Aadi's blog

Karim Benzema, the French striker who plays for Spanish club Real Madrid, has been probably the best player this season for his club.

Benzema has scored 30 goals and had 11 assists for Real Madrid last season, in all competitions. This makes the 2018/19 season one of the best for Benzema in Real Madrid.

Many people think this is because of Cristiano Ronaldo’s departure to Juventus, which results in Benzema having a larger role to play in attack, and thus score more goals, and while this is true, there is more him scoring more goals this season.

This season, the frenchman has (so far) scored 19 goals and 9 assists in 36 matches across all competitions. When you look at stats alone, it doesn’t seem like Benzema has done too well so far, but there he is for you, he’s not an out-and-out attacker who will score 40 goals a season like Robert Lewandowski or Pierre-Emrick Aubameyang, but he has something they don’t.

With Eden Hazard being injured for a huge chunk of the 19/20 season after arriving from Chelsea, Benzema has an even bigger role to play in the Los Blancos attack.

When people think of the best goalscorers in the world right now, one that does not spring to mind is Karim Benzema, sure, he doesn’t score as many goals as the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski and the like, but, as stated earlier, there’s much more to his game than just scoring goals, when you watch him play, you can literally describe him as the transferrer of the ball from midfield to attack.

He often plays more like a false-nine, getting the ball from midfield and initiating wonderful counter-attacks that Real Madrid are so lethal at. Before the coronavirus pandemic stopped all leagues, Benzema was in somewhat of a goal drought, his last goal coming in the 1-0 win against Atletico Madrid at the start of February.

Since then, it feels like he has started playing more as a playmaker rather than an out-and-out striker, helping more in starting the play rather than ending it.

With 10 matchdays in La Liga still left to play, and with Eden Hazard returning to the Los Blancos lineup, it looks like Karim Benzema and Eden Hazard could be the magical partnership that every single Madrid fan wants to witness.

The Argentinian, Lionel Andres Messi, one of the, if not the best players to grace a football pitch, plays for FC Barcelona of Spain. At the age of 31, and his birthday approaching fast, he is on the twilight years of his career.

Although he is in the twilight years of his career, there is absolutely no stopping him. This 2018/19 season, in 51 total appearances for Barcelona, he scored 50 goals and had 22 assists in all competitions, a phenomenal record and the highest in the top five leagues in Europe.

There is a downside to all this, though, because FC Barcelona depend a lot on Messi, which is never a good sign, football is a team game, and one player should not be doing big masses of work, even if he is the best in the world.

We may never know, but it is definitely possible that Messi may not perform very well or maybe even perform bad next season. At the age of 32, you never know. If that happens Barcelona could go into total turmoil, unless, of course, someone like Philippe Coutinho or Luis Suarez saves them, just like Karim Benzema did in the 2018/19 season for Real Madrid when Cristiano Ronaldo left for Juventus.

But here is where another problem arises, neither Coutinho nor Suarez looks like they can do well next season, Coutinho has performed very badly under Valverde after joining from Liverpool, and it doesn’t look like a miracle could happen next season.