Karim Benzema

Icarium

Lifestealer
He has been awesome in this champions league season. Scoring goals creating chances. One class above ronaldo. But still ronaldo gets all the praise. Totally unfair.
 

DonAK

President of FC Barcelona
He's such an underrated player. Good to see majority of Madridistas have realized his worth.
 

Raed

Dr. Raed St. Claire
Surprised to say this but I'd qualify Benzema as a striker who'd be a fantastic fit for us. If I had to make a list of ideal Barca strikers based on both current quality and fit it'd be as follows:

1. Suarez
2. Lewandowski
3. Benzema
4. Muller
5. Cavani
6. Aguero
7. Tevez
8. Ibrahimovic
9. Paco Alcacer
10. Rooney?/Higuain?

Having intelligent movement and technique is vital along with some level of physicality that allows them to play with their back towards goal or directly tussling with opposition CB's. I'd expect Paco to shoot up that list in a few years considering how he is a fantastic young talent with all the aforementioned qualities.
He will suffer on the wing.
 

Raed

Dr. Raed St. Claire
He's such an underrated player. Good to see majority of Madridistas have realized his worth.

Madridistas were and are well aware of his skillset, gave him all the patience in the world to break out of his shell. For a long time he didn't, and after lots of work from the whole club and most importantly, himself, he is shining.
 

DonAndres

Wild Man of Borneo
He will suffer on the wing.

Well *ideally* no striker at Barca should be truly pushed out to the wing. Suarez's first few games had him spend more time out wide but even then he had a fair amount of time performing his natural role/movements centrally. With Messi in that right-central free role, Benzema would spend most of his time as a #9 and only move laterally in support when Messi chooses to burst vertically to the middle; much like what he does when he moves to the left often as Ronaldo decides he wants to be in the box for scoring chances (see his assist against Basel for example).

In fact, here's the positional map against Basel:

499ab776e7d3077d35a32ba1ed2c8fdd.png


Benzema is mobile and skilled enough where he could drift away from the static 9 position in times of linkup or quick sequence moves. This is, of course, all theoretical as the transfer would never happen and it doesn't need to now that we have Suarez (a better fit for that role). I've criticized Benz heavily in the past but he's proved me wrong over the course of 2014.
 

Raed

Dr. Raed St. Claire
Suarez, Muller, Neymar, Pedro, Guily, are naturally wide players Benz isn't it.

However, this is not to say that he cannot do the job.
 

CuleLife4Life

Active member
He'd be king of Madrid if Bale and of course Cristiano weren't there. Really makes me wonder how he'd be perceived if he was the #1 star of a team.
 
Hmm, Benzema has never been as good for the NT than for madrid. Medias brand him as the main man but from that perspective he is almost always a disappointment. I just view him as a regular, like Valbuena or Matuidi, or more recently Griezmann and Pogba
 

hamad138

Banned
Benzema can only play good because hes sorrounded by world class players, let him play for liverpool and he be worser than ballotelli
 

Home of Barca Fans

Top