The proximity of a World Cup, which he can win with France, lies in wait for a player whose commitment no one can doubt
That Real Madrid is one without Karim Benzema and another when the Frenchman is on the field did not need the draw against Girona or the defeat in Leipzig to be an absolute truth. He has never tried to hide that reality from Carlo Ancelotti: "To say that we are dependent on Benzema is the truth, there is no need to hide it. I am very happy to be dependent on Karim".
For tomorrow's final against Celtic, in which Madrid must close the first place in the group after the agonizing draw in Warsaw against Shakhtar and the 3-2 in Leipzig, one of the questions that the Madrid eleven has is the presence or not of Benzema. The muscular fatigue that he drags made him train yesterday, like Tchouaméni, outside the team. It will be this afternoon when the white team exercises in Valdebebas when there will be more certainty about whether or not the Ballon d'Or can be against the Catholics of Glasgow.
Ancelotti, like all coaches with players who could be in the World Cup, knows that the closeness of Qatar is already in the minds of his players. That turns the remaining games - for the whites, Celtic, Cádiz, and Rayo - into the mined territory.
A Special Case
For Benzema, the year 2022 is special. League champion with Madrid and top scorer, he lifted his fifth Champions League in his country, best player in the Champions League, and with the Ballon d'Or already placed in his living room.
But he has something huge ahead of him: the World Cup. If for any player the World Cup is a moment marked red in his career, this is superlative for Benzema. Of the three that he has been able to play, he was only in 2014, when France fell in the Maracana against Germany in the round of 16, and with his shot at the end that Neuer saved with great difficulty. In 2010 he was left off Domenech's list and in 2018 he was punished for the Valbuena case. That decision deprived him of being the world champion and of playing the Euro final in Saint-Denis two years earlier.
Without doubts about his commitment to Madrid, it seems logical that Benzema measures the times and risks to arrive healthy at a World Cup in which France is at the top of the favorites.
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