(Madrid) See you again! Fourteen years after their joint arrival at Real, Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo, the two best scorers in the history of the Madrid club, will find themselves at the end of their careers in the opulent Saudi championship to prolong their friendship there… or to create a little rivalry.
An air of 2009: the “Nueve”, who left Real Madrid to join the recent Saudi champion Al-Ittihad, follows in the footsteps of his illustrious attacking teammate from the “White House”, who plays at Al- Nassr since January.
The 2022 Ballon d’Or is 35 years old and still has football in his legs when injuries leave him alone, as his 31 goals this season with Real have shown. The five-time Ballon d’Or is in trouble: transferred to the Gulf in January, the Portuguese still scored 14 goals in 16 games… but his club, Al-Nassr only finished in second place of the Saudi championship, behind the future club of Benzema, Al-Ittihad.
Their last match in the same merengue jersey dates back to August 8, 2018: in Skopje, in the UEFA Super Cup (swept 2-1) against Manchester United, club “CR7” would return a few weeks later, before leaving with crash. Cristiano Ronaldo had replaced Karim Benzema in the 83rd.
But their last confrontation is more recent: the two friends had found themselves in the jerseys of France and Portugal on June 23, 2021 in the group stage of the Euro, and had each scored twice in a 2- 2.
That evening, we had seen, for a moment, all the complicity that had contributed to forming the magic trio nicknamed “BBC”, with Benzema, Gareth Bale and Cristiano, between 2013 and 2018 at Real.
The two players had even exchanged their shirts at half-time, and had joined the locker room arm in arm, laughing and remaking the world.
“It was a great pleasure to see him again. We have accomplished so much together at Real Madrid, scored so many goals,” Benzema said at the microphone of TF1.
In eight years together at Real Madrid (2009-2018), the native of Bron and that of Funchal won everything: four Champions Leagues, two Ligas, two Copa del Rey, two Spanish Super Cups, two UEFA Super Cups , and three Club World Cups.
Evenings of glory that forged strong bonds between the two men. For many years, before becoming a metronome goleador as in 2021-2022, Benzema accepted the thankless role of an erased striker behind the ogre Ronaldo, who chained seasons to more than fifty, even sixty goals.
But the Frenchman has always denied any rivalry.
“If you have someone on your team who scores three or four times as many goals as you, what competition is there? There is no competition. So you have to change your game, that’s what I did. I scored, but if I had the chance to shoot and he was in a better position, I would pass to him because I was sure he was going to score,” “KB9” said in a interview with the newspaper L’Équipe in April 2022.
The most assiduous supporters will even remember that during his first days in Madrid, Benzema, when discovering for the first time the white jersey flocked with his name, could not hold back his tears. Cristiano Ronaldo, also just arrived from England, had then offered him his sunglasses to hide his red eyes, and the two had ended up bursting out laughing, during a photo shoot with the other galactics recruited at the summer 2009 (Kaka, Xabi Alonso, etc.).
The beginning of a long friendship born in Madrid, and which will continue in Saudi Arabia.
