the times | Friday May 27 2022 2GM 69
Sport
T
he whole of France will be
watching Karim Benzema
when he takes to the field in
Paris tomorrow night — but
nowhere in the country will
his performance in the Champions
League final be monitored more
closely than in the Lyon outskirts
where he grew up.
The Real Madrid striker is from
Bron, a poor suburb to the east of the
city. Benzema’s first house, a modest
two-storey building, is a stone’s throw
from his first football club, while his
mother used to watch him play from
a kitchen window.
Benzema has divided opinion in his
home country for years now — and
many still regard him with
ambivalence — but in Bron they have
no doubt. As one man in a newsagent
puts it: “You only have to write one
thing: total pride.”
It was only last year that Benzema
returned to the national team after
nearly six years of exile for his role in
a blackmail case involving his former
France team-mate Mathieu Valbuena.
He was found guilty of conspiring to
blackmail Valbuena over a sex tape in
November; Benzema will be tried on
appeal on June 30.
Benzema’s complex relationship
with France stems in part from his
background. Born to parents of
Algerian descent, he was one of nine
siblings growing up in Bron. In 2012
the suburb, or banlieue as it is known
in France, was classed as a ZSP —
priority security zone — by the
French government, referring to
places where order has broken down
and crime is rife.
Benzema’s first team, Sporting Club
Bron Terraillon, have always
preferred to focus on his football
ability. Frédéric Rigolet, who helped
to coach him, remembers a timid boy
who was happy to play endless passes
to himself against the stadium walls.
He is convinced Benzema’s passing
quality comes from those hours spent
at the club’s ramshackle ground.
Benzema made Lyon sit up and
take notice when he scored two goals
against them in 1995. They signed
him, aged eight, in March 1996.
Things were not always
straightforward for Benzema at Lyon.
Bryan Bergougnoux, a former team-
mate, called him “Petit Zizou” —
Little Zidane — because of his
extraordinary vision. But
Bergougnoux also recalls Benzema’s
place at the academy being in doubt
at 14 because of a lack of speed.
“He was slow in terms of power and
speed but, in terms of his head,
everything went quickly,”
Bergougnoux, now the manager of the
fifth-tier side Évian, says. “Technically
he was very precise — even if he was
slow, he excelled because each control,
each pass was perfect.”
Benzema faced another challenge
at Lyon when they signed Hatem Ben
Arfa in 2002. Ben Arfa joined from
France’s esteemed national academy
at Clairefontaine and was considered
the brightest talent of his generation.
Pascal Yvars, Benzema’s under-14
coach and later his and Ben Arfa’s
agent, thinks Ben Arfa’s arrival
spurred Benzema on.
“When Karim saw Hatem arrive, he
started to become a worker, to put in
a lot of effort, and that’s when, at 16
or 17, he put on muscle and become
powerful,” Yvars says. “Hatem’s arrival
did Karim good — it allowed him toimpact at Real — he has already won La
Liga in the first season of his second
spell at the club, who he led to the
Champions League victory in 2014.
“He has got some sort of magic he
casts on the players,” McManaman
said. “The way that Carlo operates now
is perfect for Real Madrid. [He’s] as
close to Vicente del Bosque as a manag-
er can be.”
Del Bosque managed Real from 1999
to 2003, winning two Champions
League finals and two La Liga titles.
Like Ancelotti, he is credited with a
soft-touch approach.
McManaman, who joined Real in the
summer of 1999, said he was surprised
by the relaxed attitude of his team-
mates the night before the 2000
Champions League final against Valen-
cia. He scored in a 3-0 win at the Stade
de France — the host venue tomorrow.
“Most of my team-mates had won it
in 1998 — they were so relaxed, having
massages at one in the morning,”
McManaman said.
Real have beaten the champions of
France and England, Paris Saint-Ger-
main and Manchester City respective-
ly, and the Club World Cup champions,
Chelsea, en route to Paris. “They have
done it the hard way — [if they win] it
should go down as one of the best victo-
ries ever,” McManaman said. “Liver-
pool want to go level with AC Milan [on
seven European Cups]; Madrid want to
go to 14 — this is normal for these types
of clubs. They’re expected to win tro-
phies. [For Jürgen Klopp and the Liver-
pool players] the work is done, it’s just a
question of fitness.”
6 Watch BT Sport’s exclusive coverage of
the Uefa Champions League final,
Liverpool v Real Madrid, live from 6pm
tomorrow. For more information, visit
btsport.comBenzema spent
six years in exile
from Les BleusSport
A Real great but Benzema
continues to divide France
come out of his comfort zone .”
Benzema was called up to the
senior team in January 2005. Tasked
with giving an initiation speech in
front of a Lyon dressing room that
included Florent Malouda, Michael
Essien and Eric Abidal, some of the
experienced professionals giggled.
“Don’t laugh,” Benzema, 17, said. “I’m
here to take your place.”
