What's next? Benzema league goalscoring stats vs. Maradona league goalscoring stats?

In all of this I'm not calling Benzema a bad player or anything by the way. I'm merely arguing against that goalscoring argument which is somehow supposed to portray him as a "CL specialist". Neymar has already surpassed the likes of Rivaldo and Ronaldinho for Brazil in the goalscoring charts. 3 more and he will be top 5 of all time. Means jackchit when 90 % of the games have been meaningless friendlies while Rivaldo and Ronaldinho brought Brazil World Cup glory.

Fußball wrote:Because legends aren't born in CL group stage games against Galatasaray, Copenhagen, Moscow, Ajax or Zürich.

Your stat comparison with the likes of Rivaldo actually shows how meaningless those padded stats are. Rivaldo was a 1 man army for a Barca team that could barely qualify for the Champions League. Qualification relied on him delivering a hattrick and the bicycle goal of the century. Benzema is leading the line for a top 3 team in the world where getting knocked out before the semis would be considered a huge failure. Please tell me more about goalscoring stats. What's next? Benzema league goalscoring stats vs. Maradona league goalscoring stats?

again with the cherry picking of the points you think you can argue .

was trezeguet a one man army too when he started undisputedly as a striker for one of europe's top teams for almost ten years ?
and what about eto'o ? rooney ? and barça prior to the gaspar era was far from being a rivaldo one man army
you're also ignoring that benzema only started 2 seasons for lyon and didn't become an undisputed starter for madrid until 2013-2014.

no matter how you spin it , benzema's record in the CL is impressive , and he'll possibly end up in top 5 by the time his career ends .

the need for benzema to be "not that good but ok" is funny to me, when all the other cf who are focal point will just end up scoring like 5-7 more goals than him, but their 20x better than him

Fußball wrote:In all of this I'm not calling Benzema a bad player or anything by the way. I'm merely arguing against that goalscoring argument which is somehow supposed to portray him as a "CL specialist". Neymar has already surpassed the likes of Rivaldo and Ronaldinho for Brazil in the goalscoring charts. 3 more and he will be top 5 of all time. Means jackchit when 90 % of the games have been meaningless friendlies while Rivaldo and Ronaldinho brought Brazil World Cup glory.

lol, and what exactly has ronaldinho done in a world cup other than score a penalty against the mighty china in a 4-0 drubbing in the group stage and off course fluke it against england (even spoilt it with a needless red card too) so yeah, he brought the world cup to brazil..THE Great ronaldinho in 11 world cup games 2 goals and 2 assists but as long as it's benzema yeah its okay to call him a scrub. Smh

I can empathise with Benzema. He reminds me of a great Dutch player, some of you know him as Dennis Bergkamp. He was also introverted on the field and did not call for the ball. Benzema, like Mr. Bergkamp, lacks a certain killer instinct that lesser players such as Ruud van Nistelrooy had. Dennis Bergkamp typified the certain self destruction we Dutch have been plagued with since the unfortunate 1974 world cup final, where the Dutch team of the Totalvoetbaal lost to our bitter rivals in the form of the unsightly Gerd Muller.

Benzema will never change his character. It is unfortunate but only the manager can do this, and unfortunately, Italians are known too much for their pragmatism rather than their eye for beautiful football. TY.

Why do people even question Benzema's quality?

And then will go and laud the most obscure of strikers searching for qualities while in the same breath trying and I mean trying to search for any slight fault they can find in Benzema

What the hell is Benzema supposed to do?

"Oh sorry obscure team no1 I won't score against you because that would be stat padding so I'm just going to pass the ball to Ronaldo instead, I'll wait till the final"

Makes me laugh

Blame benzema for marcelo, pepe, casillas,and bale being idiots ok

what's funny is that this " observation " is coming from fussbal
the guy was all giddy about klose's record last summer .. you know ,the guy who in 4 world cups for the world's most consistent national team only scored one truly decisive do-or-die goal for germany ( against argentina in 2006 )the rest are group stage stat padding against scrubs or contributions to high scring games against overmatched opponents .

apparently legends are made scoring hatricks against saudi arabia .

The hate this guy gets... Seriously..

Jack Daniels wrote:The hate this guy gets... Seriously..

Usually from Higuain fanboys... whether they be Madrid fans or Argentinian.  Still buthurt.  All you can hope for is that time cures their anal soreness...  but it's a longshot.

3 goals in his last 20 appearances for Madrid.

Casciavit wrote:3 goals in his last 20 appearances for Madrid.

2 in the last 6 this season .

but hey , anything to make the guy look bad even if it means counting games from last season .

Casciavit wrote:3 goals in his last 20 appearances for Madrid.

Using the 'goals scored' tally to judge a player like Karim Benzema shows that you are ignorant of his role. He is playing the Dennis Bergkamp role at Real Madrid. If you took time to do some more research, you will see that Cristiano Ronaldo occupies the #9 position, leaving the facilitation of attacks to Benzema. Benzema is the perfect total footballer. I am starting to doubt the knowledge of people in this forum. I am disappointed in that post from you Casciavit. Higuain was an ugly footballer and there was no complications or beauty in his play. Benzema is the atypical modern striker. We are one step closer to shifting towards a game where every team plays with absolute totality.

I await your retort with much relish Cascivit. TY

Clockwork Orange = arq

i'm sure of it now.

So OK.  Let's look at that.  Benzema got injured in the Clasico against Barca in late March last season...  but Bale and Ronaldo got injured too and they couldn't play without risking worse.  Di Maria went out 2 games later too.  Benzema decided to play because there was nobody else.  He toughed it out for the team.  By his own admission when he joined NT after the season... he was playing the CL final at 50%.  IF we were remotely healthy or deep, we could have given him the 2 weeks he needed to get himself right in April.  He had inflammation in his knee and hamstring soreness.  He only played the last pre-WC friendly as he finally got the 2 weeks.

He ended last season with 24 goals and 14 assists.

Went to the WC, was in the top XI coming out of pool play as voted by the media and had 3 goals and 2 assists in 5 games.

As with all WC elimination round players, he didn't show up at Madrid until the first week of August.  His first game was the UEFA supercup against Sevilla.  So really, Benz, James and Kroos (CR7 too due to injury) are all just finishing what would normally be their preseason period.

So what's going on this year?  Nothing too unusual.  He's always been a slow starter in his career since he needs to find a rhythm.  Our midfield sucks donkey so he wasn't getting any scoring chances until the last 2 games (a bit better in the midfield).  We've played 7 official games and he has 2 goals, 1 assist.

Now let's compare his 2 goals and 1 assist to the others:
-  Benz - 2 goals and 1 assist in 11 total shots
-  Bale - 2 goals and 1 assist in 15 total shots (he played entire preseason and rested with no WC)
-  Ronaldo - 5 goals and 1 assist in 22 total shots

So someone explain to me.... why is he being singled out?  What about Bale who has been worse overall by quite a lot?  Ronaldo isn't exactly lighting the world on fire either...  but he's dealing with injuries.

The problem is that our forwards have to create chances amongst themselves.  Di Maria is gone.  Ozil is gone.  There's nobody in the midfield to set them up.  IT'S OBVIOUS that their stats will drop until James gets into the class of either Ozil (the Madrid Ozil) or Di Maria, which he is nowhere near right now.

Casciavit wrote:3 goals in his last 20 appearances for Madrid.

wasn't he carrying an injury towards the ending of the season? while being exhausted due to lack of rotation? oh wait only bale and cr injuries are worth mentioning