The stellar Champions League crossover begins to bite.
Real Madrid‘s French striker Karim Benzema warns in France that “there is no fear” in his team ahead of the next Champions League match against Paris-Saint-Germain (PSG) and that the Whites will go to the French capital “to to win”.
The round of 16 draw produced an exciting PSG-Real Madrid match.
In an interview published this Saturday with the magazine France Football on the occasion of having been chosen as the best French player of 2021 by the publication, Benzema acknowledges that they “would have liked another” rival, but affirms that “if you want to reach the end, you have to win everyone.”
The first leg will be in a month, on February 15, and the Whites’ attacker stresses: “When we go to France to play that game against Paris, it will be to win.”
He also avoids comparing the white attack with the Parisian Messi-Mbappé-Neymar triplet. “It is not the same, they are neither the same age nor have they lived the same“, is justified.
In the interview, Benzema also reviews some elements of his career and his excellent level at the age of 34, and acknowledges that he can no longer do more on the pitch to win the Ballon d’Or (which is also awarded by France Football) except to achieve ” more titles collectively”. “My motivation is to do better every year. And that’s what I do, improve, in terms of statistics, goals, assists, progression,” he highlights.
Benzema was fourth in the last Ballon d’Or, last November, behind Leo Messi, Robert Lewandowski and Jorginho. Although he has surpassed the great star of French football, Kylian Mbappé, in the national trophy, Benzema avoids speaking in terms of competition with the PSG attacker and his teammate in the French team, and says about him that “he is already one of the great players and he is going to be very great”.
“We are lucky to play together in the national team, I see his potential and I know what he is capable of doing,” he insists. Even so, he assures that he does not like to say that he is the best French footballer of the moment, since “they are nothing more than words”.
The year 2021 also marked the return of Benzema to the French national team after an absence of almost six years after being splashed by the “Valbuena case” and his disagreements with the national coach, Didier Deschamps, which deprived him of being part of the team that was crowned world champion in 2018.
The player denies having been “pardoned”. “I don’t see it that way. I’ve returned to the French team. With the French public, just like with all my fans, I’ve always tried to make them enjoy themselves,” he says.
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