The tone may have been light-
hearted, but Benzema was proved
right. He made his debut against Metz
that month, when both he and
Bergougnoux came on in the 78th
minute. He promptly produced a
sombrero flick and provided an assist
for Bergougnoux. “You sensed he was
on a mission,” Bergougnoux says.
That mission became clear as
Benzema racked up the goals for
Lyon, who were in the midst of a
run of seven Ligue 1 titles in a row.
The striker helped them to win
four of those from 2005 to 2008,
finishing as the league’s top
scorer with 20 goals in their final
title-winning season. He
attracted interest from big
European clubs, including
Manchester United and
Real Madrid, but the lure
of Real proved too hard
to resist when their
president, Florentino
Pérez, paid a
surprise visit to his
house in Bron.
Benzema
signed for Madrid
in the summer of 2009 for
£30 million, becoming their
third big signing of the
window after Cristiano
Ronaldo and Kaká.
Benzema had to fight
it out with Gonzalo
Higuaín for the starting
striker role, while José
Mourinho likened the
Frenchman to a cat,
saying he would
prefer to “hunt with
a dog”.
Off the pitch,
Benzema courted
controversy. Therewere a number of driving-related
incidents, while in 2014 a French
court dropped charges of sex with an
underage prostitute against him and
his France team-mate Franck Ribery,
which both men denied. Then, in
2015, the French football federation
suspended Benzema after the
blackmail case involving Valbuena.
The case split France, particularly
after Benzema accused Didier
Deschamps, the France manager, of
having “bowed to the pressure of a
racist part of France”.
“When Benzema’s on top, everyone
says he’s French,” Rigolet says. “But
when he had his stories, they
slandered him and they forgot him.
It’s like Zinédine Zidane. His parents
are Algerian, and everyone loves him.
But he deviated in the slightest way
with his headbutt in 2006 in the
[World Cup] final and they started to
forget what he had done in the past.”
Zidane was part of a multicultural
France team who won the country’s
first World Cup in 1998. He scored
two goals in the final against Brazil
and was hailed as an icon of
integration — but Benzema was out
of the picture when France won again
20 years later.
Yvan Gastaut, a historian who
specialises in migration and sport,
says Benzema is the latest in a long
line of dual-heritage French
footballers who have become “ping-
pong balls” in the country’s
immigration debate. Gastaut says
public opinion has shifted since
Benzema returned to the fold with
France before the European
Championship last year.
“His best defence is to be what he is
today — brilliant on the pitch, scoring
goals and showing human values on
the pitch,” Gastaut says.
Now 34, Benzema has stepped out
of Ronaldo’s shadow at Real Madrid
since the Portugal star left in 2018,
and his return of 44 goals in 45
appearances this season is the best of
his career. This month he
matched Raúl as Real’s
second-highest scorer, with
323 goals for the club.
Even so, it was Kylian
Mbappé who adorned the
French sports pages at the start
of this week after his
decision to stay at Paris
Saint-Germain. A
World Cup winner
with France in
2018, the 23-year-
old is the poster
boy for that
generation, having
grown up in the
banlieues of Paris.
“Karim is a
maghrébin,” Yvars
says, referring to
the French term
for people of
north African
descent.
“Sometimes in
France people don’t
like maghrébins
very much — let’s
be truthful.
“But he has
matured. He smiles
more and says, ‘I
want to play for
France, it’s my country,’
and people need to
hear that. I think
there are more and
more people who
appreciate him.”Tomas Hill Lopez-Menchero Leading marksman
Most Champions League goals,
2021-22Karim Benzema
(Real Madrid)15 (11)Robert Lewandowski
(Bayern Munich)13 (10)Sebastien Haller
(Ajax)11 (8)Mohamed Salah
(Liverpool)8 (12)Riyad Mahrez
(Man City)7 (12)Christopher Nkunku
(Leipzig)7 (6)Goals (Games)Benzema's goals broken downRight
foot
11Left foot 1Head
3Inside
box
13**Including 3 penaltiesOutside
box
2alongside Virgil van Dijk, arguably
the best centre back in the world at
present. The Holland international,
he says, has been quick to offer advice
but also freedom.
“He trusts me to make certain
decisions,” Konaté, who has been
capped by France 13 times at under-21
level but is yet to win a first full cap,
says. “He’s not like, ‘You need to do
this, you need to do that,’ before each
match. He lets me play to my
strengths, and that’s great.”
For now, all roads lead back to
Paris, and what he hopes will be a
glorious homecoming. “A long, long
journey,” he says. “I remember six
years ago when I had just joined
Sochaux. We made the journey to the
Stade de France to see the under-19s
in the final.
“It’s incredible to think that I was
watching a match at that level from
the stands just a few years ago,
my first time there, and now I’ll be on
the grass, playing in a Champions
League final. It really is some
journey.”GUALTER FATIA/GETTY IMAGES
Konaté dreamt
of being striker
but is now set
on being the
world’s best
centre back1
Day until the
Champions League final
tomorrow, 8pm
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